John Edwards Extramarital Affair - Initial National Enquirer Allegations

Initial National Enquirer Allegations

On October 10, 2007, the Enquirer published an article claiming that Edwards had engaged in an extramarital affair with an unnamed female campaign worker. On the same day, Stein published another article in The Huffington Post that contained additional details about Hunter, including Hunter's name and the web videos that she had produced. The following day, October 11, New York magazine published a piece linking Hunter to the Enquirer allegations.

Both Edwards and Hunter denied the relationship claims. Edwards said the Enquirer story was "made up", further stating, "I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years," referring to his wife Elizabeth, "and as anybody who's been around us knows, she's an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story's just false." Hunter's attorney issued a denial via Jerome Armstrong, a political blogger and founder of MyDD, stating, "The innuendos and lies that have appeared on the internet (sic) and in the National Enquirer concerning John Edwards are not true, completely unfounded and ridiculous." David Perel, the Editor-in-Chief at the Enquirer, did not back down from the paper's allegations, stating, "The original story was 100% accurate."

The Enquirer published a follow-up story that included a photograph of a visibly pregnant Hunter on December 19, 2007. The Enquirer alleged that, according to its anonymous source, Hunter was claiming that Edwards was the father of her child. The article also claimed that Hunter had relocated to a gated community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S., near Andrew Young, a former official with the Edwards campaign, who had claimed paternity of Hunter's child. As with Hunter's initial denial of the affair, Young's paternity claim had been issued to Armstrong and published on MyDD.

CBS News journalist, Bob Schieffer, asked about the allegations on Imus in the Morning, stating, "I believe that's a story that we will be avoiding, because it appears to me that there's absolutely nothing to it ... This seems to be just sort of a staple of modern campaigns, that you got through at least one love child, which turns out not to be a love child. And I think we can all do better than this one." Mickey Kaus, a journalist at Slate, speculated that the lack of mainstream coverage was motivated by a desire not to harm Elizabeth Edwards, who was fighting cancer at the time. Kaus also considered the possibility of news organizations taking a "wait-and-see" attitude, pending the results of the Iowa caucuses.