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John Edwards, the Democrats’ 2004 vice presidential nominee who unsuccessfully sought the top spot on the party’s ticket this year, is like the man who never was among party leaders gathered in Denver. Edwards, the one-term North Carolina senator whose 2008 candidacy ended in January, admitted in early August, after a lot of tabloid disclosures, that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair with a campaign aide even as his wife, Elizabeth, was battling cancer. He also admitted that he had repeatedly lied about it. It still isn’t clear if he fathered an out of wedlock child during the...

ExclusiveJohn Edwards calling former staffers asking for forgiveness By THOMAS M. DeFRANK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF Updated Tuesday, August 26th 2008, 12:07 AM   DENVER - John Edwards is burning up the phone lines, begging former aides and backers to forgive him for lying about his affair - but hearing their rage instead.As Democrats kick off their convention Monday, the onetime presidential contender is a man without a party - or a political future - trying to rebuild bridges through dozens of remorseful phone calls.It's proving a hard sell with onetime true believers. CLICK TO SEE A PHOTO...

One-time Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards promised his mistress they would reunited once his cancer-stricken wife died, the National Enquirer reported. The Enquirer - which first broke word of the Edwards scandal - also reported that mistress Rielle Hunter refuses to make Edwards take a paternity test because she fears it will jeopardize their future. Edwards, who admitted the affair earlier this month after repeated denials, remains in contact with Hunter even now, according to the Enquirer. The North Carolina politician called her after his Aug. 8 confession on national television, reportedly telling her: "We'll be together when Elizabeth is...

snip-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. The review found that Mr. Edwards’s political action committee went to unusual lengths to make a final $14,000 payment to Ms. Hunter’s film company months after its contract with the committee had ended. The payment was issued while the committee was short on cash and could...

Via Tapper, a palate-cleansing Kinsleyan gaffe from Susan Collins confirming that everyone in America, from the checkout counter to the Senate, is on the same page vis-a-vis Silky. The exchange starts at 2:00. Meanwhile, Radar picks through the latest tidbits from the Enquirer (print edition only) and floats a familiar theory about who their super-secret source might be. Exit quotation: “Of course I love you. Don’t worry, we’ll get through this.”

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to spend a little time here, just a brief moment, on the Breck Girl. This is a story, ladies and gentlemen, not going away. People ask me, "Rush, it's over. What's the big deal? Why stick with Edwards?" This is a multilayered story, and to illustrate this, I am holding in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers (shuffling paper) a printed copy of an article by the illustrious Walter Shapiro writing at Salon.com. Walter Shapiro is a Drive-Byer, and he used to write for USA Today. "After covering John Edwards -- and liking him -- for years,...

Another issue of the National Enquirer, another round of sordid allegations about the extent to which John Edwards is lying about his affair with Rielle Hunter. The four new pieces: • Edwards didn't confess until after a campaign staffer walked in on him and Hunter having an "intimate moment" in hotel room. Word eventually got to Elizabeth Edwards, who then confronted John, who then admitted the whole thing. But this all happened after he'd already declared his candidacy for the presidency. • The whole public tango over the DNA test, with Edwards saying he wants one and Hunter saying she...

An anguished Elizabeth Edwards decided to stay with her cheating husband because she is dying and worried about their two young children, her closest friend says. "It's just tragic. That's all I can say about it," Hargrave McElroy, Elizabeth's best friend, told the Daily News. In a longer interview with People magazine, McElroy, a North Carolina teacher, said John Edwards didn't confess his adultery with his flaky videographer, Rielle Hunter, until after he officially announced his presidential run in December 2006. Then Elizabeth had a terrible choice to make. "There was anguish - excruciating anguish - for her in dealing...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Elizabeth Edwards' decision not to leave her husband after he confessed to an affair was hastened by the discovery of her cancer recurrence just months after the revelation, her brother and a friend told People magazine. "She couldn't say, 'Well, maybe we'll work through this for years, or maybe we should separate for two years,"' said Hargrave McElroy, a friend, told the magazine for its Aug. 25 issue. "(The cancer) forced her to choose whether to move forward." Edwards, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate, admitted last week to having a short affair in 2006 with a filmmaker...

MIDI - JOHNNY ANGEL

Former presidential candidate John Edwards knew his ex-mistress, Reille Hunter, was receiving payments from his former campaign finance chairman, according to the National Enquirer, the publication that broke the story of Edwards' affair. What's more, says the Enquirer, it has "uncovered that Edwards' political operatives are still paying" Hunter. After months of denials, Edwards admitted to the affair, but vehemently denied fathering a baby with Hunter, or knowing she was being paid. Edwards said, "I've never paid a dime of money to any of the people that are involved. I've never asked anybody to pay a dime of money, never...

The good news: DNA testing has confirmed that John Edwards is not the father of Rielle Hunter's baby. The bad news: The father is Bill Clinton. Ha ha -- just kidding! It's almost impossible to get pregnant by having the type of sex Bill Clinton prefers. Also, by now, everyone has heard the news that Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter, has refused to grant a paternity test. I wonder if Edwards knew that when he was making his chesty offer to take a paternity test? Edwards gushed to ABC's Bob Woodruff: "I would welcome participating in a paternity test, be happy...

A Texas publicist who says she was Rielle Hunter's confidant when her secret affair began with John Edwards is convinced the ex-senator fathered her friend's baby. "She would not have a child with someone that she didn't love - and she loves him," said Pigeon O'Brien, who says she was pals with Hunter for 20 years until they lost touch a year ago. As "who's the daddy" speculation persisted, the National Enquirer reported last night that Edwards lied when he told the nation - and his sick wife - that he ended the "short" affair in 2006. Edwards renewed the...

Democratic strategists loudly insist that the tawdry sex scandal consuming John Edwards will do no damage to the Obama campaign. Despite the very public embraces between the former North Carolina senator and the presumptive nominee, Obama apologists (can we coin a new term-- "Obamapologists"?) dismiss the Edwards case as an irrelevant distraction. After all, they say that their man never seriously considered his former rival as a potential running mate or even for a major cabinet post, so the unfolding disgrace of a one-time elected official bears no connection to Barack's visionary campaign of hope, change, and global redemption. For...

The rise and fall of John Edwards Political stardom to public apology By Jim Morrill jmorrill@charlotteobserver.com Posted: Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008 When veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum first met John Edwards in 1997, he saw in the accomplished trial lawyer a raw political talent. “I called my partners and said. ‘I think I just met a future president of the United States,'” Shrum recalls. A year later, at 45, Edwards was elected to the U.S. Senate, launching a trajectory that in 2000 put him on the short list of Al Gore's vice presidential candidates. By 2001, he'd begun planning what...

Rielle Hunter compared John Edwards with Gandhi and went around trashing his cancer-stricken wife, it was reported Sunday. A Newsweek writer who courted her as a source during Hunter's affair with the presidential candidate portrays Edwards' mistress as a charming but hugely indiscreet muddlehead who called reporters with New Age babble about Edwards' "old soul." Asked about Elizabeth Edwards, who is unusually well-liked by political operatives and reporters, Hunter told reporter Jonathan Darman, "She does not give off good energy. ... I've only met her once.... She didn't make eye contact with me." Darman wrote of meeting Hunter, a former...

RALEIGH, N.C. - There were few people closer to John Edwards during his presidential campaigns than Fred Baron, a renowned Texas trial lawyer who evolved into one of the Democratic Party’s key fund-raisers. Baron, who made his fortune as a celebrated litigator on asbestos-injury cases before turning his attention to Democratic presidential tickets, was part of Edwards’ inner circle of advisers. But when it came to one key financial decision, Baron said he chose to keep the former senator out of the loop. On Friday, after Edwards confessed to having an affair with Rielle Hunter, a video producer with whom...

It was the encounter that would unceremoniously hoist former Sen. John Edwards' extramarital affair into full public view: a visit last month with the woman and her baby at her room at a hotel in Beverly Hills where Edwards was confronted by reporters for the National Enquirer as he tried to leave the building. At the center of that now fateful episode at the Beverly Hilton was Robert McGovern, a California resident described as a spiritual healer of 20 years and a friend and former associate of the woman with whom Edwards has admitted having the affair, Rielle Hunter. In...

His $400 haircut was the first clue that this guy was a first-class narcissist Just around the time the above photo was taken, during the hotly contested primaries, John's ex-girlfriend was giving birth to a baby girl who, he claims, is not his even though he paid the mother hush money to keep it all quiet. After denying any shenanigans and bad-mouthing the media for perpetuating hurtful rumors, the dummy went on the tube and admitted that he had had an affair after all. This proves, by the way, that the National Enquirer now can boast that it employs one...

John Edwards’ ludicrous denials of an extramarital affair crumbled on Friday when ABC News applied enough pressure to get Edwards to agree to an interview – and an admission – finally giving the story first reported in the National Enquirer legitimacy in the eyes of the mainstream media. The flood gates opened early Friday afternoon when Brian Ross and producer Rhonda Schwartz posted a story on ABCNews.com stating that Edwards had admitted to an affair with Rielle Hunter, a videographer who was paid in excess of $100,000 by the Edwards campaign to make a few short web videos. The Enquirer...

The confession of John Edwards was, to me, worthy of attention for a few reasons, but not worthy of endless analysis. The guy's chances at being Obama's running mate or attorney general are shot to hell. Having said that... there are at least two glaring questions that suggest Edwards' explanation consists of additional lies. (Besides his claim that the affair started after she was hired by his PAC, and not before, which appears to be contradicted by the PAC billing records.) If the affair ended in 2006, why were Edwards and Hunter meeting in the Beverly Hills Hilton from 10...

Saturday, Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, issued a statement saying, “Rielle will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter's privacy now or in the future." JohnedwardssonSo I guess Edwards is pretty much off the hook on that offer to take a paternity test. Is that why he so freely offered to take one? But Edwards better not make her angry... oh, maybe by not giving her what she wants, forgetting her birthday, not paying enough attention to her, or by not marrying her in a few years... She could so change her mind. Talk...

When I next saw Rielle weeks later, she told me that she'd been fired by the Edwards campaign. She seemed perfectly cheerful about it, but she proceeded to tell me a tale of woe—how the campaign hadn't understood her, how they'd ruined the Webisodes, how they'd impeded her vision and how Edwards himself had failed to defend her. The chief villain in this saga was Elizabeth Edwards. "Someday," Rielle said, "the truth about her is going to come out." [snip] But I didn't. I stayed in touch with Rielle for months. At lunch at the Soho House in late spring...

Edwards: Affair was result of egotism, narcissism Former presidential candidate John Edwards talked about his extramarital affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter. and the effect it had on his wife Elizabeth in an interview with Bob Woodruff for ABC's Nightline on Friday. Here are some excerpts: Did you have an affair? — "In 2006, two years ago, I made a very serious mistake, a mistake that I am responsible for and no one else. In 2006 I told Elizabeth and asked for her forgiveness, asked God for his forgiveness. We have kept this within our family since that time." —"I'm in...

Rielle Hunter, the former presidential campaign aide who had an affair with John Edwards, said yesterday that she will not pursue DNA testing to establish the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, despite the former senator's offer to participate in such a test. In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Hunter said through her attorney that she will not be party to such a test "now or in the future." The attorney, Robert Gordon, called Hunter a "private" person who is "not running for public office" and would not comment further. "She wishes to maintain her privacy and her daughter's...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The ex-mistress of former presidential candidate John Edwards says she will not participate in DNA testing to establish the paternity of her daughter. Rielle Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, says his client is a private individual who wishes to maintain the privacy of herself and her daughter. In a statement, Gordon says that Hunter is ruling out any kind of testing that could establish who the daughter's father is.

Rielle Hunter, the former presidential campaign aide who had an affair with John Edwards, said yesterday that she will not pursue DNA testing to establish the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, despite the former senator's offer to participate in such a test. In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Hunter said through her attorney that she would not take a genetic test "now or in the future." The attorney, Robert Gordon, called Hunter a "private" person who is "not running for public office" and would not comment further on the media frenzy engulfing her.

John Edwards lied when he denied his affair. Now he’s asking the nation to take his word that he’s revealed everything. But the strange behavior of Edwards and those around him, coupled with the backlog of other tabloid allegations, raise many unanswered questions. Three weeks ago, for instance, the National Enquirer confronted John Edwards at 2:40 a.m. leaving his mistress' hotel room in Beverly Hills, allegedly after visiting their so-called love child. Shortly afterward, FOXNews.com confirmed Edwards indeed had been escorted from a hotel bathroom by security guards who witnessed his sprint from reporters. In the days that followed, Edwards...

Dallas lawyer Fred Baron told The Dallas Morning News today that he made regular payments to the woman that former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has confessed to having an affair with. Mr. Baron, who was chairman of Mr. Edwards’ presidential campaign finance committee, said he paid money to Rielle Hunter to move from North Carolina to another location. He said she and another campaign aide, Andrew Young, who claimed paternity of Ms. Hunter’s child, were being dogged by tabloid reporters who believed she had an affair with Mr. Edwards and fathered his child. Mr. Baron would not say how...

Democrat received honor about 8 months before alleged love child born Where was John Edwards around the time his alleged "love child" Frances Quinn Hunter was conceived? The senator was in New York – receiving his Father of the Year Award. Edwards accepted his June 27, 2007, honor from the Father's Day/Mother's Day Council exactly eight months before the child was born Feb. 27, 2008, according to a birth certificate obtained by the Charlotte Observer. Before beginning his Father of the Year acceptance speech, Edwards told an adoring crowd, "I hate to admit it, but I am not the best...

Edwards: 'I Lied. It's Friday. Can I Go to Denver Now?' John Edwards finally confesses, sort of, on ABC News. He admits he lied repeatedly about his affair with Rielle Hunter, but denies he's the father of her child and specifically seems to be trying to deny cheating on his wife after the recurrence of her illness:

ABC Radio news just announced Sen. John Edwards will admit to the affair with Rielle Hunter in an interview with the network, but insists the child is not his. We return you to your regularly-scheduled FReeping.

he National Enquirer's purported photo of former Sen. John Edwards and a child it says he fathered out of wedlock is merely making things blurrier. Two weeks after it ran an anonymously sourced story asserting that its reporters caught Edwards visiting a former campaign worker and the baby he fathered with her, the Enquirer posted the photo on its Web site to bolster its reporting of the story. The picture -- tagged with a "SPY PHOTO" label -- was out of focus enough to prompt a round of wisecracks from a variety of critics online. Beside the photo is a...

Big-name Democrats don't know if John Edwards really has a love child - but some think he's definitely got a problem. For two weeks since renewed but unproven reports that he fathered an illegitimate daughter appeared in the National Enquirer, Edwards has kept silent other than to denounce "tabloid trash." Bad move, party pros say: His role at the Democratic convention, just 17 days away - and his political future - are now in peril. "The political consequences of leaving something like this unattended are fairly severe," said ex-Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler. "If no response is made, it...

‘We’re working off our timetable, not yours,” says David Perel, editor of The National Enquirer. “I’m not letting other media drive the story for us.” Perel is talking about the issue of whether the Enquirer should have published, by now, photos of a July 22 confrontation in a Los Angeles hotel between its reporters and former Sen. John Edwards. Edwards had, the Enquirer reported, come to the Beverly Hilton to see a woman named Rielle Hunter, with whom he has had an affair and a baby. In an almost surreal scene described on the Enquirer’s website, Edwards was said to...

Clark Stooksbury thinks I have gone around the bend by endorsing media coverage of the John Edwards love child scandal. Excerpt: So presumably, Kaus/Dreher wants the media to shove camera and microphone into the face of a mother and infant and demand to know who the little girl's father is. It occurs to me that they both are employed by organizations with the resources to pursue such a story, so I don't see why they are waiting around for other media outlets to do what they could be doing. Now, now, I don't direct the newsgathering of the Dallas Morning...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Former Sen. John Edwards has a deadline to save his spot on the national stage. With two weeks to go before their national convention, a number of Democrats are saying that Edwards needs to publicly address National Enquirer stories that have alleged he had an affair with a campaign worker and fathered her baby. If Edwards fails to clear up the story in short order, he risks party officials deciding not to have him speak or, if they do, creating a distraction from a week focused on Barack Obama accepting the nomination. "If there is not an...

Too hilarious — here's John Edwards accepting an award for Father of the Year. Edwards accepted this award a little less than 9 months before his mistress Rielle Hunter gave birth the Breck Girl's apparent love child, Frances Quinn Hunter. Too bad they don't give awards for the Cheesy Philandering Phony of the Year. On a tip from Simon.

Why should the mainstream media get off its butt and cover the Silky Pony's love child scandal? Mickey Kaus makes a persuasive case. Excerpt: Edwards was certainly a contender for VP, or a big cabinet post like Attorney General, or even the Supreme Court, before the scandal first erupted in the "undernews" in late 2007. Some reporters say he was still on Obama's VP list until quite recently. If he's now finished as far as those big jobs are concerned, it's in large part because of this scandal, which Obama might never have learned about if everyone had followed the...

The MSM are still getting killed on the story of John Edwards and his relationship to racy blonde Rielle Hunter - or should I say his relationship to Hunter's love child? Check out this comprehensive piece by mondoreb from the Blogger News Network. There are a few interesting wrinkles. The first concerns pack journalism. Mondoreb reports: "Because of those 'vigorous denials from campaign staffers,' not one reporter posed the question to Edwards that DBKP kept repeating, 'Do you deny that you've been in telephone contact with Rielle Hunter since she found out she was pregnant?' Did the reporters on the...

WASHINGTON -- Only three weeks ago, John Edwards fielded media questions on his chances of filling the vice-presidential slot on Democrat Barack Obama's ticket or a Cabinet position in his administration. On Wednesday, the former U.S. senator, presidential candidate and 2004 vice-presidential nominee refused to answer questions that took a tabloid turn. About a dozen reporters and photojournalists attended a speech Edwards gave to an AARP Foundation symposium on poverty and aging in Washington. Afterward, he avoided a crowd of waiting reporters, at least some of whom wanted to question him about recent reports in the National Enquirer that alleged...

Is University of North Carolina alum and former professional basketball player Eric Montross the rich pal of onetime presidential hopeful John Edwards who is (allegedly) paying off both his (alleged) mistress Rielle Hunter and the guy who is taking responsibility for her bastard baby? This certainly falls under the umbrella of "Wildly Speculative," but let's look at the facts: Yesterday, the Enquirer reported that a "wealthy colleague who was closely tied to the Edwards campaign" has been funneling $15,000 dollars a month to Hunter in hush money, as well as an undisclosed sum to Andrew Young, the former Edwards aide...

A BABY DADDY FOR BOTH AMERICASJuly 30, 2008 The mainstream media really seem to imagine they can prevent Americans from knowing information by refusing to mention it in newspapers or on TV. For those few Americans without an Internet connection and to whom I have not faxed the National Enquirer stories: Evidence is accumulating that John Edwards is right -- there really are "two Americas." There's one where men cheat on their cancer-stricken wives and one where men do not cheat on their cancer-stricken wives. To put it another way, it would appear that ambulances aren't the only things John...

Refusing to call it quits despite being dissed by mainstream media, The National Enquirer has released more scandalous John Edwards allegations! The celebrity gossip tabloid reports that Edwards’ alleged mistress / baby-mama, Rielle Hunter (also known as Lisa Druck), will not say a word about their affair and love child because she’s being paid to zip it - $15,000 a month! The money is reportedly being funneled to Hunter by a colleague of John Edwards, the former U.S. Senator from North Carolina, 2004 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee (running with John Kerry) and 2008 presidential candidate. This same man is also...

Elsewhere on the Internet you can find postings about a story in the National Enquirer about former Sen. John Edwards, alleging unpleasantness about his personal life. You can also find a story by FOX News that purports to confirm a small portion of that National Enquirer story. The allegations concern the kinds of moral and ethical issues I frequently blog about, but I haven't written about these and I'm not going to do so here. Why? It's not because I'm an Edwards fan. It's because I still think that standards still matter in journalism. My screed is at the jump....

John Edwards was fighting for his political future yesterday as America's mainstream media began reporting a colourful scandal involving his alleged mistress, a disputed "secret love child", and an altercation at a Beverly Hills hotel in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The married former Democratic presidential candidate, who is among leading contenders to be Barack Obama's running mate, saw his private life given more attention than he would like when Fox News claimed to have "independently verified" details of last week's National Enquirer story headlined: "John Edwards caught with mistress and love child." Reporters from the supermarket tabloid had...

I think Mickey Kaus is correct about this. Under normal circumstances, John Edwards would have a prominent role in the Democratic convention in Denver — remember the adoring, break-into-the-news coverage of Edwards' decision to endorse Obama? But these are not normal circumstances for Edwards. I think most people in the media believe the National Enquirer story about him is accurate, even as they have adopted a this-is-not-happening editorial policy. But the policy would be harder to maintain were Edwards to take a high-profile role at the convention. It is impossible to imagine that the Obama campaign would want Edwards to...

Ann Coulter relaunched her campaign against John Edwards today. You’ll recall that the right-wing authoress took a shot at Edwards last year, when she called the politico a “faggot.” Well, Coulter has done it again, this time calling him “faggy” while discussing his alleged affair. Said Coulter: "I just think John Edwards is an incredibly creepy individual and the very definition of faggy, with his whole two Americas — and remember when he was campaigning, one of his big things, oh, how people are so poor and they can’t, they’re starving at night, and, you know, he met a woman...