Trial skills count at impeachment

[Abigale Applewhite]

Posted on Sun, Aug. 17, 2003

Trial skills count at impeachment
Leahy wanted Edwards and his fresh-from-the-courtroom talent
TIM FUNK
Observer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Within days of being sworn in as a U.S. senator, trial lawyer John Edwards found himself back in a courtroom -- namely, the Senate chamber, site of President Clinton's impeachment trial.

As tense as it was for the country, the legal proceeding offered Edwards a quick entree into the higher levels of the Senate.

"He goes up to Washington and the first thing they do is have a trial. He's the luckiest man in America," cracks Gary Pearce, the Raleigh-based political consultant who ran Edwards' 1998 campaign.

Though there were 56 lawyers in the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., says he knew just who he wanted helping him when Clinton's House prosecutors deposed the three witnesses.

"I specifically asked for John," says Leahy, who had been away from courtroom work for 25 years. "Eyebrows went up that I would ask for one of the most junior members."

Why Edwards?

"I wanted somebody a lot more recently in the trenches," he says. "This was the trial of a president. That's about as momentous as you can get -- possibly overturning a national election. I wanted to make sure we had the best, and I thought he was."

Edwards and other senators -- three Democrats, three Republicans -- asked questions during the depositions of Monica Lewinsky and others. And they made rulings if the lawyers involved objected to anything.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/special_packages/john_edwards/6552279.htm