John Edwards' political career is in ruins as a result of his affair with a campaign hanger on and now the Feds have taken an interest in trying to determine whether any hush money was paid to the woman from campaign funds.

Mandy Locke of the Charlotte Observer reports that Edwards has acknowledged the investigation but refuses to comment on it directly. And she writes of how difficult it will be for the investigators to track down any illegal payments:

Records of one group that does disclose donors, the Alliance for a New America, show that Edwards' 2008 campaign got a huge boost from a single source: $3.48 million from a holding company for Rachel "Bunny" Lambert Mellon, a 98-year-old matriarch of industrialist Andrew Mellon's fortune.

The riches that bankrolled Edwards' bid for president will be tough to sort, campaign finance experts say.

"This may be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of Open Secrets, a campaign watchdog group. "John Edwards is a leader in misleading the public."

Records show that Hunter was paid by a political action committee aligned with Edwards. She received $114,000 to film Edwards as he hopscotched the nation to rally crowds in the fight against poverty. She followed him to Uganda, where he met with starving children orphaned by attacks by rebel forces. Her "webisodes" still live on the Internet.