John Edwards Finally Admits

[ILP]

RALEIGH, N.C. – Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally admitted Thursday he fathered a child during an affair before his second White House bid, dropping long-standing denials just ahead of a book by a former campaign aide who initially took the fall.

Edwards released a statement admitting paternity of the girl, Frances Quinn Hunter, who was born in 2008 to videographer Rielle Hunter as the result of an affair Edwards has already confessed to.

"It was wrong for me to ever deny she was my daughter," he said, adding he was providing financial support for the child and mother. "I am Quinn's father."

The admission comes ahead of the Feb. 2 release of a book by former Edwards aide Andrew Young that is expected to describe how Edwards worked to hide his paternity with Young's help.

Young initially claimed he was the child's father shortly before the 2008 presidential primary contests began. Word that Young was naming Edwards as the father first came when details of his book proposal were reported by The New York Times in September. Edwards' lawyer at the time declined to comment.

The child was born Feb. 27, 2008, indicating that she was conceived in the middle of 2007, several months after Hunter stopped working for Edwards. John and Elizabeth Edwards renewed their wedding vows in July of 2007 to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary.

Hunter's lawyer, Michael Critchley, said the admission is "good for everyone."

Critchley said Edwards' statement amounted to a public acknowledgment of something that was known privately.

He said Hunter did not have an immediate comment. It is not clear where she and the child are living.

In an excerpt of an ABC News interview released Thursday, Young says that Edwards asked him to arrange a fake a paternity test.

"Get a doctor to fake the DNA results," Young said Edwards told him. "And he asked me ... to steal a diaper from the baby so he could secretly do a DNA test to find out if this (was) indeed his child."

An Edwards spokeswoman declined to comment on the ABC interview.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Elizabeth Edwards, whose cancer returned in an incurable form in March 2007, has stood by her husband despite the affair. She has said that it does not matter to her whether her husband fathered a child with Hunter, saying, &quot;that would be a part of John's life, but not a part of mine.&quot;</span> &lt;---i are deading aye sah...

Harrison Hickman, a longtime friend of John Edwards who worked as his political pollster, said Elizabeth Edwards was supportive of the decision of her husband to come forward.

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[kia027]

Re: John Edwards Finally Admits

i read an article about him the other day about how in the last few years he has become a megalomaniac of sorts. Let me see if I can find the article and share

[Seveen]

Re: John Edwards Finally Admits

the Today show said he and Mrs. Edwards have been separated since June/July 2008

chalk one up to The Enquirer

those papers couldn't survive if all the printed were lies - i wouldn't be surprised if they have a big expose about him next week - that may have prompted his confession

and he's probably still seeing Rielle Hunter and ready to come &quot;out&quot; with her

[Seveen]

Re: John Edwards Finally Admits

Ruth Marcus - washingtonpost.com

John Edwards's continuing, <span style="font-weight: bold">self-serving </span><span style="font-weight: bold">smarminess</span>&quot;I am Quinn's father. I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves. It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me”

-Former North Carolina Sen., former presidential candidate, and continuing purveyor of self-justifying smarminess John Edwards, in a statement belatedly acknowledging the obvious: that he is the father of his former mistress’s almost-two-year-old daughter.

Excuse me, but when she understands what? That her father cheated on his wife with her mother -- but only when his wife’s cancer, as he famously caveated, was in remission? That her father prevailed on his friend and aide, Andrew Young, to claim paternity? That her father lied at every turn -- about whether he had an affair with Rielle Hunter, about whether he was the father? That he lied even while professing to come clean? (&quot;Being 99 percent honest is no longer enough,&quot; Edwards told ABC's Nightline as he 'fessed up to the affair, even as he continued to deny paternity and blithely offered to take a test to prove it.) That his tardy acknowledgement happens to come right before Young comes out with a tell-all book?

“It’s a lot more complicated, I think, than most people think,” Edwards former pollster, Harrison Hickman, told NBC’s “Today” show. “There are a lot of adults involved, and I think they wanted to handle this the right way for [the Edwardses’ children] Jack and Emma Claire and Kate, as well as for Quinn.”

If this is the right way, could someone tell me the wrong one?

[Seveen]

Re: John Edwards Finally Admits

More on <span style="font-weight: bold">self-absorbed </span>John Edwards
I concur with everything Ruth Marcus said about the unbelievably self-absorbed John Edwards. Just let me add to her list of things Quinn Hunter might understand when she's older. Such as how her father's narcissism led him not only to seek the presidency while having an affair with her mother. Such as how after her father's &quot;Two Americas&quot; campaign mantra fell flat (perhaps because while the message was right, the messenger was a phony) he tried to push then-Sen. Barack Obama into making him his vice presidential running mate. Such as how her father then lobbied the nascent Obama administration hard to become the attorney general of the United States. Such as how her father's carefully crafted Potemkin Village of a squeaky clean image could have brought down the ticket or severely hobbled the new administration if Edwards had succeeded in either quest. That Obama dodged potential calamity shows he's a good judge of character. That Edwards had the nerve to put his family, his party and his country at risk shows that Edwards lacks any.


By Jonathan Capehart | January 21, 2010; 12:43 PM ET