|
Indications that Edwards is the father of Hunter’s child
(Note: Updates keep being added periodically to this entry.) (See, below, further information strongly suggesting that Edwards is the father of Rielle’s child.) As I last said about John Edwards, the story as given by him on ABC’s Nightline two days ago doesn’t hold together. He insists he’s not the father of Rielle Hunter’s child—but his own finance chairman Fred Baron—without, Edwards insists, Edwards’s knowledge—has been giving Rielle $15,000 per month enabling her to live in a nice house in California. Here is the part of the Nightline transcript in which Edwards, unbelievably, denies any knowledge of his own finance chairman’s financial assistance to Rielle Hunter. Edwards says his affair with her ended in 2006, but he met with her from 9:45 p.m. to 2:40 a.m. in her Beverly Hills Hilton hotel room last month—the purpose of the “meeting,” he told Nightline’s Bob Woodruff, being for him to persuade her not to go public on their affair. At two o’clock in the morning. He even said they were not alone together: “She was there, Mr. McGovern was present, and that’s where the meeting took place.” So there are already strong grounds for disbelieving Edwards’s denials. But there’s more that has come out today that leads me to some definite conclusions. Item one: Today’s New York Post reports (“NO TEST FOR ‘LOVE LIPS’ JOHN”):
Barry Levine, editor of The National Enquirer, which broke the news of the affair, told The Post yesterday: “Up to this hour, I can tell you from our sources, she’s believing that eventually she and John Edwards will be together and this will all work out.”Item two: Someone wrote—I think it was at Huffington Post which has been covering the story a lot, but I can’t remember who it was and don’t have the link—that the affair went from early ‘06 to the end of ‘06, not for a brief time as Edwards says. Item three: Jonathan Darman of Newsweek (son of the late Richard Darman) knows Rielle Hunter well and has an article about his contacts with her, linked at Huffington Post. He first met her on an Edwards campaign trip in Iowa in July ‘06 that he was covering for Newsweek. She was already filming Edwards as part of her assignment of producing “webisodes” about the candidate. (Page one of Darman’s article also has one of Rielle’s “webisodes.”) They struck up a conversation, Darman was intrigued by her, and they regularly had lunch thereafter, in a relationship that seemed both reportorial and personal. In one of their last meetings, in early summer ‘07 (see page two of his article):
I asked Rielle if she was dating anyone. She answered simply, “I’m in love.” I asked, “Who with?” “I can’t tell you,” she said, “but maybe someday we’ll all be friends.”Doesn’t that indicate that the affair was continuing well into 2007? Well, maybe not. Edwards declares that the affair ended in ‘06. Maybe he’s telling the truth. So, maybe in early summer ‘07 she was in love with someone else, i.e., Edwards’s campaign director Andrew Young, who has claimed to be the father of her child. But not so quick. Look back at item one. The editor of National Enquirer says that Rielle believes to this day that Edwards will end up with her, meaning that she’s in love with Edwards now. Piecing the above together:
(1) In 2006 Rielle and Edwards were having an affair. If Rielle was having an affair with Edwards in 2006, and is still in love with him now, in August 2008, then the man she was in love with in early summer 2007 had to be Edwards. And therefore Edwards is the father of her child.
Another point. Edwards was running for president while this affair was going on. He then (supposedly) ended the affair and told his wife about it. His wife proceeded to campaign with him and help him present the image of a happy family life. (Bonnie Fuller at Huffington Post criticizes Mrs. Edwards strongly for this.) But here’s the most surprising part, brought out, I think, by a HuffPost commenter: Edwards ran for president while having an affair, in fact his mistress was traveling with him on his campaign. We know the affair was going on at least in the early stages of his campaign, in 2006, and perhaps through 2007 as well. What if he had secured the Democratic nomination, and—as has actually happened—the affair was then revealed? The Democratic Party would have been wrecked. So Democrats have good reason to be furious at him. Is this to peer into a man’s private life? Come on, he was running for president, and the affair was very likely to come out. So it is he who made his private life public. What then should he have done, other than not having the affair at all? Obviously, given the disorder in his personal life, he should not have run for president. Further, his wife, who knew about this very recent affair, should have discouraged him from running, instead of enabling him to run.
Finally, read the column by Clark Hoyt, the so-called Public Editor of the New York Times, explaining why the Times did not do anything to pursue this story, even though they had put on their front page allegations that John McCain had had an affair, allegations backed up by not a single fact. Then look at Hoyt’s photograph. Edwards spoke of his narcissism and ego-centrism. It’s nothing compared to the narcissism—the despicable self-satisfaction—of Hoyt and other New York Times’ editors.
 Clark Hoyt
LA writes:
Sarah Miller, writing in the Los Angeles Times, tells about a long, revealing conversation Rielle Hunter had with her in 2002. She’s a super space cadet.Steve R. writes:
The so-called Public Editor Hoyt’s article: Here is more information showing how unbelievable is the cover story that Edwards’s former campaign director of operations, Andrew Young, is really the father of Rielle’s child. First, in CNN’s interview of National Enquirer editor-in-chief David Perel on August 9 (transcript here), Perel said:
[W]e do know the man that has claimed to be the father, Andrew Young, who worked for Mr. Edwards, our sources—the same sources that led us to uncover this affair—say that Rielle says she never had a sexual relationship with him.Now here is National Enquirer’s article from December 19, 2007 revealing Rielle Hunter’s relationship with Edwards and her pregnancy: “JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL!” Several things in this story and in subsequent coverage indicate that the claimed sexual relationship with Andrew Young is a transparent falsehood. In 2007, during her pregnancy, Young helped Rielle find, or provided her with, a rented home in his gated community in North Carolina not far from his own home. A confidante close to Rielle told the Enquirer:
“If [Andrew Young] really were the father of her baby and had engaged in an extramarital affair with her, I doubt seriously that he’d bring his wife and kids over to her house for dinner—which Rielle told me he did a few weeks ago.”Further, as told in more recent press accounts, at some point in 2008 Rielle and Young’s family moved to Santa Barbara, California and lived in the same house for a while. Would Young’s wife live in the same house with her husband’s mistress and the mother of his child? Thus Young and Rielle were not even trying to make the denial of Edwards’s paternity seem plausible. Also, in the December 19, 2007 story, the Enquirer reported:
… in a shocking twist, the attorney for Mr. Young issued a statement that Young fathered Rielle’s baby!Let’s sum this up. The story coming from Edwards’s own until-very-recently director of campaign operations, Andrew Young, in December 2007 was that Young and Rielle—not Edwards and Rielle—had an affair in 2006, and that Young was the father of the baby. But now, in August 2008, Edwards has admitted that he, Edwards, had an affair with Rielle in 2006, even while he still insists that he’s not the father of her child. But given that Edwards has admitted that the first part of the official story (that it was Young, not Edwards, with whom Rielle had an affair in 2006) is false, how can anyone believe that the second part of the official story (that it is Young, not Edwards, who is the father of the child) is true? Edwards, with his four hundred dollar haircuts and wretched-of-the-earth rhetoric, has always struck me as a ridiculous figure. And everything about both his past cover-up of the affair and his present partial admission combined with continued cover-up of the affair, is ridiculous. Yet, notwithstanding what I’ve just said, there is still a strong argument that supports the belief that Edwards is now telling the truth. Namely, how could he make his big admission on national television while combining the admission with lies that he must know would instantly be exposed, thus completing the destruction of his reputation? It doesn’t make sense. August 11 Sam Stein at Huffington Post demonstrates that the affair was going on for months prior to Edwards’s hiring her, which suggests he hired her either as a front to keep her around or as a way of helping out his mistress financially with campaign funds. And if you believe that Edwards’s stated desire to take a paternity test proves he’s telling the truth about not being the father of the child, John Tabin at American Spectator punctures that. Tabin writes:
Edwards said on Nightline that he’s willing to take a paternity test. But read between the lines of the exchange:Peter H. writes:
Here’s my wife’s theory (a pretty good one, I think).James P. writes:
A Minnesota liberal explains the Edwards affair. Poor John is the real victim, of course, but with counseling and therapy hopefully he can reprioritize his marriage and make a full recovery! He will emerge even stronger from this experience than he was before! UPDATE August 12: From the editor of the National Enquirer on Larry King last night.
KING: Can you give us a hint what’s coming this week?If this is true, then Edwards is not merely a presidential candidate/adulterer who got caught, which is not out of the realm of normality. He’s nuts. He gave a half-hour interview on Nightline declaring that now he was telling the full truth about the affair when in reality he was repeatedly lying about things, including the financial support for Rielle, including probably his paternity, that he had to know would very soon be revealed as lies.
UPDATE August 13: According to today’s National Enquirer as reported by the New York Post, after Edwards confessed the affair to his wife in 2006, he recommenced the affair, and that’s when Rielle became pregnant. So from late June or early July 2007 when she became pregnant until he quit the race in February, he was running for president with a cancer stricken wife and a pregnant girl friend—a girl friend, moreover with whom he had been having the affair while she was traveling with him on his campaign. What if he had won the nomination? Did he think this wouldn’t come out? Given his personal issues, he simply should have left the race. We’re not France. Presidents aren’t allowed to be committing adultery and have publicly known mistresses—even Clinton. Did Edwards think the rules had changed for him? But the most astonishing thing is that he went on Nightline to say, “I lied before, now I’m telling the whole truth,” even as he was continuing to tell major lies. So he’s discredited himself completely, even within his own, amorality-embracing party. It’s crazy behavior. Here’s the Post’s story:
EDWARDS SCANDAL’S NEW TRYST Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 10, 2008 03:28 PM | Send Email entry |