As we noted back on July 23, the National Enquirer broke the news that John Edwards, once a presidential candidate has been hiding his affair with former New York party girl, Rielle Hunter.
According to excerpts of an interview on 08 August 2008 with US broadcaster ABC News, Edwards admitted that he had an extramarital affair with former campaign worker 44-year old Rielle Hunter after denying it for months. Edwards denied that he is the father of Hunter's child, born 27 February 2008. Edwards' wife Elizabeth suffers from an incurable form of cancer. The National Enquirer first reported the affair and Edwards admitted the publication was correct when it reported he visited Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last month. EPA/TANNEN MAURY
The Hunter family is demanding that John Edwards' submit to a DNA paternity test after his claim that he did not father Hunter's six-month old child.
In October, Edwards, 55, dismissed an initial report in the National Enquirer that he had had an affair with Hunter, 44, as "lies" and "tabloid trash."
Younger sister Melissa told ABC News that Edwards should immediately follow through on his pledge to take a paternity test.
"I would challenge him to do so," the sister said to ABC. "Somebody must stand up and defend my sister," she said. "I wish that those involved would refrain from bad-mouthing my sister."
In his interview with ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff acknowledging the affair, Edwards said he knew the child was not his because of "the timing" of the pregnancy and the affair.
"I would welcome participating in a paternity test," Edwards said. "I'm only one side of the test, but I'm happy to participate in one."
Hunter left her Santa Barbara home earlier this week in advance of Edwards' ABC News interview.
A novice in filmmaking, she had been hired at a six-figure salary funded by campaign donations to produce Web documentaries for the Edwards campaign.
She was compensated $114,000.
Edwards admitted the affair began after she was hired.
Her daughter was born in February in Santa Barbara.
Edwards admitted to ABC News he met secretly with Hunter last month at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California for the purpose of "trying to keep this from becoming public."
It was there he was ambushed by reporters from the National Enquirer.
Edwards claimed he never told his wife about the meeting in advance. He told ABC news the meeting was not "the only contact" he had with Hunter since 2006 when he said he ended the affair.
"There have been some other telephone contacts," Edwards told ABC.
Edwards also told "Nightline" that he did not love Hunter.
Edwards said that he is "ashamed" of his conduct and that "it is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry." In the course of several campaigns, he said in a statement, "I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up -- feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself."
He told ABC's "Nightline" that Elizabeth was "furious" and as a candidate, Edwards often talked about morality and family as he campaigned with Elizabeth, who has an incurable form of breast cancer
He said in the statement yesterday that he is willing to take a paternity test to establish that he is not the father of Hunter's girl.
Fred Baron, a Texas lawyer who was the finance chairman of Edwards's two presidential campaigns, in 2004 and this year, said in an interview that he has been sending unspecified sums of money to Hunter without informing Edwards.
The payments helped Hunter relocate from North Carolina to a $3 million Santa Barbara home and helped Andrew Young -- a former Edwards aide who claims to be the baby's father -- move into a $4 million home in the same city. Edwards said he was unaware that money was being funneled to his former aides.
"It was a horrible situation," Baron said. "These people were being harassed," he added, referring to Young and Hunter.
Edwards told CBS's Bob Schieffer yesterday that he went public because "he just couldn't live with the constant pounding from the tabloids," as Schieffer put it. Schieffer added that Elizabeth Edwards had told him that "this is really, really tough."
The Edwards admission comes amid growing criticism of major news organizations for not reporting the allegations, even as they were debated on Web sites from Monsters and Critics to National Review, and on Fox News.
"We feel our reporting and our investigation have been vindicated," National Enquirer editor in chief David Perel said. "It took so long because Edwards was just so bold in lying about it."
Some conservatives cried double-standard because Edwards is a Democrat. Fox News commentator Sean Hannity told viewers last month that "if this were Dick Cheney or Vice President Quayle or any Republican, I've got to believe there'd probably be more coverage than there has been here."
Hunter created a New Age Web site, called "Being is Free," that appears to be a few years old. In a section called "story of my life," she offers scant details about herself except that she was born in Fort Lauderdale in 1964.
In a 2005 joint interview with Breathe magazine, Hunter and novelist Jay McInerney said Hunter, whose name had been Lisa Druck, was the inspiration for one of his books, "Story of My Life." "It was narrated in the first person from the point of view of an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year-old who was, shall we say, inspired by Lisa," McInerney said.
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