Posted on 08/14/2008 8:08:55 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
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 with this....She couldn't say, 'Well, maybe we'll work through this for years, or maybe we should separate for two years,'" McElroy told the magazine. "[Cancer] forced her to choose whether to move forward."
According to new reports in the National Enquirer, Edwards didn't confess until after an unwitting campaign staffer walked in on him with Hunter and word got back to his wife, who confronted him.
By staying by his side in life and on the stump, Elizabeth Edwards hoped to ensure that her youngest children, 10-year-old Emma Claire and 8-year-old Jack, still have an untarnished father when she's gone, friends and relatives said. That is no longer possible - not after Enquirer reporters confronted him and forced his televised confession last Friday.
"It's so painful for her to see the father of her children become a pariah," McElroy mourned.
Worse, reports keep emerging that Edwards continues to lie and the affair never ended. "They broke up a bunch of times, especially when Elizabeth was rediagnosed [with cancer]," a friend of Hunter's, Texas publicist Pigeon O'Brien, told People. "But they got back together."
The National Enquirer said Edwards, 55, and Hunter, 44, restarted the affair in 2007 and were still involved when Hunter got pregnant that May. She now has a 5-month-old daughter whose paternity is a mystery.
The weekly also quoted sources close to Hunter saying that Edwards and his mistress choreographed their public tango over a DNA test: he offered to take one last week, she declined to allow it.
"They worked that out together in advance," a source described only as "an insider" told the Enquirer. "She's still protecting John because she loves him and thinks they may eventually have a future together."
Hunter's sister Roxanne Andrews, who says she spoke to her sister recently, told "Entertainment Tonight" the affair has not ended, that Hunter and Edwards are in touch and that Hunter remains deeply in love with Edwards.
The Enquirer also alleged that Fred Baron, a Texas lawyer who ran finances for the Edwards campaign, was still "secretly funneling $15,000 a month" to Hunter. The weekly also said Baron was paying off Andrew Young, the married campaign staffer who claimed paternity of the baby, to the tune of $20,000 a month.
Baron did not respond to the new allegations, but he told Texas Lawyer magazine that he only learned of Edwards' affair three weeks ago, when the former senator came clean to him and some other friends.
He said he was in the dark when he paid big bucks to relocate her and Young from North Carolina to California in January.
"Do I feel that he betrayed me? I don't like the word 'betrayal,'" he said. "I think he was in denial himself. He did a very, very stupid, bad thing."
Until she fled last week, reportedly on a private jet to an overseas hideout, Hunter was staying in the Santa Barbara home of Microsoft millionaire Jon Kechejian, which rents for $9,000 a month, according to neighbor Susan Green.
"I only met [Hunter] once. She was standing in front of the house with the baby, and I asked 'Are you renting?' And she said yes. And I asked if it was for the whole six months, and she said 'Oh I wish I could.'"
Baron says he took care of all the expenses himself without telling Edwards. "I never discussed it with John. He was on the campaign trail in Iowa at the time," Baron said.
I would have made other arrangements.
Your cheatin’ heart will make you weep
You’ll cry and cry and try to sleep
But sleep won’t come the whole night through
Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you
When tears come down like falling rain
You’ll toss around and call my name
You’ll walk the floor the way
I do your cheatin’ heart will tell on you
When tears come down...
Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you
I’ll never understand why people get married nowadays.
He was boinking this Camille Parker Bowles look alike up thru 3 weeks ago.
Doesn't she have relatives who can fill the bill?
Goes to show money isn't everything...(considering, of course, how he got it in the first place)
Now he will prolly loose a good chunk of it, his reputation, his ability to make money, that beautiful new home etc.
Is this bad karma, 'just desserts' or simply a man who think's his sins are invisible?
Given Lizzie’s strong desire for pursuit of political power through her sissified husband, I have significant doubts about the story about staying married fer duh chiddrens.
DRats favorite line............ for the children !
Nobody should judge what Elizabeth did.. The woman is dying...she had so many things to think about. Can you imagine this poor woman has to know now that this is the crazy woman will probably be her children’s stepmother? Edwards is FINISHED...DONE....COOKED in public life.
Infidelity ruins everyone in the long run. As an adult child whose father was caught at that game, I know how much it hurts. I feel for these Edwards children.
She could have become an independent woman and assigned guardianship of her infant children to her eldest daughter or her sister.
At the time she had the upper hand and could have forced the lyin’ cheatin’ dog to sign off on the document.
There is no way he would have cut off her financial support so again she had the upper hand and the moral high ground.
WHAT? you think this means the courts would take away his children? If that was the criteria for custody, half the children in tihs world would be in government run houses.
Years ago a friend of mine caught her (rich) husband cheating and just let it go on, when ask why she said I have the check book????
“I think he was in denial himself.”
What a stupid excuse for an arrogant, cheating, lying...you know what!
Hate to break it to them, but there’s no such choreographing that can hide the illegal campaign cash from the IRS, the FBI or U.S. Atty unless it’s been pre-determined to let Edwards, Baron and Young get away with it.
Stay tuned - The National Enquirer is publishing quite an eye-opener about the money trail in next week’s issue.
I agree - she is complicit in his lies while trying to foist him off on us as President. I have no sympathy for her for that reason alone. She chose the low road by deceiving the public and duping people into sending money to his campaign when he was no longer a viable candidate. The Dems were “took” by two of their own!!
What a scumbag liar...
I told my mother, “Look, you can take this man for everything he’s worth, and live in luxury the rest of your life...get a face lift, travel the world, find a man who won’t be unfaithful.... .”
This stuff turns the nicest of us into mean, undesirable scum. That Mrs. Edwards has risen above it says so much for HER character.
What!...No follow-ups from DBM's crack investigative reporters. /sarcasm...no pun intended
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