John Edwards Affair: When Private Lives Become Public Lies

We’ve taken another look at the private lives and public lies of the John Edwards’ affair.

We found some interesting tidbits in the John Edwards’ transcript from last Friday’s ABC Nightline with Bob Woodruff and also found out some new info about the key players in the Edwards affair: Rielle Hunter, Andrew Young, Fred Baron, and John and Elizabeth Edwards.

ANDREW YOUNG

Apparently Andrew Young’s mom believes her “baby” Andrew isn’t the father of Reille Hunter’s love child either. According to the New York Post, Andrew’s mom, Jacquelyn Aldridge, wants Edwards to take the DNA test to “exonerate” her son as the father of Reille Hunter’s baby.

This is curious as Young has kept mum since he released a statement through an attorney in December that he was the father of Hunter’s baby, and not Edwards. Yet Young’s mom is not staying mum, she believes her son is “honorable” but not the “daddy”. Young is being touted as a long time Edwards’ loyalist willing to “fall on the grenade” for the ex-Senator. Unfortunately if Edwards does turn out to be the father, Young will have sacrificed his family as well.

RIELLE HUNTER

It’s also been revealed that Hunter was recognized by Lester Munson, a former investigative reporter for Sports Illustrated, as being involved in a case of show horses being murdered for the insurance money. According to ESPN, Munson recognized Hunter in a photo while reading about the Edwards affair. Hunter’s father was allegedly involved in a scheme where several “rich and prominent horse owners” had their expensive show horses killed by a “hitman” known as the Sandman.

William Nack wrote a book about the case, “Blood Money”. Hunter’s name was originally Lisa Druck. Allegedly Druck’s father, James Druck, an attorney in Ocala, Florida showed hitman Tommy Burns how to electrocute horses and Druck’s horse, Henry the Hawk, was their first victim. Druck rode the horse in competition and was purportedly at her father’s home when the “Sandman” and her father allegedly killed Henry the Hawk. No telling how this affected young Lisa/Rielle. Many who ride become truly bonded with their horses. The tragic circumstances of the death of her horse could have been extremely traumatic for Ms. Druck/Hunter.

According to Fox News, Hunter is also related, at least by an ex-marriage, to the Jon Benet Ramsey case. Hunter’s ex-father-in-law was Alex Hunter, the Boulder D.A. who did such a slipshod job of prosecuting the case. Amazingly FOX was unable to pinpoint the exact date Rielle Hunter married Alex “Kip” Hunter, leaving it to “some time in the late 80′s” and that the two were married for a “decade”.

Jonathan Darman of Newsweek wrote on August 6 of meeting Reille Hunter on the Edwards campaign trail in July of 2007. Darman wrote that he was privy to conversations with Hunter about Edwards, that Hunter claimed she was “fired” by the Edwards campaign, that “the campaign didn’t understand her” and that Edwards “failed to defend her”. Darman claimed Hunter cast Elizabeth Edwards as the “villain” and that “someday, the truth about her is going to come out”.

JOHN EDWARDS MARRIAGE

Which kind of segues into Edwards’ ABC Nightline transcript. Woodruff asked Edwards about his wife’s reaction, how did she find out, and how did she, Elizabeth cope?

Edwards gave a enigmatic answer by speaking about “what goes on inside people’s marriages”:

“You know, Elizabeth and I have been married 31 years. The admiration she gets from the public is deserved. But nobody can see… I mean Bob, you’ve been married a long time. Nobody can see inside everybody’s marriage. You just can’t. Everybody watching this broadcast knows there’s things inside their marriage they want to stay inside their marriage, they don’t want the rest of the world to know about it and that would certainly be true of ours too. It’s impossible for people to know what’s going on inside of our marriage. But that doesn’t change anything. This is not something Elizabeth did, this is something I did. And I intended to love and admire because she has stood with me.”

Edwards’ said: “You know, Elizabeth and I have been married 31 years. The admiration she gets from the public is deserved. But nobody can see…” and then he refers to “inside their marriage”. Which made us curious, what was Edwards alluding to, “inside his marriage” versus Elizabeth’s public image, that if we could just “see” what it was, that the affair would “make sense”?

He also said: “Everybody watching this broadcast knows there’s things inside their marriage they want to stay inside their marriage, they don’t want the rest of the world to know about it and that would certainly be true of ours too. It’s impossible for people to know what’s going on inside of our marriage. But that doesn’t change anything.”

Edwards alludes to something “inside his marriage” that he and Elizabeth “don’t want the rest of the world to know about”. He says it again when he states “it’s impossible for people to know what’s going on inside of our marriage”. He doesn’t do Elizabeth any favors with this line of reasoning, it leads to all sorts of conjecture, we now have unbidden visions in our heads as to what is “really going on” inside their marriage.

Edwards also didn’t do Rielle Hunter any favors with his so-called “confession”. Edwards, in answering Woodruff as to whether he’d had an affair with Hunter, said something rather interesting, not once but twice, at the beginning of the interview and at the very end:

From the “did you have an affair” question:

“I was at the Beverly Hilton. I was there for a very simple reason, because I was trying to keep this mistake that I had made from becoming public.”

The last question in the interview:

“WOODRUFF: Did you want to control [Ms. Hunter] to some degree? In the sense that you didn’t want her to reveal this relationship?

EDWARDS: I wanted her not to tell the public what had happened. Very simple. That’s the reason I went.”

Twice Edwards stated that he was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles because he “wanted her (Hunter) to “not tell the public what had happened”. Woodruff failed to followup: What did Hunter do or say that made Edwards feel as the affair would “go public”? Edwards’ statement seems to be an attempt to paint Hunter as an extortionist. Threatening to “go public” seems to imply that Hunter “wanted something” in exchange for not “going public”.

Even more curious is the fact that Hunter claims she wants “privacy” even though Edwards’ claims she threatened him to “go public”. Another strange thing about this story, Hunter claims Young, a long time friend of Edwards and married man with kids, is the father of her love child. Why would she threaten to expose an affair with Edwards that occurred before her “affair” with Young?

Edwards’ claimed in the interview that the affair “ended” in 2006 and that he told his wife. And yet in 2007 his campaign posted the mini-web documentaries that Hunter produced and filmed prior to getting “dumped”. Shouldn’t Edwards have realized that those videos, reminders of the woman who had an affair with him displayed on his campaign website a few months later, would be incredibly hurtful to Elizabeth?

FRED BARON

Then there’s Fred Baron, the multi-millionaire backer and long time friend of Edwards who admitted he paid thousands of dollars to Hunter and Young and put them up in a mansion in Santa Barbara. Baron released a statement the same day as Edwards interview on Nightline. When Edwards was asked by Woodruff if he knew anything about “hush money” being paid, Edwards denied knowing anything about Baron’s participation. Edwards also “speculated” as to why Baron was involved:

“EDWARDS: If you’re talking about Fred Baron, I do know Fred Baron. I also know that Fred Baron knows both of these people who are involved and has worked with them for years. So he has the relationship with them independent of me. So what he chose to do or not do, I can’t explain, he’ll have to explain. I don’t know what he did or why he did it. And what his reasons for, were, for doing it. Is it possible that he wanted to help them because they were in a difficult time? Of course. Is it possible that he was worried that in fact something had happened with me, and he wanted to help? Of course that’s possible. I think all these things are possible.”

Inside Edwards statement about Baron something interesting caught our eye: “I can’t explain, he’ll have to explain. I don’t know what he did or why he did it. And what his reasons for, were, for doing it. Is it possible that he wanted to help them because they were in a difficult time? Of course.”

Edwards claimed he didn’t know what Baron “did” or “why” but that it was “possible that he wanted to help them because they were in a difficult time”.

According to the Dallas Morning News, here’s what Baron had to say about why he paid the money:

“He said Ms. Hunter and another Edwards aide, Andrew Young, who claimed paternity of Ms. Hunter’s child, were being dogged by tabloid reporters chasing rumors of the affair and pregnancy.

“I made a decision on my own, without talking to Edwards or anybody, to try to help them move to a community to try to get away from those folks,” Mr. Baron said.”

How is it that both Edwards and Baron claim the same reason for helping Hunter and Young even though Edwards stated he, Edwards, had no idea “what Baron did” or “why he did it”?

And finally, back to Andrew Young, the long-time pal and right hand man of Edwards. Young claimed in his “I’m the father of Reille Hunter’s baby” statement back in December that he wanted “privacy” in order to make “amends” to his family. It was later learned that Young, along with his wife and kids, had dinner with a very pregnant Hunter. Even weirder, they, Hunter, Young and his wife and kids, “loaded up the truck” and moved to Santa Barbara, California where they all lived in the same house. What a strange way to to “make amends” with your wife.

The Young’s are purportedly back in North Carolina while Hunter has been spotted in Florida. Edwards, in his “confession” to Woodruff intimated that Hunter was going to “go public” with their affair, which paints a very nasty picture his ex-mistress. Edwards also alluded to something “going on inside” his and Elizabeth’s marriage.

Hopefully, it’s not Edwards wearing diapers or a toe sucking fetish.

This whole “affair” of private lives reads more like a poorly written screenplay titled “Private Lies”. What’s even more amazing is that Edwards & Co think the public will swallow this swill–hook, line and stinker.

By LBG

Image – Private Lives

Tags: andrew young, Elizabeth Edwards, Fred Baron, John Edwards, john edwards affair, John Edwards baby, John Edwards hush money, John Edwards Scandal, lisa druck, rielle hunter