Edwards Trial Set to Begin John Edwards arrived at federal court in Greensboro, N.C., on Monday. GREENSBORO, N.C. - John Edwards, once an accomplished trial lawyer who twice reached for the presidency, begins the most important trial of his life on Monday morning. Judge Catherine C. Eagles of Federal District Court here will first select from a pool of 42 potential jurors the 12 who are expected to spend more than a month deciding his fate. Lawyers for the federal government are then expected to begin their case, arguing that nearly a million dollars that two wealthy donors gave to Mr. Edwards constitute illegal campaign contributions and were not, as he has claimed, aid from friends trying to help him hide an affair from his wife. The trial promises to reveal even more details of the affair that derailed his political career and his marriage to Elizabeth Edwards, who died in 2010 after a public battle with breast cancer. By Sunday night, television satellite trucks had already been put into position around the small federal courthouse here, although many in this city, about an hour's drive from Mr. Edwards home in Chapel Hill, are more consumed with the nearly 100,000 people in town for the nearby High Point Market, the world's largest furniture trade show. The government's case is simple: Mr. Edwards knowingly accepted the money from the two donors and used it to keep information from the public that would have surely torpedoed his presidential campaign. The defense team will try to characterize the federal government's legal theory as impossibly novel, and argue that the case is politically motivated. Defense lawyers say that Mr. Holding has long been politically hostile to Mr. Edwards and hopes the case will help his political ambitions. Mr. Holding retired as a prosecutor last year, a month after securing Mr. Edward's indictments, and then announced he was running for Congress. But some political strategists dismiss the defense's argument as mere posturing. The government's legal team is being directed by David V. Harbach II of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, and faces a lineup of high-powered white-collar criminal defense lawyers led by Abbe D. Lowell, a former Justice Department official and Washington insider. It is not clear whether Mr. Edwards will testify or to what extent he will participate in his defense. Mr. Edwards was once considered such a skilled trial lawyer that others in the profession would rush to catch his closing arguments. Of course, it will be hard for both sides to keep the focus on the intricacies of campaign finance law when the central story of the trial hangs on a dying wife, an affair and an attempted cover-up thought to be so elaborate that Mr. Edwards persuaded a loyal campaign aide, Andrew Young, to claim paternity of the daughter Mr. Edwards had with his mistress, Rielle Hunter, and go underground with Mr. Young's family and Ms. Hunter. William Dupre contributed reporting from Greensboro, N.C. Correction: April 23, 2012 An earlier version of this article carried an erroneous dateline and contributor line. The trial is being held in Greensboro, N.C. - not South Carolina.