Edwards Admits Affair, Denies Love Child

Former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) has admitted to ABC News that he did have an affair with film documentarian Reille Hunter and that he repeatedly lied to the national press about the story. Edwards continues to say that he is not the father of Hunter's infant son.

John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today. In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her. Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter's baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test. Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby's birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father. A former campaign aide, Andrew Young, has said he was the father of the child.

The story broke via the National Enquirer two weeks ago (and I covered it here), but it did not get much coverage in the mainstream media, despite near daily updates from gossip sites such as Gawker.

Today's admission comes at the cusp of overwhelming national coverage of the Beijing Olympics, causing some to speculate that Democrats hope the story will therefore be given relatively little attention. It remains to be seen whether Edwards will now appear or speak at the Democratic convention.

I imagine this effectively ends Edwards' chance of having a position in Obama's administration.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Edwards has issued a statement via her Daily Kos account.

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. 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. 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.