From The Daily Progress, August 8, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Democratic presidential candidate John
Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was
battling cancer but denied fathering the woman’s daughter.
Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old
Rielle Hunter but said that he didn’t love her. He said he has not
taken a paternity test but knows he isn’t the father because of the
timing of the affair and the birth.
ABC said a former Edwards campaign staffer claims he is the father, not
Edwards. Hunter’s daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born on Feb.
27, 2008, and no father’s name is given on the birth certificate filed
in California.
Three weeks ago, the National Enquirer said its reporters caught Edwards
visiting Hunter at a California hotel. In the interview, scheduled to air
on ABC News’ “Nightline,” Edwards said the tabloid was correct
when it reported on his meeting with Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hotel last
month.
Edwards was a top contender for the Democratic nomination for president,
pursuing his party’s nod even after announcing that his wife, Elizabeth,
had a deadly form of cancer. 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.
David Bonior, Edwards’ 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 him 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 Rielle Hunter, who directed
the production of just four Web videos, one a mere 2½ minutes long.
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
following 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 mid-2006, Edwards was
preparing a run for president. Hunter’s name appears on credits in
the four videos as director and cameraman.
Episode One 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.”"
(Pete Yost, Associated Press, August 8, 2008)
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Associated Press Writers Michael R. Baker and Gary Robertson in Raleigh,
N.C., and Michael Blood in Los Angeles contributed to this report. | 
