Edwards admits to affair, denies fathering child
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WASHINGTON - Former presidential candidate John Edwards, who won praise and sympathy as he campaigned side-by-side with his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, admitted Friday he had had an extramarital affair with a woman who produced videos for his campaign.
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Edwards acknowledged a sex scandal he had dismissed as "tabloid trash" only last month. However, he denied fathering the woman's daughter, who was born in February.
The former North Carolina senator, who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, confessed to ABC News that he had lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter. He said he had not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father because of the timing of the affair and the birth. A former Edwards campaign staffer says he is the father.
Hunter's daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born on Feb. 27 this year, and no father's name is given on the birth certificate filed in California.
The National Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007, in the runup to the Democratic primaries, and Edwards denied it.
"The story is false," he told reporters then. "It's completely untrue, ridiculous." He professed his love for his wife, who had an incurable form of cancer, saying, "I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years and as anybody who's been around us knows, she's an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story's just false."
Last month, the Enquirer carried another story stating that its reporters had accosted Edwards in a Los Angeles hotel where he had met with Hunter after her child's birth. Edwards called it "tabloid trash," but he generally avoided reporters' inquiries, as did his former top aides.
In an interview, scheduled to air on ABC News' "Nightline" Friday night, Edwards said the tabloid was correct when it reported on his meeting with Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last month.
Most mainstream news organizations had refrained from reporting the story, but newspapers in Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., recounted the Enquirer's allegations in prominent articles on Thursday.
Edwards was a top contender for the Democratic nomination for president, pursuing his party's top spot — with his wife's support — even after announcing in March 2007 that her breast cancer had spread. Elizabeth Edwards revealed in November 2004, shortly after her husband and John Kerry lost the White House race, that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. After months of remission, the couple announced the recurrence of the cancer 2 1/2 years later.
He placed second in the Iowa caucuses last January but dropped out of the 2008 race a few weeks later. He has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice for Barack Obama.
The Edwardses have three children — Cate, Jack and Emma Claire. Another son, Wade, died at 16 in a 1996 car accident.
David Bonior, Edwards' campaign manager for his 2008 presidential bid, said he was disappointed and angry at Friday's news.
"Thousands of friends of the senator's and his supporters have put their faith and confidence in him, and he's let them down," said Bonior, a former congressman from Michigan. "They've been betrayed by his action."
Asked whether the affair would damage Edwards' future aspirations in public service, Bonior replied: "You can't lie in politics and expect to have people's confidence."
In 2006, Edwards' political action committee paid $100,000 in a four-month span to a newly formed firm run by Hunter, who directed the production of four Web videos showing Edwards in supposedly candid moments as well as in a public speech talking about morality.
The payments from Edwards' One America Committee to Midline Groove Productions LLC started on July 5, 2006, five days after Hunter incorporated the firm in Delaware.
Midline provided "Website/Internet services," according to reports that Edwards' PAC filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Midline's work product consists of four YouTube videos showing Edwards in informal settings as he prepares to make speeches in Storm Lake, Iowa, and Pittsburgh, as he prepares for an appearance on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and travels in Uganda in 2006.
Edwards' PAC followed the six-figure payment with two smaller payments totaling $14,461, the last on April 1, 2007.
At the time Hunter was compiling the videos in 2006, Edwards was preparing his run for president.
Episode One of the four videos shows a conversation between Edwards and an unseen woman as the two chat aboard a plane about an upcoming speech in Storm Lake, Iowa.
Cutting between clips of the speech and the conversation with the woman, Edwards touches on his standard political themes, declaring that government must do a better job of addressing the great issues of the day, from poverty and education to jobs and the war in Iraq.
"I want to see our party lead on the great moral issues — yes, me a Democrat using that word — the great moral issues that face our country," Edwards tells the crowd. "If we want to live in a moral, honest just America and if we want to live in a moral and just world, we can't wait for somebody else to do it. We have to do it."
The sound track for the six-minute video is the song "True Reflections" which begins with these words: "When you look into a mirror, do you like what's looking at you? Now that you've seen your true reflections, what on earth are you gonna do?"
The video entitled "Plane Truths," opens with Edwards relaxing in his seat on the plane, telling the unseen woman that "I actually walked the country to see who I am, who I really am, but I don't know what the result of that will be.
Edwards adds: "But for me personally, I'd rather be successful or unsuccessful based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll that you put up in front of audiences, that's not me, you know?"
Source: Yahoo News
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This... is not surprising. Edwards always thought he was more sly than he really was. |
