Source: blogywoodbabes.blogspot.com
John Edwards is now embroiled in a love child scandal with a former employee for his campaign, the National Enquirer originally broke the stoy. John Edwards allegedly got Rielle Hunter pregnant while his wife Elizabeth Edwards is dying from cancer. His name had been mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Bloggers and journalist have been intensely debating the issue for days. But on Friday, ABC News took the plunge by becoming the first mainstream media outlet to go big on the John Edwards extramarital-affair story. But all the journalism credit should go to the National Enquirer for doing some old fashion investigating reporting. Click on pictures to enlarge.
Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a woman he met in a New York City bar in 2006, ABC News reported on Friday.
Saying he was "ashamed of my conduct and choices," former North Carolina senator and onetime Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards today admitted publicly that he had an affair with a campaign videographer in 2006 and said that his original denials were lies, but he emphatically denied the Enquirer newspaper's report that he also fathered the woman's 5-month-old child.
Hunter's daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born Feb. 27, 2008, 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, and Edwards denied it.
"The story is false," he told reporters. "It's completely untrue, ridiculous." He professed his love for his wife, Elizabeth, 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."
In the interview, scheduled to air on ABC News' "Nightline," Edwards said the tabloid had been correct when it reported on his meeting with Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hotel last month.
Last month, the Enquirer carried another article 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 the account "tabloid trash," but he generally avoided reporters' inquiries, as did his former top aides.
Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year-old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.
In a written statement issued hours after ABC News quoted Edwards as having admitted the affair in an interview to be broadcast tonight, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee said apologies to his loved ones and supporters were "inadequate," and he berated himself in striking terms.
"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic," Edwards wrote. "If you want to beat me up -- feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help."
He said he would have "nothing more to say" on the matter in the future.
In an interview airing tonight on ABC's "Nightline," Edwards acknowledged that he had the extramarital affair and repeatedly lied about it. The affair came during a campaign in which he stressed the importance of family and in which his wife, Elizabeth, who suffers from an incurable form of cancer, played a prominent role.
Edwards dismissed the allegations of an affair with Rielle Hunter as "tabloid trash" after they surfaced in the National Enquirer.
Despite today's admission, he told ABC he is not the father of Hunter's infant daughter, as the Enquirer has charged, and he repeated that denial in his written statement.
He told ABC that Elizabeth Edwards did not know he had a secret late-night meeting with Hunter last month at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in California, as the Enquirer reported.
The woman subsequently was hired by an Edwards political action committee to produce documentaries, according to the reports. Edwards, whose wife Elizabeth is suffering from incurable cancer, pulled out of the Democratic race for president earlier this year. During his campaign, he denied that he had an extramarital affair.
Edwards told ABC he did not love Hunter, adding that he knew he was not the father because the affair ended too soon for that to be the case. The baby was born on Feb. 27. Another former Edwards campaign aide, Andrew Young, who is married, has stepped forward to say he is the father, and Hunter has said that as well.
"In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs," Edwards said in his statement. He said he told his wife about the affair and asked her forgiveness but did not inform the public, basing his denials on what he said was the fact that the story by the "supermarket tabloid" contained "many falsities."
But now, he said, "being 99 percent honest is no longer enough."
Although he said he was ashamed of his conduct, he noted that the affair "took place for a short period in 2006" and "ended then."
Edwards added: "I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I am not the father of any baby, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established. I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby. I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the apparent father of the baby."
Edwards's admission, which followed several weeks in which he avoided reporters and refused to answer their questions, came as top campaign aides to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) were debating whether Edwards should speak at this month's Democratic convention. Several said privately that the Enquirer stories had become such a distraction that they would prefer the Democrats' 2004 vice-presidential nominee have no role at all. Edwards, who drew live network coverage in May when he endorsed Obama for president, had been expected to have a prominent speaking slot to discuss poverty issues at the Denver gathering.
Most major news organizations, including The Washington Post, did not report the allegations against Edwards because of a lack of corroboration. But a debate has swirled on Internet sites and on Fox News over whether media outlets were protecting the former senator, either out of bias toward a Democrat or sympathy for his wife.
The story began to draw more mainstream coverage after the Charlotte Observer reported last week that the birth certificate for Hunter's baby lists no father. The North Carolina media, followed by the New York Daily News, have been reporting on the political implications of the story that Edwards was refusing to address. Edwards has walked away from reporters and refused to answer their questions on several occasions recently.
Most mainstream news organizations refrained from reporting the story, but newspapers in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, recounted the Enquirer's allegations in prominent articles Thursday. Edwards acknowledged the affair Friday afternoon, traditionally a slow news period even when the Olympic Games' opening ceremonies are not preoccupying millions of Americans.
Edwards was a top contender for the Democratic nomination for president, pursuing his party's nod even after announcing in March 2007 that his wife's breast cancer had spread to her bone.
Elizabeth Edwards disclosed in November 2004, shortly after her husband's defeat, that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
After months of remission, the couple announced the recurrence of the cancer 2½ years later.
He placed second in the Iowa caucuses last January but dropped out of the race a few weeks later. He has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice for Barack Obama. The former North Carolina senator was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004.
The Edwardses have three children - Cate, Jack and Emma Claire.
Another son, Wade, died at age 16 in a 1996 car accident.
David Bonior, Edwards's campaign manager for his 2008 presidential bid, said Friday he was disappointed and angry after hearing about Edwards' confession.
"Thousands of friends of the senators 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's 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 just four Web videos, one a mere 2½ minutes long.
The payments from Edwards's One America Committee to Midline Groove Productions started July 5, 2006, five days after Hunter incorporated the firm in Delaware.
At the time Hunter was compiling the videos in 2006, Edwards was preparing a run for president.
Episode 1 of the four videos captures 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?"
A video titled "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?"
The couple's marriage was always regarded as a political asset for Edwards. Elizabeth's warm, engaging everywoman appeal balanced her husband's more distant demeanor and Ken-doll looks. The anguish they've endured—the loss of their son Wade in 1996 and Elizabeth's battles with cancer—further humanized them. Because voters responded favorably to all this, Edwards's campaign advisers dispatched Elizabeth regularly to campaign alongside her husband in the buildup to the Democratic primaries. Edwards's "total life story is a plus … and certainly having a strong marriage for 29 years is a key part of that life," longtime adviser Ed Turlington told reporters in March 2007. "I have observed them up close as a married couple and family for more than 20 years. What you see in public is the private reality—that is, a strong marriage, a partnership, love and affection. And it appears to me that they're even closer today than they were when I first met them years ago."
At the time Turlington spoke, Edwards had already engaged in his affair with Hunter. Months later, in the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses, a reporter sat down with Edwards to discuss the campaign and his life story. Asked about the lessons he learned from the 2004 campaign, he said, "I'd been through a national campaign, a national spotlight, and there's a seasoning and a toughness that comes from doing that. And Elizabeth's health, the two of us went through that, our family went through that together. And I think my feeling is that I'm going to tell people, I'm going to speak the truth, whatever the consequences are … The most important thing for me is to be direct and honest with people and for them to just see me."
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