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Elizabeth Edwards is threatening to divorce her husband, John, after learning of allegations he had committed adultery with more than one woman, the National Enquirer is reporting. According to the Enquirer, the allegations are in a book proposal by former Edwards aide Andrew Young in which he says he falsely claimed to have fathered Rielle Hunter's 19-month-old daughter, Frances. Edwards had an affair with Hunter during the 2008 presidential campaign. According to The New York Times and other reports quoting sources, Edwards is considering declaring he's the little girl's father, which he has previously denied. "Elizabeth was read portions of...

<p>Sources have told WRAL News that they expect former U.S. Sen. John Edwards to admit that he is the father of his former mistress' 18-month-old daughter.</p> <p>Edwards, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate, confessed last August to having an affair with Rielle Hunter, who served as a videographer on Edwards' 2008 campaign. He has denied fathering her daughter, saying his relationship with Hunter ended before the child was conceived.</p>

BOMBSHELL WORLD EXCLUSIVE! John Edwards has secretly undergone a DNA test - and it proves he's the father of his mistress' love child, The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively. Multiple sources confirm the bombshell development, and reveal lawyers for the disgraced presidential candidate are privately hammering out child support payments with his former lover Rielle Hunter. Edwards - who hotly denied he was the child's father when he publicly confessed his affair with Rielle on ABC's Nightline a year ago - has broken the news to his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth, sources say. But The ENQUIRER has also learned that Rielle testified...

Rielle Hunter, John Edwards' former mistress, went inside the federal courthouse in Raleigh Thursday morning. A grand jury is meeting in the courthouse. FBI agents escorted Hunter into a back entrance ... Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and two-time presidential candidate, is under investigation to see if campaign funds were illegally paid to Hunter. There is also widespread speculation that Edwards fathered her child.

RALEIGH (AP) — The former mistress of John Edwards arrived at a federal courthouse in Raleigh where a grand jury was meeting Thursday — an appearance that comes as federal investigators examine the two-time presidential candidate's finances. Rielle Hunter walked into the building through a back entrance and holding a young child. Edwards adamantly denied during his confessional interview with ABC News last summer that he had fathered a child with Hunter, and he welcomed a paternity test. His wife, Elizabeth, has said while promoting her book that she doesn't know if her husband is the father.

Former presidential candidate John Edwards is out of luck if he hoped that the extramarital affairs of Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign would take people’s minds off his own cheating scandal. Former Edwards aide Andrew Young says the ex-senator and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, once made a sex tape, according to someone who has seen Young’s book proposal. St. Martin’s Press just inked a deal with Young, who also says in his proposal that, contrary to his public statement last year, he is not the father of Hunter’s infant daughter — Edwards is. Edwards has denied that....

WORLDWIDE ENQUIRER EXCLUSIVE: John Edwards' mistress Rielle Hunter has agreed to sit down for a bombshell interview with ABC News Barbara Walters, the ENQUIRER has learned exclusively. "Rielle will break her silence for the first time with Barbara Walters. The interview will air on ABC in June," a source told The ENQUIRER. "Rielle is so angry with Elizabeth Edwards for trashing her repeatedly while promoting her book that she's decided to break from John. She's going to defend herself and tell her side of the story!" The ENQUIRER previously reported Rielle was considering going public, narrowing her choice of...

Elizabeth Edwards tells talk show host Oprah Winfrey that it's a "complicated question" if she still is in love with her husband, former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen John Edwards, after his admitted affair. In an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to air Thursday, Winfrey asks Edwards, "Are you still in love with him?" Edwards responds, "You know, that's a complicated question," in an excerpt provided in advance to The Associated Press by Harpo Productions. Winfrey also asks Edwards, "Is it a day by day thing?" And Edwards says, "Neither one of us is out the door so I...

John Edwards’ ex-lover, Rielle Hunter, is not writing a book or giving interviews. Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, however, is doing just the opposite. Here is a picture of Frances Quinn Hunter, whose last name should be Edwards, according to sources. It’s from her first birthday, on Feb. 27, just one week ago. With her is her mother, Rielle Hunter, the filmmaker and ex-lover of former Sen. John Edwards. Edwards has admitted the affair, but denied that the baby is his. There is no father’s name on Frances Quinn’s birth certificate. Hunter is said to be upset about a story in...

DENVER - Texas Rep. Chet Edwards, who was on the four-person short list of potential Barack Obama running mates, said Sunday the front-page scandal involving former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards hurt his chances of getting on the ticket. “I would have to think that a bumper sticker that said 'Obama/The Other Edwards' might have been a bit difficult,” Edwards said Sunday after visiting a Veterans Administration hospital upon arrival in Denver for the Democratic National Convention. Chet Edwards (not related to the former North Carolina senator) said he was notified Aug. 10 that he was on Obama's short list...

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...

Fred Baron now claims that he moved Young and Hunter, gave them money, but didn't know about the affair until a few weeks ago... The former campaign finance chairman for John Edwards said this morning he was unaware of Edwards' affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter when he paid to move her to California last year. In an e-mail this morning to The News & Observer, Dallas lawyer Fred Baron wrote, "I will re-state what I have previously stated on one point: I learned of the affair only a few weeks ago and had previously presumed that the 'tabloid' stuff...

The woman John Edwards admitted to having an affair with made disparaging comments about Edwards' wife Elizabeth in an interview two years ago, says the New York Post. Talking to Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman in late 2006, Rielle Hunter reportedly said, "[Elizabeth] does not give off good energy," and accused: "She didn't make eye contact with me." Hunter, a filmmaker, was documenting Edwards' presidential campaign at the time. She spoke with Newsweek's Darman after getting fired, reportedly telling him of Elizabeth: "Someday, the truth about her is going to come out." When Darman spoke again with Hunter last summer, she...

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...

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...

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...

Now that John Edwards has admitted to his affair with "filmmaker" Rielle Hunter, we decided to take a better look at the "Webisodes" she made about him for his failed presidential campaign. Each one uses a theme song at its end by Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band. The song is called "True Reflections." It would seem that Edwards and his staff never listened to the lyrics. It's as damning a choice as Hunter could have selected. The first verse says it all: When you look into a mirror Do you like what's looking at you? Now that you've...

<p>JOHN Edwards "shocked" the political world yesterday by admitting he'd cheated on his wife of 30 years with a campaign aide, Rielle Hunter.</p> <p>If it looks like a phony, walks like a phony, quacks like a phony, it's a phony.</p>

GOOD-TIME GIRL: Rielle Hunter, the woman John Edwards fooled around with, was into drugs and nightclubs. The flaky filmmaker for whom John Edwards risked his political future and his family is a former "party girl" who went from narcotics to nirvana. Rielle Hunter's résumé also includes actress, producer, New Age blogger - and now, home wrecker. A Florida native, the 44-year-old divorcée grew up in a well-to-do household but is now deep in debt, a source told The Post. Hunter, born Lisa Druck, first turned up in New York in the 1980s, where she hooked up with novelist Jay...

Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some most recently caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him. John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him...

STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN EDWARDS August 8, 2008 Chapel Hill, North Carolina In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny...

Some highlights:Wolf Blitzer: What got you guys going in this direction to begin with? David Perel: We received what we thought was a credible tip, Wolf, and we started investigating it. A lot of times when we go down this road and the story turns out not to be true, we abandon it. But the more we dug in, the more information The Enquirer uncovered that was standing up, we were able to prove that, indeed, John Edwards had a sexual affair with Rielle Hunter. We first did the story in October without naming her and then we came back...

ABC News' Jennifer Parker reports: Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Sen. John Edwards has reacted to the news of her husband's affair, posting a blog titled "Today" on the liberal Daily Kos website and asking for privacy for her family. In the blog, Elizabeth Edwards says her husband told her about the affair in 2006 and they worked through it. "This was our private matter," she writes. She heaps blame on the news media for prying into her family's life, writing, "the toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet...

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...

<p>Commentary: Is it any wonder that nobody buys newspapers any more?</p> <p>LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The scandal over former Sen. John Edwards' alleged fathering of a love child is rapidly being surpassed by a greater travesty -- not one single major media organization in the U.S is covering the story.</p>

‘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...

The NATIONAL ENQUIRER is releasing the photograph that the world has been waiting for – the first-ever picture of John Edwards and his love child! The stunning “spy photo” shows the former presidential contender holding his infant daughter Frances Quinn Hunter at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles – where the ENQUIRER caught him visiting the baby’s mother, his mistress Rielle Hunter.

If it were not for the National Inquirer this would disappear down the "memory hole." Ann Coulter's take: The mainstream media's reaction to the National Enquirer's reports on John Edwards' "love child" scandal has been reminiscent of the Soviet press. Edwards' name has simply been completely whitewashed out of the news. Say, why isn't anyone talking about John Edwards for vice president anymore? No, seriously –- hey! Why are we going to a commercial break? I suspect that if I tried to look up coverage of the Democratic primaries in Nexis news archives, Edwards' name will have disappeared from the...

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...

Hooray! The National Enquirer has published photos of former political person John Edwards with a baby. The baby is almost certainly made up in part of DNA he left in a woman named Rielle Hunter, a former Edwards staffer who now spends her time cashing checks and hiding in hotels and denying everything to the media (until Good Morning America finally books her!). So now would be a perfect time for, like, established print media to cover this story, right? Anyone? Ha, no, they are all too embarrassed. Once again, it's up to the internet! The story is still sneaking...

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...

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine: Slip Sliding Away Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards slipped out the back door of yet another hotel on Wednesday. The Raleigh News and Observer reports that Edwards was in Washington for an AARP Foundation symposium at Hotel Monaco and avoided reporters for the second time in as many weeks. He escaped through a fourth-floor side area used by kitchen staff, and then through a handicap ramp at the rear of the hotel. Edwards refused to answer reporters' questions about a story in the National Enquirer that says he visited a woman...

Birth record for child lists no father The birth certificate of a child who a tabloid newspaper claims is linked to former Sen. John Edwards doesn't identify a father.

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...

SHH! It’s the John Edwards sex scandal. Bu don’t tell anyone… Says Ken: If you only read Respectable Newspapers and avoid the morally corrupting influences of blogs, tabloids and Jay Leno, it might be news to you that Democratic boy wonder John Edwards is the alleged star of a creepy sex scandal. The story has everything a cable-news producer or magazine editor or soap-opera writer could ask for: adultery, political power, a monstrous mansion, betrayal, cash transfers, terrible lies, vanishing evidence, a fall guy, a saintly wife dying of cancer, a late-night hotel rendezvous in Beverly Hills, even a “love...

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....

The New York Times cites the "public's right to know" every time they reveal national security documents that aid and abet terrorists. However, when it comes to the John Edwards affair, the "public's right to know" be damned. --R.E. Bierce The state of the media coverage--or rather, non-coverage--six days after the National Enquirer's reporters catch John Edwards at the Beverly Hilton visiting his mistress and their love child. Two daily newspapers from the U.K. cover the news the American mainstream media won't. More specifically, the John Edwards Love Child news. The Independent Sunday edition contained "Love child and mistress claims...

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...

RUSH: An update on the John Edwards situation out in Los Angeles broken by the National Enquirer. Two interesting things here: "A hotel security guard at the Beverly Hilton told FoxNews.com that he intervened this week between a man he identified as [the Breck Girl] and tabloid reporters who chased down the former presidential hopeful after what they're calling a rendezvous with his mistress and love child. The Beverly Hilton hotel guard said he encountered a shaken and ashen-faced [Breck Girl] who he did not immediately recognize in a hotel men's room early Tuesday morning about 2:30 and was in...

LA Times Blog EditorVia Mickey Kaus, we learn that the Los Angeles Times has apparently banned its bloggers from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story.