Free Republic

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...