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Opinion: Rielle Hunter video of John Edwards’ during affair

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This morning former Sen. John Edwards admitted an affair with a videographer named Rielle Hunter, an issue The Ticket has reported on here previously and here last night and in the Opinion L.A. blog on July 23.

This afternoon, after taping an ABC-TV interview for broadcast later, Edwards issued a printed statement admitting the affair. Later, his wife, Elizabeth, also issued a statement. The full text of both is published on the secondpage of this item, click on the Read more line.

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The 55-year-old lawyer, former Democratic vice presidential nominee and former North Carolina senator said:

‘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 it. But being 99 percent honest is no longer enough.’

The complete text of Edwards’ statement is available here by clicking on the Read more line below.

Despite her lack of experience, Hunter was hired in 2006 to make a series of behind-the-scenes campaign videos on Edwards for his ultimately unsuccessful run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Those videos were exhibited on the Edwards website for a brief time last year.

Then, they disappeared.

However, The Ticket has obtained Chapter I of those videos called, in ironic hindsight, ‘Plane Truths.’

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The film includes casual in-flight interviews of Edwards during trips to speeches, the candidate making fun of his staff, discussing his speech notes and then cutaways to the actual passages in his later speech and ruminations about the political process in America today, how modern politicians so easily just get speaking a reel and not the truth. All designed to show, presumably, the candidate’s human side.

Often, you hear the voice of a woman off-camera asking questions or laughing heartily at some Edwards’ comment, which he appears to enjoy.

You do not see the woman. However, the film is dated 2007 and is fully credited to the 42-year-old Rielle Hunter. It’s titled ‘Inspiring Politics: A Webisode Series John Edwards. ‘

In the opening, the former Democratic presidential candidate, who finished second in the Iowa caucuses, says:

‘I’ve come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I am, who I really am. But I don’t know what the results of that will be.

‘But for me personally I’d rather be successful or unsuccessful based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll you put out in front of audiences. That’s not me, you know.’

In his statement Edwards also denies paternity for Hunter’s baby and<

offers to take any tests to prove that. He also denies making any financial payments to Hunter or to the Edwards friend who’s taken responsibility for the infant, Frances Quinn Hunter, born Feb. 27, although her birth certificate carries no father’s name.

‘It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry,’ Edwards continues, ‘as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry.

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‘In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up -- feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself.’

He says with this statement and his TV interview he will have nothing further to say on the matter.

According to the Associated Press, Edwards’ One America Committee paid $100,000 to Midline Groove Productions on July 6, 2006, five days after Hunter, who had no previous video experience, incorporated the firm in Delaware. She produced four webisodes, one only 150-seconds long.

To see the full texts of both Edwards’ statements, click the Read more line below.

--Andrew Malcolm

one t Here is the text of John Edwards’ statement, August 8, 2008:

‘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 it.

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‘But being 99 percent honest is no longer enough.

‘I was and am ashamed of my conduct and choices, and I had hoped that it would never become public. 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. I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I am not the father of any baby, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established.

‘I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby. I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the apparent father of the baby.

‘It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry.

‘In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.

‘If you want to beat me up - feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself.

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‘I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help.

‘I have given a complete interview on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.’

Text of statement issued by Elizabeth Edwards, August 8, 2008:

‘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 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.

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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. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do. 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. I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.’

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