Hunter-Edwards affair and coverup timeline

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2006
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Late December 2005/Early January 2006 – According to Sam Stein of Huffington Post, Edwards and Hunter first met in a hotel restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Elizabeth Edwards will say in May 2009, that the first night they met, her husband slept with Rielle Hunter; Hunter’s friends said the same in 2008. John Edwards, on the other hand, claimed the affair took place after Hunter was hired to produce webisodes.

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Late February/Early March 2006 – Hunter’s friend at the time, music publicist, and former community editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Virginia “Pigeon” O’Brien claims to have been told directly by Hunter that she was involved with a “John from North Carolina” who was married to a woman who had been seriously ill. O’Brien would tell ABC News in August 2008, Hunter wasn’t hired to produce webisode documentaries for almost another six months.

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March 2006 – According to O’Brien, Hunter visits “John from North Carolina” in North Carolina.

Sam Stein of Huffington Post dates this trip as early April 2006. In emails to friends she says he is a married man and describes her lover as “Love Lips.”

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June 30, 2006 – Rielle Hunter and partner Mimi Hockman form Midline Groove, a video production company, incorporating in Delaware.

At some point after this, after she was hired, is when Edwards later claimed a one-time lapse of infidelity with Hunter, at a time his wife’s cancer was in remission. In August 2008, Hunter’s friend, Pigeon O’Brien told ABC News the affair had started almost six months before the hiring.

Rielle tells Jonathan Darman of Newsweek in November 2006, that she had traveled with Edwards for five months on the webisode project. In a 2007 interview on Extra, she says it was six months of travel.

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July 2006 – Rielle Hunter is living in South Orange, New Jersey with friend and business partner, Mimi Hockman.

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July 5, 2006 – Midline Groove receives first payment from Edwards PAC, One America Committee for webisode project in amount of $12,500. Ultimately the committee paid over $114,000 for the webisodes over the course of nine months, with a final payment on April 1, 2007 of $14,086.

In August 2008, Roger Friedman of Fox News will cite a source close to Midline Groove who claims the payment of $14,000 to Rielle Hunter in April 2007 was not for unused webisode footage, all of which had been turned over to the Edwards campaign in February 2007. In addition, the payment did not appear in Midline Groove’s bank records.

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July 7, 2006 – Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman witnesses Hunter flirting with Edwards on plane to DesMoines, Iowa, but does not suspect affair. He is told by Edwards press secretary that she is working on a campaign documentary. Hunter and Edwards ride in a car together between events, Darman says.

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Summer/Fall 2006 – Hunter tapes Edwards’ trips to:

Iowa – Education speech – 7/7/06

Pittsburgh PA – Walmart rally – 8/4/06

Uganda – five-day poverty tour – Late September-Early October 2006

New York City – Daily Show appearance – 11/14/06

New Orleans announcement – 12/28/06

New Hampshire – 12/29/06

Reno, Nevada – 12/29/06

Chapel Hill rally – 12/30/06

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August 2, 2006 – First webisode taped: “Plane Truth”

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August 4, 2006 – Second webisode taped: “Golden Rule” – in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Fall 2006 – High command of Edwards campaign getting disturbing reports from road staff about behavior of Edwards and Hunter.

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Late September-Early October 2006 – “Plight of Uganda” webisode taped in Kitgum, Uganda.

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Early October 2006 – Edwards and Hunter return from Africa. 2004 campaign manager Peter Scher confronts Edwards who denies having affair. Scher doesn’t believe it and leaves 2008 campaign, as do others from 2004 team.

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October 2006 – Ladies Home Journal luncheon. Elizabeth claims better choices have made her happier than Hillary Clinton, “more joyful.” A week later says she was misquoted, but Ladies Home Journal stands by transcript.

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October 2006 – Rielle Hunter registers to vote from South Orange, New Jersey address of house owned by Mimi Hockman.

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November 14, 2006 – Fourth webisode, “The Plug,” is taped in New York City and airs on “The Daily Show.”

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November 2006 – Rielle Hunter and Jonathan Darman of Newsweek meet for lunch in New York, Aqua Grill in Soho, week before Thanksgiving. She says she has been traveling with Edwards for the five months on the webisode project and she’d met Elizabeth Edwards only once in that time. Darman told her, if she let him see the films, there was a possible story in it, and this was published December 25, 2006.

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December 17, 2006 – In a short tech piece in January 2007, about online video, Business Week mentions that Edwards announced his campaign today via YouTube ten days ahead of official announcement on December 27, 2006. They post one of Hunter’s webisodes to the Business Week website.

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December 25, 2006 – Jonathan Darman publishes a brief article, “John Edwards, Untucked” in Newsweek. He previews the upcoming launch of the webisodes on One America’s website. A few weeks after this, Rielle told him she had been fired by the Edwards campaign and blamed Elizabeth.

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December 28, 2006 – John Edwards announces his candidacy in New Orleans, Louisiana. Hunter is present; Elizabeth Edwards is not. A “California friend” tells the National Enquirer in 2008 Rielle had said she felt like she was his First Lady at the event. Edwards later claims in an ABC interview in August 2008, the affair with Hunter had ended before this announcement.

Remarkable number of senior staff of 2004 campaign have removed themselves from 2008 campaign and some will later say it was because of affair.

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December 29, 2006 – Hunter tapes a rally in New Hampshire and flies from there with Edwards to Reno, Nevada.

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December 30, 2006 – According to Elizabeth Edwards, in her May 2009 interview with Oprah, Edwards confessed to her that he had had one-time sex with Rielle Hunter. According to the August 13, 2008 National Enquirer: Elizabeth Edwards learned of affair from a campaign worker who walked in on Edwards and Hunter in a hotel room in 2006. Elizabeth confronted her husband and then he confessed to a one-time indiscretion.

In August 2008, an Edwards campaign source of Fox News claimed to have known of the affair during the time Hunter worked with the campaign.

More campaign staff say they didn’t suspect for another year, December 2007/January 2008. Doomsday strategy to sabotage Edwards campaign if it looked like he might win the nomination.

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December 30, 2006 – Rielle Hunter attends Edwards rally in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, meeting Elizabeth Edwards for what EE says in 2009, was the only time. This is also the day she says John confessed to one-time infidelity.

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December 31, 2006 – One America Committee’s contract with video production company, Midline Groove, is terminated. Hunter later tells Darman she was fired because of Elizabeth.

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2007
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January 2007 – Launch of webisodes online.

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Early 2007 – Rielle Hunter appears in television interview on Extra (clips), discussing John Edwards and webisode project.
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March 22, 2007 – Elizabeth and John Edwards hold press conference announcing her cancer has recurred, but they will continue with campaign for presidential nomination.

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April 1, 2007 – One America Committee, with $7,932 at hand, pays out $14,086 to Midline for remainder of webisode footage. The same day, One America Committee takes in $14,035 from the presidential campaign; shown in FEC reports as office furniture. The only donations to One America Committee for the first quarter of 2007 totaled $18,000 from Fred Baron’s wife and three other donors.

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May 2007 – Hunter’s child, Frances Quinn Hunter, born February 2008, is conceived around this time. As reported in August 2008, Hunter tells friends that John did not want her to have an abortion.

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Early Summer 2007 – Jonathan Darman of Newsweek asks Rielle if she is dating anyone. She says she is “in love,” but says she can’t tell him who.

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Summer 2007 – The Edwardses renew their wedding vows on their 30th anniversary.

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August 2007 – Andrew and Cheri Young move into Governors Club gated community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina having sold their house in Raleigh.

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August 27, 2007 – New York Post Page Six prints blind item about a presidential candidate having trysts with a woman in downtown Manhattan, who he plans to marry once his wife is out of the picture.

A year later, confirms Hunter and Edwards identities in blind item.

Pigeon O’Brien denies she is the Page Six tipster.

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September 2007 – Anonymous tip comes into National Enquirer hot line saying Edwards was having an affair with Hunter.

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September 2007 – Anonymous tip comes into Gawker by email. Claims Elizabeth Edwards had been calling Midline Groove looking for Rielle Hunter. No knowing when this occurred, but note, “Perhaps to try to put a stop to the shenanigans.” Could indicate when EE learned of affair or continuation of affair.

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September 26, 2007 – By this time, the webisodes have been removed from the Web and so has Hunter’s personal website, beingisfree.org. Sam Stein of Huffington Post writes a detailed article about his efforts to view the webisodes and the campaign’s resistance. Midline Groove claims confidentiality agreement doesn’t allow them to talk about the webisodes.

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October 2007 – Andrew Young pleads guilty to a DWI charge, community service for which he will end up doing in California in 2008.

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October 2007 – National Enquirer views some webisodes and acquires emails from Hunter revealing the affair.

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October 10, 2007 – National Enquirer publishes allegations of Edwards having an affair without naming Hunter.

Rielle calls Jonathan Darman of Newsweek asking if he thought she should put out a statement denying the report.

Jerome Armstrong of MyDD publishes a statement by Rielle Hunter denying the affair.

Edwards flatly denies affair to Associated Press.

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October 12, 2007 – National Review notes Edwards is asked about the affair reports by local press at every campaign stop on swing through South Carolina the day before.

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October 16, 2007 – Cindy Adams writes in her New York Post gossip column that Edwards staff not dismissing rumors – “newly nervous” and “profoundly worried.”

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October 17, 2007 – Ladies Home Journal publishes survey results on happiest married couple among presidential candidates. On hearing she and John won the poll, Elizabeth says, “The competition wasn’t very tough.”

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October 17, 2007 – Andrew Young pays off a $272,700 mortgage in full for property in Conservation Ridge, Orange County, North Carolina. In September 2008, McClatchy outlined Young’s real estate ownership record: 1998, bought a home in Cary NC for $175,000; 2000, sold the Cary home and bought a house in Raleigh for $450,000, adding another $200,000 in improvements; 2005, bought a 10-acre tract in Conservation Ridge project near Chapel Hill for $300,000; 2007, sold Raleigh house for $1.2 million; October 2007, borrowed $850,000 to build new home on Conservation Ridge property. The Youngs’ newly built home, in September 2008, after they returned to North Carolina from California, was described as 5,300 square feet on ten acres.

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October 19, 2007 – Edwards campaign cancels Orange County Register interview of Elizabeth Edwards. Campaign wanted ground rule that rumors of affair would not be addressed, but did not want ground rule acknowledged in the piece.

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November 2007 – Hunter moves to a gated community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the Governors Club, nearby Andrew Young and his wife, Cheri. Rielle lives in a house owned by an Edwards backer. Andrew Young leaves his job as North Carolina finance director of the Edwards campaign. In North Carolina, Hunter drives a BMW rented by Andrew Young.

In June, 2009, as reported by the Daily Beast, according to editors who saw a tell-all book proposal from Andrew Young, he said he was paid to take the pregnant Rielle Hunter into his home for eight months. After Elizabeth Edwards learned of the financial arrangement, Young said, he had no further contact with the Edwards family.

A USA Today profile of Andrew Young published August 15, 2008, places his abrupt departure from the 2008 Edwards campaign in December, after Young claimed paternity of Hunter’s child. In September 2008, McClatchy published a report describing Young’s career progression with Edwards: 1998, Senate campaign staffer; 2002, Edwards’s US Senate office and PAC New American Optimists; 2004, presidential campaign; 2005, UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity (paid with private funds). He had previously worked as a lobbyist for the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers.

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November 18, 2007 – Elizabeth Edwards goes absent from the campaign trail after New Hampshire event. On December 13, 2007 she appears in DesMoines, Iowa for the Democratic Debate and then joins the campaign’s bus tour.

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Late November 2007 – National Enquirer discovers Rielle is living in Chapel Hill and having dinner with Andrew Young and his wife. Sources were saying Rielle was six months pregnant.

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December 12, 2007 – National Enquirer staking out Rielle’s OB-Gyn’s office gets a picture of Rielle Hunter outside a grocery store.

National Enquirer tries to confirm story with Edwards, whose attorney offers a sworn affidavit that Edwards wasn’t the father of the child, but according to campaign staff, Edwards didn’t sign it. He also refused a polygraph, which NE offered to kill the story.

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December 19, 2007 – National Enquirer publishes photos of pregnant Rielle Hunter taken in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A source close to Rielle tells the Enquirer that when Rielle first became pregnant, she said Edwards was the father. Rielle considered Andrew Young a friend, but was not romantically involved with him. Andrew and Cheri Young had dinner at Rielle’s house. The source also said that Rielle remained in telephone contact with Edwards, but couldn’t see him.

A source described as a well-placed campaign worker, who knew of the Edwards-Hunter relationship when Hunter worked with the campaign, told the Daily News in August 2008, that there was no such relationship between Young and Hunter. Another source from the Edwards campaign described Young as more of an Edwards family aide than a professional campaign aide.

It was reported that rumors of Cheri Young’s anger at her husband’s having covered up for John Edwards were coming out of her local beauty shop. In June of 2009, Andrew Young confirms this in a book proposal; also says John Edwards is the baby’s father.

A USA Today profile of Andrew Young published August 15, 2008, places his abrupt departure from the Edwards campaign in December, after Young claimed paternity of Hunter’s child, although National Enquirer sources placed the event in November, close to Hunter’s arrival in Chapel Hill.

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December 2007 – Attorney Robert J. Gordon of New York, said that his client, Rielle Hunter, a pregnant 43-year-old filmmaker, was not carrying Mr. Edwards’s child. Lawyer Pamela J. Marple of Washington stated her client, Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, was the baby’s father. Both attorneys have ties to Fred Baron, national finance chairman for both the 2004 and 2008 Edwards presidential campaigns, whose firm had contributed almost $420,000 to Edwards’ campaigns since 1998, and subsidized Edwards’ air travel with use of a corporate jet. Baron denies being involved in arranging selection of attorneys for Hunter and Young, but then vaguely retracts.

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December 20, 2007 – National Enquirer editor-in-chief David Perel says source for Hunter-Edwards love child story was not a rival political campaign. Calls sources “extraordinarily good” and “beyond reproach.”

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December 31, 2007 – National Enquirer print edition publishes investigation.

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December 2007/January 2008 – While some campaign staffers suspected an affair in Fall 2006, more campaign staff say they didn’t suspect before December 2007/January 2008. Doomsday strategy to sabotage Edwards campaign if it looked like he might win the nomination.

Ari Berman of The Nation confirms. Such discussion among campaign veterans did take place in December 2007.

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2008
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January 2008 – Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young, with his wife and children, are moved to a house in a gated community in Santa Barbara, California. Soon, after problems arise in the household, Hunter moves out and into her own house, a $3 million mansion renting for $6000 a month. Both houses, along with travel from North Carolina to California, were arranged for and paid for by Fred Baron.

Once Rielle moves out, all contact with the Youngs ceased, according to the National Enquirer.

A source close to Andrew Young says Young has not paid a cent in child support for Rielle’s baby.

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January 30, 2008 – John Edwards drops out of presidential primaries.

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February 27, 2008 – Hunter gives birth to daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter in Santa Barbara CA; father’s name unstated on birth certificate.

At some point after this, Andrew Young finds a sex tape of Edwards and Hunter. Young was unpacking, according to a New York Daily News report on his June 2009 book publishing deal with St. Martin’s Press, having moved his family out of the house they shared in California with Hunter. Most other sources have reported it was Hunter who moved out of the house she was sharing with the Youngs.

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March 20, 2008 – Cenk Uygur runs into John Edwards outside Beverly Hilton Hotel on this date. Edwards says he is in town for the Tonight Show and was a guest at the hotel. On August 12, 2008, Lee Stranahan of Huffington Post speculates Enquirer spycam photo of Edwards wearing a blue tee shirt and holding a baby inside hotel room was taken on March 20.

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June 2008 – According to a Santa Barbara woman who met Rielle and her baby, Rielle moved into a $9000 a month mansion with a stable. According to this woman and other Santa Barbara mothers who met Rielle, they thought her a nice person and good mother.

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June 2008 – Roger Friedman of Fox News is told by a source that Edwards took the basement elevator in the Beverly Hilton. Friedman thinks Edwards was visiting Rielle Hunter.

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July 2008 – National Enquirer will report in May 2009, after Elizabeth’s release of her book, Resilience, that the Edwardses are living apart and have been since July 2008, Elizabeth having barred the bedroom door in December 2006.

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July 18, 2008 – National Enquirer gets a tip Edwards will be visiting Hunter at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

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July 21, 2008 – National Enquirer catches John Edwards visiting Rielle Hunter and baby at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Arrives 9:45 PM bypassing lobby. The Enquirer mentions that Edwards and Hunter left the hotel together briefly, but gives no details of that sighting. At 2:40 AM: Edwards escapes into a men’s room in the basement, where he stays for 15 minutes until eventually escorted out by security. In his Nightline confession of August 8, 2008, Edwards will say that Hunter’s friend, Robert McGovern, had called him at his Los Angeles hotel to set up a meeting at which McGovern, who had an adjoining room to Hunter’s, was present. McGovern had driven Edwards to the Beverly Hilton, having earlier driven Hunter from Santa Barbara to the Beverly Hilton.

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July 23, 2008 – ExtraTV reports Hunter denying to them that National Enquirer hotel story is true.

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July 25, 2008 – Fox News reports security guard at Beverly Hilton confirms Enquirer story; reports a former campaign staffer is upset, but not surprised.

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Late July 2008 – This is the first Fred Baron claims to have learned of affair. Says Edwards came clean to him and a few other friends. (Unclear if this is before or after Beverly Hilton incident.)

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July 31, 2008 – Report that Edwards’s educational charity “College for Everyone” has ended.

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August 5, 2008 – Hunter calls 911 from Los Angeles Freeway saying paparazzi is following her trying to prove someone is the father of her baby “who’s not.” Tape recording of 911 call is broadcast on “Inside Edition.”
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August 6, 2008 – Democrats call on Edwards to address affair rumors before Democratic National Convention.

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August 7, 2008 – Rielle Hunter and baby flown out of California by private jet costing $50,000 to St. Croix, accommodations said to be paid for by Edwards friend and trial lawyer, Lee Rohn and other Edwards backers. Former Virgin Islands Senator Anne Golden confirmed that Hunter stayed with Rohn at first, but after Enquirer reporters found her, Hunter was moved to a motel before leaving for California on August 17. Lee Rohn vehemently denied she was a friend of Edwards or hosted Hunter in St. Croix.

Andrew Young family moves back to North Carolina. In September 2008, the Raleigh News-Observer reported the Youngs’ newly built home was 5,300 square feet on ten acres outside Chapel Hill. An $850,000 loan to build the house on Conservation Ridge was taken in October 2007, the month the National Enquirer first published articles about Edwards-Hunter affair. The newspaper asks: How did a man who collected a middle-class income raising money and serving as a personal assistant wind up doing so well for himself?

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August 8, 2008 – John Edwards interview on ABC Nightline: admits “mistake” with Hunter in 2006 – admits meeting with her in hotel room July 2008, which he had previously denied, saying he was there to convince Hunter not to reveal their affair – denies paternity of Hunter’s child – says baby’s birth on February 27, 2008 does not fit timing of affair – says affair started after Hunter was hired to do webisodes in 2006 – declares willingness to take paternity test – his wife’s cancer was in remission at time of affair – says he does not remember baby being present in hotel room and claims published photo of him holding baby either doctored or taken elsewhere – denies knowing of Fred Baron’s payments to Hunter or to former Edwards campaign aide, Andrew Young. Says he has told his family “every detail” and will not say anything further to the public.

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August 8, 2008 – Elizabeth Edwards posts to DailyKos: Refers to “mistake – begs for privacy – denies husband is child’s father – family will stand by him.

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August 8, 2008 – Fred Baron reiterates that Edwards did not know about personal payments to Hunter for resettlement to from North Carolina to California.

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August 9, 2008 – Hunter’s sister, Melissa Druck speaks out for the first time, demanding a paternity test of Edwards.

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August 9, 2008 – On CNN, David Perel, editor-in-chief of National Enquirer, says initial sources of affair story (October 2007) gave tip that Edwards would be at hotel to meet Rielle. Also that Rielle says she never had a sexual relationship with Andrew Young.

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August 10, 2008 – Attorney Robert J. Gordon, Hunter’s lawyer in December 2007, issues statement that she will not be authorizing paternity test. Hunter requests privacy for herself and her daughter.

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August 10, 2008 – Mimi Hockman tells Newark Star-Ledger she is ”contractually prohibited“ from talking to them.

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August 11, 2008 – Pigeon O’Brien is interviewed by ABC News: O’Brien says Hunter-Edwards affair began almost six months before Hunter was hired to do webisode project.

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August 12, 2008 – CBS News Early Show. Pigeon O’Brien describes the relationship as mutually pursued; denies Hunter would have stalked Edwards or had a child with a man she didn’t love.

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August 13, 2008 – National Enquirer reports Edwards political operative still paying off Rielle Hunter. Says they have evidence that Edwards visited Rielle and baby three separate times at same Los Angeles hotel. Edwards restarted affair with Hunter after his December 2006 confession to his wife.

National Enquirer claims, after saying on Nightline that he did not love Rielle, Edwards called her and told her he did love her. A source described as an ”insider“ claimed Rielle and Edwards had worked it out in advance that he would offer to take a paternity test and she would say no. Also, Elizabeth Edwards learned of affair from a campaign worker who walked in on Edwards and Hunter in a hotel room in 2006. Elizabeth confronted her husband and then he confessed to a one-time indiscretion.

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August 13, 2008 – Robert McGovern’s daughter says the National Enquirer had offered her $50,000 for McGovern’s story and McGovern refused. Says McGovern was just driving Rielle, a friend of many years, as a favor.

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August 14, 2008 – New York Times piece about lawyers involved with Edwards affair.

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August 15, 2008 – Office of Robert J. Gordon, who denied paternity by Edwards on Hunter’s behalf in 2007 and spoke for Hunter regarding paternity test August 10, 2008, refuses to take message from CBS for Hunter.

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August 15, 2008 – Colleagues and acquaintances see Young as a loyalist who would cover for Edwards.

Neighbors, too. Young’s mother, Jacquelyn Juchatz, doubts her son was the father of Hunter’s baby.

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August 16, 2008 – Salon profile of Rielle Hunter.

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August 16, 2008 – Roger Friedman of Fox News cites a source close to Midline Groove who claims a payment of $14,000 to Rielle Hunter in April 2007 was not for unused webisode footage, all of which had been turned over to the Edwards campaign in February 2007. In addition, the payment did not appear in Midline Groove’s bank records.

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August 22, 2008 – National Enquirer editor-in-chief David Perel denies Rielle Hunter was source of photo of Edwards and the baby at Beverly Hilton, wishes she was a source.

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August 25, 2008 – People Magazine. Closest friend of Elizabeth Edwards, Hargrave McElroy and others. While Elizabeth pushed Edwards to a public confession, she was crushed by the outcome, her husband’s image tarnished, seen as pariah.

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September 26, 2008 – A John Edwards-Karl Rove debate had been scheduled for this date at SUNY Buffalo. Edwards was replaced by General Wesley Clark.

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October 29, 2008 – Elizabeth Edwards delivers a talk on health care at George Washington University. The Washington Post notes she was not wearing a wedding ring.

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October 30, 2008 – New York Post’s Page Six reports Edwardses have separated, but source was not confirmed.

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October 30, 2008 – Source tells New York Magazine Edwardses have separated.

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October 30, 2008 – Fred Baron dies of cancer.

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November 10, 2008 – John Edwards speaks at Indiana University; takes only pre-screened questions.

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November 5, 2008 – Report that National Enquirer says they are in possession of a dirty diaper with which to test the DNA of Frances Quinn Hunter should they obtain Edwards’ own DNA. Also say Hunter is writing a tell-all book.

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December 2008 – Lease runs out on Hunter’s Santa Barbara house.

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December 17, 2008 – Rielle Hunter and child reported to again be living in South Orange, New Jersey.

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2009
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February 3, 2009 – Fox News reports that Elizabeth Edwards will write about Rielle Hunter and affair.

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April 27, 2009 – National Enquirer print edition reports sources claiming Rielle Hunter has decided to go public in response to Elizabeth Edwards with an “ABC News” interview with Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters, which would be scheduled to air mid-May 2009.

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April 30, 2009 – The New York Daily News, having received an advance copy of Elizabeth Edwards’s book, Resilience, reports book will cover the Edwards-Hunter affair.

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March 4, 2009 – National Enquirer reports that Edwards has confessed to Elizabeth that he is the baby’s father. On the same page of the ”exclusive“ the Enquirer shows an announcement of Elizabeth’s book due out in May 2009. According to a ”close source,“ Rielle has become nervous about Elizabeth’s book and threatened to go public herself, if John did not tell his wife he was the father of Rielle’s baby.

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March 10, 2009 – John Edwards speaks at Brown University; for the first time, publicly responds to supporters’ disappointment in moral standard, but not really.

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April 2009 – Author Jay McInerney, who was Hunter’s lover in the 1980s, publishes a collection of short fiction. In a story called ”Penelope of the Pond,“ a character of that era and based on Rielle Hunter, Alison Poole is revived and working as a media consultant on a presidential campaign. She is having an affair with the candidate and they are using a campaign aide as a beard. The candidate’s wife, however, isn’t buying it and Alison is fired.

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May 3, 2009 – Edwards confirms there is a Federal inquiry into money paid to Rielle Hunter, says he is cooperating.

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May 5, 2009 – Some details of Elizabeth Edwards’s scheduled May 7 interview with Oprah are revealed. It is noted Elizabeth does not mention the baby in her new book, Resilience, but in the interview no longer denies the possibility of her husband’s having fathered the child, says she has ”no idea.“

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May 7, 2009 – Elizabeth Edwards interview by Oprah airs. Says husband did bad thing, but marriage otherwise perfect. Oprah had to agree Rielle Hunter’s name would not be mentioned although discussion about Hunter throughout.

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May 9, 2009 – Associated Press is unable to interview Elizabeth Edwards for article due to her insistence Rielle Hunter’s name not be used anywhere. Through her publishers she is asked her motivation in writing the book. She says she decided not to go through with it after learning of the affair, but changed her mind.

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May 11, 2009 – Good Morning America interview. Elizabeth says again that John made one bad mistake, but otherwise a good man. Says more clearly she loves him. Had she known it was more than a one-night stand, she might have been more adamant about his not running.

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May 12, 2009 – Elizabeth Edwards appeared on “Larry King Live.” She claimed she dismissed the first National Enquirer reports of affair, which were published in October 2007. However, the Enquirer reports came ten months after she was told by her husband he had had an affair with Hunter.

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May 13, 2009 – National Enquirer reporting that the Edwardses are living apart and have been since July 2008, Elizabeth having barred the bedroom door in December 2006. May 25, 2009 print edition to claim he lives in a condo nearby the Edwards home and sometimes at beach house.

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May 13, 2009 – John Edwards reported to be on an anti-poverty trip to El Salvador during his wife’s book promotion tour.

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May 14, 2009 – Washington Post discusses Elizabeth’s insistence on interviewers not mentioning Rielle Hunter’s name.

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May 14, 2009 – Associated Press article on PACs such as One America Committee as ”personal piggy banks.“

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May 19, 2009 – Elizabeth Edwards appeared on “The View,” saying she would not leave her husband even if Frances Quinn Hunter turned out to be his child.

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May 20, 2009 – Democratic US Senator Kay Hagan, who heads a screening committee for recommending US Attorney replacements, says current US Attorney in North Carolina, George Holding should stay on until Edwards investigation is completed.

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May 20, 2009 – National Enquirer reports a Rielle Hunter/Barbara Walters interview will air on ABC in June. The decision was made, says the Enquirer, in reaction to Elizabeth Edwards’s trashing Hunter on the book tour. Hunter will also seek commitment of one quarter of John Edwards’s “estate” after a DNA match is confirmed. Source says Rielle has “decided to break from John.” ABC tells “Extra” no such interview has been booked.

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June 18, 2009 – John Edwards gave an interview to the Washington Post about his anti-poverty work. The article covered promises unkept to Katrina victims and North Carolina students. “Edwards refused to talk about Hunter, the baby’s paternity, his wife’s memoir or the campaign investigation.”

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June 22, 2009 – Daily Beast reports Andrew Young is shopping a tell-all book project around to New York publishers. Rielle Hunter surprised. According to editors who saw the proposal, Young says he was paid to take the pregnant Rielle Hunter into his home for eight months. Since Elizabeth Edwards learned of the financial arrangement, Young says, he has had no contact with the Edwards family.
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June 28, 2009 – Andrew Young claims to have a sex tape of Edwards and Hunter. Young was unpacking, according to a New York Daily News report on his new book publishing deal with St. Martin’s Press, when he found the tape, having moved his family out of the house they shared in California with Hunter. Most other sources have reported it was Hunter who moved out on the Youngs.

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June 29, 2009 – Character in Elizabeth Edwards’s book she called “Jim” identified as Andrew Young. She holds him partly responsible for her husband’s affair with Hunter.
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Well-said

Nutty? ‘Fringe’? We’re not sure if it was the woman who appeared on Oprah last week or her idiot followers online. The woman was Elizabeth Edwards.

-snip

Time’s short, especially when you have cancer. You don’t have time for self-delusions. In the Edwards Fairy Tale, one adopted by a number of woman bloggers who should know better, John and Elizabeth lived in the Garden of Eden, or at least Allah, and all was perfect and wonderful between the two of them until one day, many, many years later, Rielle slinked onto stage. She lurked, she tempted and poor John, probably heady from a hot oil treatment, finally caved.

Rielle is an adventurous woman, according to mutual friends. She is not, however, a rapist. And to be Elizabeth or one of her online supporters, you pretty much have to cast Rielle as a rapist. It is all so much slut-shaming that we keep expecting the same actresses who played Amy Fisher in TV movies years ago (Drew Barrymore and Alyssa Milano among them) to show up playing Rielle.

Rielle’s a grown woman, unmarried. She can sleep with whomever she wants. It’s her business. She’s not taken a vow to anyone. Elizabeth Edwards told Oprah, “There is no excuse for women to do this. Women need to have respect for other women.”

-snip

John Edwards cheated on Elizabeth. Rielle didn’t. John Edwards lied to Elizabeth. So it was really funny to watch Elizabeth’s blogging crew online work overtime to support Lizzie and attack Rielle. One huffed, “After a marriage of 30 years, she has a lot invested in the man.” Yeah, too much invested in him as was obvious during the Kerry campaign when John and Elizabeth were the picture of harmony (remember the front page photo of all their kids frolicking in the summer of 2004?) but when the press moved on, things weren’t so pretty. While Teresa Heinz-Kerry was ready to go any and everywhere (and did, winning over a huge number of Latinos in Texas with a speech tying her immigrant story into America’s shared history), Elizabeth preferred not to be too far from her husband and the rumors of his straying were already rampant within the Kerry campaign. Elizabeth did have “a lot invested in the man,” in fact, she had too much.

She still does…

Third Estate Sunday Review

Fed investigation into “honest services fraud”

CHAPEL HILL (WTVD) — The Edwards house in Orange County is a house divided – divided by infidelity, and former presidential candidate John Edwards acknowledges federal investigators are now probing his affair with Rielle Hunter.

Frank Perry spent 22 years with the FBI and is familiar with political corruption cases. He’s now retired and works for a non-profit in downtown Raleigh called – the Foundation for Ethics in Public Service.

While the feds are not commenting on the investigation, Perry explained to Eyewitness News how the case will proceed.

“It is the FBI that makes a determination of that allegation, to see if it’s credible, specific and coherent enough to proceed,” he said. “I think many people wrongly believe US attorneys generate public corruption cases, but the initiation, the vetting, the working of the case, the FBI is driving that train and it’s done with a true abundance of caution, fairness, and you want to be as firm and fast as you are fair.”

In 2006 and 2007, Edwards’ political action committee paid Hunter $114,000 to produce videos of Edwards. Federal investigators are trying to figure out if those payments violated federal law.

Perry is not connected to the Edwards investigation, but says political corruption cases focus on a federal law – called “honest services fraud”.

“Honest services means that a public official has done something that deprives the citizens of the honest services they expect from public officials,” he explained.

-snip

“It can take some time to build a case,” he said. “And [an] honest services case can take a lot of effort and can be extremely time consuming with respect to going through the financial records and following that money.”

While it appears the investigation is being conducted in Raleigh, Perry says political corruption cases have a lot of oversight – from both FBI headquarters in Washington and the Justice Department in Washington.

ABC/WTVD

“The whole thing is just baffling”

The whole thing is just baffling. Why would Edwards enter the race under these circumstances? And why didn’t Edwards quit the race a few months later when it was discovered his wife’s cancer had spread — giving him a graceful reason to bow out? Did John and Elizabeth Edwards really think the affair could be kept secret indefinitely? Was there any thought at all given to the impact on their children, their supporters, the Democratic Party and the nation if and when the affair was exposed?

Was Edwards really so egotistical, so ambitious to think taking the risk was worth the possible (and likely) consequences?

Apparently so.

Kalamazoo (MI) Gazette

I would ask Elizabeth that last question, too.

Investigators dig through records to see if donors’ money was used to cover up affair with campaign worker

Federal investigators are sifting through the records of money that helped John Edwards’ presidential campaign to determine if any was used to keep quiet his affair with Rielle Hunter.

Edwards, a Democrat and former U.S. senator, acknowledged the investigation to The News & Observer.

“I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,” Edwards said in a statement.

“However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely matter. We appreciate the diligence and professionalism of those involved and look forward to a conclusion.”

Edwards declined to discuss the matter.

A review of Edwards’ campaign money will turn up a cluster of nonprofits, some not subject to the same rules of transparency as official campaign organizations.

-snip

“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.”

Charlotte Observer

Campaign finance laws prohibit candidates from spending campaign money to pay for personal expenses they would have incurred had they not been running for office. But nonprofits created to support a candidate or his message have different requirements.

The Alliance for a New America, the group that received Mellon’s millions, was kept at arm’s length from Edwards, a requirement of campaign finance law. Nonprofits such as this, known as 527 groups, primarily finance media messaging that most often closely aligns with a particular candidate’s stance.

The alliance was launched by Nick Baldick, Edwards’ campaign manager in 2004. At least one of the donors, San Francisco attorney Jim Finberg, said he was advised the money would pay for media ads supporting universal health care in Iowa. He knew the group was linked to Edwards; by law, however, Edwards couldn’t be involved in the group’s activities.

The Center for Promise and Opportunity, a nonprofit organization allowed to shield donors’ identity but allowed some political expenditures, paid for much of Edwards’ early groundwork in New Hampshire and Iowa.

The organization’s statement of purpose filed along with its tax disclosures never mention Edwards. Edwards was the center’s honorary chairman, according to media reports in 2006.

“They play this charade. Refrain from saying they are a candidate, so they don’t have to follow the rules,” said Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group that monitors campaign finance issues. “They’re gaming the system. If they play carefully enough, they can avoid running afoul of the law.”

In 2006, Edwards traveled the nation, walking picket lines and talking to crowds about poverty and his regret in voting to fund the war in Iraq, travel paid for by the Center for Promise and Opportunity.

The center also paid for Edwards’ trips abroad, where he met with foreign leaders and visited developing nations plagued by squalor. Rielle Hunter was at his side filming.

McClatchy

Fed Grand Jury sitting on Edwards mistress pay-off

Multiple sources now confirm The ENQUIRER’s report that a federal grand jury is investigating possible misuse of presidential campaign funds by John Edwards to pay off his mistress.

U.S. Attorney George Holding revealed yesterday he “was not going to confirm or deny any investigation” regarding Edwards that was first reported by the ENQUIRER earlier this week.

A Federal grand jury did convene on Wednesday in Raleigh, North Carolina, according to multiple local reports. Grand jury proceedings are kept secret. Attorneys are liable for criminal prosecution if they discuss such investigations in public or to the press.

Prominent Raleigh defense attorney and John Edwards’ mentor Wade Smith declined to comment on whether he was representing Edwards before the grand jury investigation.

“I’m at a place where I cannot make any comment to confirm or deny,” Smith said. “I can’t say anything. It’s possible, at some later point, I can.”

The disgraced 2-time Presidential candidate began his career working for Wade Smith’s law firm and they are long time friends.

National Enquirer

Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby

An earlier photo:

The National Enquirer spycam photo, possibly taken at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on March 20, 2008:

John Edwards’ Wife: New Book Will Address Affair

You’d think after the chaos last year surrounding former Senator John Edwards’ personal life, his wife, Elizabeth, would not be looking for more publicity — or inviting questions.

But on May 12th, Broadway Books, a division of Random House, is releasing a new short memoir by Elizabeth called “Resilience,” a follow up to her best selling “Saving Graces.”

Edwards insiders are wondering if “Resilience” will be a tell-all, tell-some, tell-none, or an exercise in denial. The Broadway Books catalog says Edwards has written “an unsentimental and ultimately inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life’s biggest challenges.”

The publication of “Resilience” may not prove so inspirational to one reader, however: Rielle Hunter, the woman who gave birth last year to a baby girl whom many speculate was fathered by Edwards. Hunter has privately told friends that the child is Edwards’. Sources say the resemblance is as good as a paternity test.

So far, Hunter and Edwards have not come to any agreement about the baby’s paternity or finances — absolutely some of “life’s biggest challenges.”

The usually private Elizabeth Edwards, I am told, is definitely including her take on the relationship in her new book. Her publicist says she will be addressing John’s “affair and how she experienced it.”

Indeed, how Elizabeth “experienced” may be just as the public did: Edwards suddenly exited the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 30, 2008. In early August, after much pressure and a sting by the National Enquirer, he admitted the affair. What he didn’t say: the end of his campaign came exactly one month before Hunter gave birth to baby Frances Quinn.

Fox News

Edwards ran into the bathroom

These days, you can’t fault Perel for feeling smug. Just two weeks ago, John Edwards confirmed to Bob Woodruff of ABC News much of what the Enquirer had been reporting for 18 months: that he had cheated on his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth with 44-year-old Rielle Hunter, who was paid $114,000 by Edwards’s One America PAC for producing a series of “Webisodes” along the campaign trail. The paper had printed photos of a pregnant Hunter and named her as the mother of Edwards’s love child. (Edwards denied fathering the baby.)

-snip

In September 2007, Rick Egusquiza, a bartender turned Hollywood reporter who joined the Enquirer in 2000, was sitting at his desk in the paper’s Los Angeles bureau when he answered the tip line. (”I’m a nice guy, so people tell me things,” Egusquiza says.) The anonymous source told him that Edwards was having an affair with Hunter. “I was like, ‘Whoa, this is great,’ ” he recalled. “Not like this is great, but you know, like this is something I want to check out.” The piece was assigned the next day, and Barry Levine, the Enquirer’s executive editor based in New York, directed the coverage that grew to include nearly a dozen reporters. “We saw some of the videos. It was clear back then, the flirtation was going on. Edwards was like a blushing kid to her,” Egusquiza says.

After a month on the story, the Enquirer obtained e-mails from Hunter disclosing the affair. The first article was published on October 10, 2007, but it did not name Hunter. “We knew her name, but we withheld it,” Perel says. “We were being conservative; sometimes we err on the side of caution.”

In late November 2007, Perel and Levine dispatched to North Carolina a “ghost team,” reporters whose job it is to watch but not to be seen. The reporters discovered that Hunter was living in a gated community and having dinner with Andrew Young, the campaign aide who later said he was the father of Hunter’s child, and his wife. They wanted a photo, and they wanted comments from both Hunter and Young. “You know, you have sources telling you she’s six months pregnant, but let’s see it!” Perel says. “We decided to shift into ‘go-mode.’ “

For two weeks, a team of four reporters-including Alan Smith, who broke the Donna Rice scandal-staked out Hunter’s OB/GYN office until she was spotted and snapped outside a nearby grocery store on December 12. “The picture you see where she looks like Camilla Parker Bowles took fifteen days,” reporter Alan Butterfield, who was at the scene, remembers. “We sat in our car.”

Before publishing the photograph on December 19, the Enquirer pressed Edwards to confirm the story, Perel says. Edwards’s attorney offered to provide a sworn affidavit that his client hadn’t fathered Hunter’s child, but, according to two former Edwards staffers, Edwards never signed one. Perel says the paper also offered Edwards the chance to take a polygraph test; if he passed, Perel would kill the story. Edwards declined the offer.

Hunter’s baby was born on February 27. Perel’s reporters kept working the story. Four days before encountering Edwards at the Beverly Hilton on July 22, they learned he would be meeting Hunter at the hotel, and, on July 21, a team of seven Enquirer reporters reserved several rooms and set up camp. That day, Edwards arrived in California for an anti-poverty event. Sources told the reporters he would see Hunter during the visit, but they didn’t know when. “We were up for thirty-six hours,” says senior reporter Alexander Hitchen, a veteran of Fleet Street and son of Brian Hitchen, the former editor of the British Sunday Express tabloid.

Around 9:40 p.m. on July 21, Hitchen saw Hunter’s friend Bob McGovern pull up to the hotel in a navy blue BMW 740 sedan and take the elevator up to Hunter’s room. Hitchen and Butterfield knew Edwards would likely use a less visible entrance and stationed themselves in the lobby for the five-hour stakeout. Shortly after 2 a.m, Hitchen saw McGovern return to the lobby. Expecting Edwards to take the elevator to the basement where he could escape through a rear stairwell, the reporter positioned himself at the bottom of the stairs. Edwards popped out of the elevator and started up the stairs.

Then Hitchen pounced. “Mr. Edwards, Alexander Hitchen, from the National Enquirer. Would you like to say why you were at the hotel this evening to see your mistress Rielle Hunter and your love child?” he asked. Edwards froze and “turned pale,” Hitchen remembers. Edwards made a move for the top of the stairs but Butterfield, standing with a photographer, was blocking the exit. “He ducked, tucked, and ran,” Butterfield says. The Enquirer reporters ran after him, Hitchen asking questions all the while. “Do you think for the sake of your child, you should admit paternity?” he said.

Edwards said nothing.

Edwards darted into a bathroom and pulled the door shut. Hitchen and Butterfield stood in the corridor, trying to pry it back open. Edwards “was trying to pull the door, and occasionally I’d see his face, and you’d see the stress on his face and his hair tussling around,” Butterfield told me. A group of security guards came over. Hitchen explained the situation and handed his card to a guard who went into the bathroom. Soon, the guards shielded Edwards’s head with a jacket and escorted him up the stairs and out of the hotel.

Hitchen and Butterfield stayed up for five more hours, hoping to encounter Hunter; but, after she failed to appear, the reporters filed their piece, which was posted online, and went to sleep.

In the days since the Enquirer broke the Edwards affair, the mainstream media has debated the probity of the tabloid’s reporting, criticizing the paper for paying sources and for its seamy tactics, like staging stakeouts or digging through its subjects’ garbage. “[T]abloids pay. And they pay big,” former New York Times Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman wrote critically on her blog on August 13. “I’d guess that Hunter sold the photo from an earlier meeting at the Beverly Hilton to the National Enquirer.”

Perel laughed when I asked him about Waxman’s theory. “Tell Sharon Waxman I wish Rielle was a source, because I would have nailed this story a long time ago. I would have been putting a sex tape on the Internet by now!” he said. He also says there’s nothing corrupting about the way the paper pays for sources; it only pays out if the information is found to be true. “We pay for accurate information,” Perel says. “We do it the way cops pay tipsters and informants.”

New Republic

Lawyers’ Ties Hint at Extent of Hiding Edwards’s Affair

As tabloid reports of a sex scandal threatened former Senator John Edwards’s presidential campaign last December on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, two lawyers surfaced with written statements that appeared to exonerate the candidate.

One of them, Robert J. Gordon of New York, said that his client, Rielle Hunter, a pregnant 43-year-old filmmaker, was not carrying Mr. Edwards’s child. Shortly thereafter, the other lawyer, Pamela J. Marple of Washington, sent word that her client, Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, was the baby’s father.

Seemingly issued independently of Mr. Edwards, the statements appeared to deflate the anonymously sourced reports of an Edwards tryst. But what went unnoticed was that the two lawyers shared an important connection to Mr. Edwards that suggests they were part of an orchestrated effort to protect him, one that is continuing even after he admitted last week that he had an affair with Ms. Hunter but denied that he fathered her child.

The lawyers are linked through Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas lawyer and former finance chairman for the Edwards campaign who was a key player in the campaign’s response to the scandal. Mr. Gordon has worked with Mr. Baron on class-action personal injury cases, and Ms. Marple helped defend a lawsuit brought against both men and their law firms by an asbestos manufacturer.

After initially saying that he did not know how the lawyers were chosen to represent Ms. Hunter and Mr. Young, Mr. Baron acknowledged that he might have played a role.

The revelations of ties among the lawyers emerged through public records and interviews with people close to Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter, which suggested that their affair went on longer than Mr. Edwards admitted and that the effort to conceal it by Mr. Edwards’s inner circle was much more extensive than has been reported.

-more

New York Times