[ABOVE: Rielle Hunter still in the picture, shooting video of John Edwards, Edwards' parents, Wallace and Bobbie Edwards, at Chapel Hill NC on December 30, 2006. Hunter also took pictures of John and Elizabeth Edwards that day, as well as pictures of John and Elizabeth and their three children--at a time when according to both Edwards, "a time of healing had begun" -DBKP Exclusive photo.]

Lending the Edwards a Hand with their Timeline

UPDATE 0215 EDT September 10, 2008 at end of story.

Roger Friedman at Fox News.com, in his headline asks the question, “How much did Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards’ wife, know about his affair with Rielle Hunter and when did she know it?”

Friedman begins with a nifty bit of revisionist history:

Edwards has said that he told his wife about the affair “at the end of 2006” and that everything ended after that. Indeed, within days of the end of 2006, Web videos produced by Hunter about Edwards disappeared from his campaign Web site and from YouTube.

We realize that Friedman and Company have only lately come onto the John Edwards story–though sooner than the rest of the Mainstream Media–and might be excused for putting “end of 2006″ in quotes.

[Background information: access over 100 DBKP stories on the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair, scandal and cover-up: John Edwards Love Child Scandal Library.]

In all fairness to Fox News: it was Fox who was the only broadcast outlet to report on the Edwards affair by confirming that John Edwards had been caught by reporters of the National Enquirer in the Beverly Hilton, after visiting mistress Rielle Hunter.

But to anyone who’s followed the Edwards’ story closely, Edwards has never said that the “end of 2006″ was when his affair ended.

To make sure, we re-examined both Edwards August 8 statement and the transcripts of his ABC Nightline interview.

In his statement to the press, Edwards said, “With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006 and today I take full responsibility publicly. But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then.”

Nothing there about the “end of 2006″. How about in his Nightline interview?

In 2006 2 years ago, I made a very serious mistake. A mistake that I am responsible for and no one else. In 2006 I told Elizabeth about the mistake, asked her for her forgiveness, asked God for his forgiveness. And we have kept this within our family since that time. All of my family knows about this and just to be absolutely clear, none of them are responsible for it. I am responsible for it. I alone am responsible for it. And it led to this most recent incident at the Beverly Hilton. 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.

Nothing there, either.

That was all that Edwards said in his Nightline interview on the subject, displaying some fancy footwork in response to a later Bob Woodruff question, “How long did it last and when exactly did it end?”

Well, here’s the way I feel about this Bob. I think that my family is entitled to every detail. They’ve been told every detail. Elizabeth knows absolutely everything. I think beyond the basics, the fact that I made this mistake and I’m responsible for it and no one else. I think that’s where it stops in terms of the public because I think everything else is within my family and those privacy boundaries ought to be respected.

As that is the last time that Edwards has spoken on the record about the matter, we’re wondering where Friedman got the “end of 2006″ info from? Any readers care to help out here?

Did John Edwards ever say that his affair ended at the end of 2006? Or is Roger Friedman a DBKP reader who saw the photo below and is covering up for Edwards?

The DBKP pic is of Edwards, wife Elizabeth and Rielle Hunter at Chapel Hill NC on December 30, 2006. It is the only one that shows the three together that late in the year.

Friedman’s piece was in the “Entertainment” section of Fox News–odd in itself–along with references to Mickey Rourke and the Golden Globes’ Espresso Machine.

The story does relate that an unnamed source clues Friedman to the fact that Elizabeth Edwards had the videos of Hunter pulled down from the Internet and that they were replaced by “new videos made by a videographer who’d worked for Elizabeth Edwards’ brother, Jay Anania. Peter Cairns had worked for Anania on a project called Commedia and a video called “The Lost Hours.””

Jay Anania, readers may recall, is the guy who helped Elizabeth Edwards pick out John Edwards’ ‘favorite’ movie, Dr. Strangelove for a Turner Classic Movies’ appearance in 2004–a movie John Edwards had never watched.

Friedman’s source does reveal an interesting point: Elizabeth Edwards’ 2007 addendum to the peperback edition of her memoir:

In a chapter added to the paperback edition of Edwards’ memoir, “Saving Graces,” the former senator’s wife observes that in 2007: “My brother Jay had a wonderful young man, Peter Cairns, who worked for him, and Peter had begun videotaping the campaign, the events and behind the scenes. We had tried it before but the process of getting the film from the camera to the internet — where I and the public could watch John took much too long.”

(An e-mail and a phone call to Cairns on Monday were each unreturned.) Of course, that wasn’t the case. When Hunter shot her videos, sources tell me, a dedicated Internet technician was part of the deal, and managed to get all her videos up on Edwards’ campaign site immediately.

This is a valuable observation in a story where not only the principals have either lied and then clammed up–John Edwards, Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young–but have clammed up since.

It’s to be noted that after our picture was published, the timeline on Edwards’ affair with Hunter and Elizabeth’s knowledge of it have shifted like the sand through an hourglass.

The Fox article also notes some interesting passages in the material Elizabeth Edwards added to the 2007 paperback edition of her memoirs.

Finally, Friedman notes that Elizabeth Edwards’ paperback edition of “Saving Greaces” isn’t dedicated to her husband, but to her four children.

“For Wade, Cate, Emma Claire, and Jack. This is a small offering, for no mother has ever been more blessed.” John Edwards — aside from his mentions in the narrative of the book — gets nothing but an aside in the acknowledgments at the end — “my beloved John,” sandwiched in between Elizabeth’s parents and her daughter “precious Cate.”

DBKP has more pictures unpublished. We have been waiting for the Edwards to make further statements on the affair, scandal and cover-up. We suppose the photos will work just as well to refute MSM claims about timelines.

But, just as John Edwards was asked no questions from November 29, 2007 until late July 2008 about his affair with Rielle Hunter, the Mainstream press has ditched all investigative interest in the story–outside of ABC News pursuing the Fred Baron Money Trail.

Don’t expect them to spend much time on the story: the 11 days the MSM spent on the story from August 8-19 apparently wore out their investigative muscles–although the NY Times is supposedly hot on the trail of a Duke University student with whom Edwards allegedly had another affair.

Disposition of Edwards’ campaign money, Fred Baron, hush money payments and further curiosities just don’t interest the watchdogs in our adversarial press. But don’t think for a moment that the MSM isn’t an adversarial press.

Their coverage of John McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, over the last 10 days puts the lie to that myth.

[NOTE: Did we make a mistake? Or did Roger Friedman? Is there any references to John Edwards stating that he ended his affair at the "end of 2006" that you can find? Leave a comment or send an email. A footnote to history may await you. Thanks!]

UPDATE 0215 EDT Sept 10, 2008 – PEOPLE Magazine

There is still no evidence whatsoever to back up Roger Friedman’s assertion that John Edwards said his affair ended in “late 2006″.

A reader–Outraged–cites a “friend of Elizabeth” in People magazine on August 13, 2008, “The Edwards Affair: Elizabeth’s ‘Excruciating Anguish’“:

Behind the public show of strength, the Edwards’ household has been a scene of turmoil and tension since John, 55, first began revealing the truth about his affair with former campaign aide, Rielle Hunter, 44, after the formal launch of his campaign in the final days of 2006.

This is a much more detailed dating of the confession than Elizabeth Edwards’ statement at DailyKOS on August 8 [posted approximately the same time her husband released his statement and also the same time that Fred Baron released his statement]:

John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.

The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.

John has spoken in a long on-camera interview I hope you watch. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown. But now the truth is out, and the repair work that began in 2006 will continue.

As noted before, “2006″ was the theme of that August 8 day.

The friend, Hargrave McElroy, according to People, also said, “Hitting the campaign trail for her husband “was like returning to normalcy” McElroy said, though the challenge became more difficult than anticipated when tabloids began reporting the affair in 2007.”

Actually, it was only one tabloid: the National Enquirer. Fred Baron, John Edwards and now Hargrave McElroy, have kept talking the “tabloids” meme alive, but it wasn’t “tabloids”.

by Mondoreb
images: dbkp