Nightly News   |  May 16, 2012

Edwards’ defense lawyers ‘sweating it’

Now that the John Edwards trial is going to a jury, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie says anything can happen.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> our chief legal correspondent savannah guthrie . how likely was it really we were going to see on the stand either john edwards or his daughter cate or rielle hunter.

>> cate edwards seemed like in the realm of possibility, edwards and hunter would have been a bigger problem. it would have risen and fallen on his credibility, and the defense made the calculation they would rather focus on the weakness in the prosecution's case, specifically andrew young . they want to argue he's the one with the credibility problems, who can't be believed, who admitting lying and taking most of the money. but i have to believe that the defense lawyers are sweating it, here they are taking a case to a jury, a case they could have gotten a plea agreement on, but they took a gamble. now it's going to a jury, anything can happen.

>> a veteran trial lawyer at the sister of this decide to go to trial in