Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: Prosecutors rested their case against John Edwards on Thursday after calling to the witness stand some of his closest friends and advisers, many of whom gave unflattering testimony about the former presidential candidate whose once-promising political career collapsed amid a sex scandal. 
  
 Former presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards arrives at a federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Edwards is accused of conspiring to secretly obtain more than $900,000... (Associated Press) 
  
 Former presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards and his daughter, Cate Edwards, arrive at a federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Edwards is accused of conspiring to secretly... (Associated Press) 
  
 Edwards is accused of being the mastermind behind a plan to use secret payments from two wealthy campaign donors to hide his pregnant mistress as he sought the White House in 2008. The trial centers on whether Edwards knew what the money was being used for, and when he knew it. 
  
 While the past 14 days of testimony has focused on the money trail, the trial has also revisited Edwards' breathtaking fall. 
  
 He had an affair with Rielle Hunter, a videographer on his campaign, as he renewed his marriage vows to his cancer-stricken wife. He fathered a child with Hunter and then a decision was made for his right-hand man to claim paternity so Edwards could keep up his lofty political ambitions. And he lied repeatedly to his wife, his advisers and the public. 
  
 Jurors will have to look beyond Edwards' character, though. As prosecutors wrapped up their case, they showed the jury records detailing the money spent to hide Hunter _ $319,500 in cash, luxury hotels, private jets and a $20,000-a-month rental mansion in Santa Barbara, California. The bills, flashed up on a large screen for the jury to see, were all paid by Fred Baron, a wealthy Texas lawyer who served as Edwards' 2008 campaign finance chairman. 
  
 Baron began paying the expenses after tabloid reporters tracked down the pregnant mistress in Chapel Hill, where she had been secretly living in a house rented for her only a few miles from the Edwards family estate. Hunter was being closely watched over by Edwards' once-close confidant, Andrew Young, who falsely claimed paternity of boss' baby as the tabloid prepared to expose the affair. 
  
 As part of the cover-up, Baron paid for Hunter _ and Young and his wife _ to cross the country on private flights worth more than $80,000 and stay in waterfront hotel suites costing nearly $44,000, including bar tabs and frequent room service. Baron also leased a mansion in Santa Barbara for the mistress as she prepared to give birth, with total costs over the next eight months totaling $184,378. 
  
 Several witnesses testified that Edwards knew what the money was spent on; others were less definitive. 
  
 The government must prove Edwards had criminal intent, and his defense team will ask U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles on Friday to dismiss the case, arguing they haven't proven their case. If the judge allows the trial to go forward, the defense will begin presenting its side Monday _ and may call Hunter to testify. Edwards could also take the stand in his own defense. 
  
 Edwards has pleaded not guilty to six counts related to campaign finance violations. Prosecutors say he spearheaded a scheme to use nearly $1 million in secret payments from Baron and 101-year-old heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon to hide his affair and keep his presidential campaign viable. 
  
 Edwards denies knowing about the secret payments, which his lawyers contend were gifts from friends rather than campaign contributions. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted. 
  
 Former Edwards economic policy adviser Leo Hindery testified Thursday he was an intermediary between Edwards and former Sen. Tom Daschle, who was then with Barack Obama's campaign. On the night Obama won the Iowa caucuses, Edwards asked Hindery to talk to Obama's camp. 
  
 "He asked me to reach out to the Obama campaign and make clear his availability on the ticket," Hindery said. 
  
 Daschle responded: "You really want me to do this now?" Hindery quoted him as saying. 
  
 The jockeying didn't end there. When Obama didn't accept Edwards with open arms, he started talking to Hillary Clinton's campaign, Hindery said. ||||| GREENSBORO, N.C. —Federal prosecutors closed their case against former Sen. John Edwards Thursday afternoon with a direct play for the jury: showing the August 2008 national television interview in which he publicly acknowledged having an extramarital affair but boldly lied about its duration, whether he had fathered a child and whether he’d told his family the full truth. 
  
 The 20-minute “Nightline” video, in which Edwards makes at least a dozen statements now established to be false, served as a powerful reminder of Edwards’s dishonesty and his refined ability to appear convincing when stating things that are simply untrue. 
  
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 The video’s relevance to the criminal charges against Edwards and to the weaknesses in the prosecution case is less clear. The defense has already admitted that the former senator lied in the interview. Other witnesses have testified that Edwards told them he did so to protect his family, particularly his ailing wife Elizabeth, from further pain. 
  
 During testimony earlier Thursday about telephone records and credit card bills, some of the jurors seemed to have their eyes closed for significant stretches. But most were clearly riveted by the televised encounter between ABC’s Bob Woodruff and Edwards at the former senator’s North Carolina home. 
  
 In the interview, Edwards conceded he’d “made a mistake” by having a brief affair with videographer Rielle Hunter in 2006. 
  
 “It was short,” the former senator told Woodruff about the affair that’s been shown to have stretched from February 2006 until at least the spring of 2007. “My family knows everything about it — everything.” 
  
 Some of Edwards’s comments in the interview do bear on the charges against him — namely that he took part in a scheme to have two of his prominent supporters pay about $925,000 in living expenses for Hunter and their child, Quinn. Prosecutors contend that the payments amounted to illegal, unreported contributions to Edwards’s 2008 presidential campaign. 
  
 Asked about reports that Edwards’s wealthy finance chair, Fred Baron, paid tens of thousands of dollars to rent a multi-million-dollar home for Hunter in California, the former senator professed to be entirely unaware of any financial help Hunter received. 
  
 “I know absolutely nothing about this,” Edwards said in the interview. 
  
 Witnesses at the trial have testified about a couple of conversations Edwards was present for in 2007 where donors talked about entertaining or providing assistance to Hunter. 
  
 During their nearly three-week-long case, prosecutors chose not to call as witnesses several key figures in the stranger-than-fiction tale, including Hunter, Baron’s wife Lisa Blue, and another donor who gave funds used to bankroll Hunter, Rachel “Bunny” Mellon. 
  
 Baron died in October 2008. Mellon is now 101 and was never expected to take the stand. Prosecutors have not explained their decision to omit Hunter and Blue, who were on the prosecution’s list of possible witnesses. 
  
 Defense attorney Abbe Lowell indicated that on Friday he plans to ask U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles to order Edwards’s acquittal because the government failed to offer enough evidence to convict the former senator on the charges against him. |||||
Output:
The prosecution rested its case today in the John Edwards trial, with testimony providing a glimpse at just how sky-high his political ambitions were just a few years ago, notes Politico: Vice president: As soon as he lost the Iowa caucuses in 2008, he reached out to Barack Obama's camp to trade his endorsement for the VP slot. He didn't contact Hillary Clinton because he thought a presidential victory by her would be a "disaster," said former Edwards adviser Leo Hinderly. Supreme Court: If he didn't get the VP slot, he talked about becoming attorney general, with the larger ambition of landing a seat on the Supreme Court. Prosecutors also said the Edwards campaign spent $319,000 to hide his affair with Rielle Hunter, reports AP, money that went toward "luxury hotels, private jets, and a $20,000-a-month rental mansion in Santa Barbara." Tomorrow, the defense will ask that the case be dismissed. Assuming that formality goes nowhere, Edwards' attorneys are expected to present their case starting Monday.