Now that former Democrat Presidential Contender John Edwards has officially left his wife Elizabeth, will he finally give Rielle that "Rooftop Wedding" she so desires?
This includes Dave Matthews bands playing in the background.
O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!
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Rielle Hunter Seeks Return Of Sex Tape From Andrew Young
Just when you thought the saga over disgraced presidential wanna-be John Edwards couldn't get more sordid, now comes this - his baby mama is suing to get her sex tape back.
Rielle Hunter, the former mistress of the two-timing Edwards, has obtained a court order demanding that former Edwards aide Andrew Young turn over videotapes and photos Hunter says belong to her, CBS News reported.
According to Maj. Charles Blackwood of the Orange County, N.C., Sheriff's Office, the restraining order "speaks to video recordings and photographs that depict matters of a private and personal nature."
That would seem to jibe with an account by Young in his new book, "The Politician," in which Young describes how he and his wife found a sex tape made by Hunter and Edwards just months before the January 2008 Iowa caucus.
Young says the tape in question clearly shows Edwards right in the middle of a "sexual encounter" with a visibly pregnant woman wearing a thumb ring similar to one that Hunter frequently wears.
Young refused to immediately hand over the tapes and photos to the sheriff's office, CBS News reported. Apparently, negotiations are continuing.
Meanwhile, a police report has surfaced that reveals Edwards' marriage was crumbling just months after he admitted the affair with Hunter in August 2008.
Edwards showed up at his home in October 2008 to have dinner with his children but Elizabeth tossed him, the Raleigh News and Observer reported.
His wife told cops he then swiped her wallet, containing $320 and credit cards before leaving, the police report said.
Edwards Promised Mistress Rooftop Wedding With Dave Matthews Band
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A man who once claimed to have fathered the child of John Edwards' mistress says in a book proposal the former presidential candidate is the real father and that Edwards and worked with his campaign finance chairman to hide that secret, according to a newspaper report published online Saturday.
The New York Times said the book proposal by former Edwards aide Andrew Young states he helped facilitate the affair between Edwards and Rielle Hunter. According to the newspaper, Young wrote that Edwards once told Hunter they would wed after Edwards' wife, who has cancer, died.
Edwards told Hunter that the ceremony would be held on a rooftop in New York and the Dave Matthews Bands would make an appearance, the newspaper said, citing its examination of the book proposal.
St. Martin's Press has said Young signed a book deal with the publisher in June and it involved a strict confidentiality agreement. A spokesman for the publisher did not immediately return a phone message and e-mail seeking comment Saturday.
Edwards has said the affair with Hunter ended in 2006. That year, Edwards' political action committee paid Hunter's video production firm $100,000 for work. Then the committee paid another $14,086 on April 1, 2007. The Edwards camp has said the latter payment from the PAC was exchanged for 100 hours of unused videotape Hunter shot.
The same day, the Edwards presidential campaign had injected $14,034.61 into the PAC for a "furniture purchase," according to federal election records.
Edwards, a U.S. senator representing North Carolina from 1998 until his vice presidential bid in 2004, acknowledged in May that federal investigators are looking into how he used campaign funds. Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the U.S. attorney's office in Raleigh has declined to confirm or deny an investigation.
Edwards adamantly denied during an interview with ABC News last summer that he had fathered a child with Hunter, and he welcomed a paternity test. His wife, Elizabeth, has said she doesn't know if her husband is the father.
Young said in 2007 he was the child's father. Hunter said around the same time that Young was the father and the birth certificate does not list a father's name.
Michael Critchley, Hunter's attorney, declined to comment Saturday. A lawyer for Young did not immediately return messages left at his office Saturday.
Joyce Fitzpatrick, a spokeswoman for Edwards and his attorney, Wade Smith, said that Edwards would not comment Saturday. Smith has said Edwards may make a statement at some point in the future about the paternity of Frances Quinn Hunter, who is 19-months old, but there was no timetable for that.
Young hasn't spoken publicly since saying he was the father in 2007 and has repeatedly ignored reporter requests for interviews.
Young got his last campaign paycheck in the middle of November, a month before he and Hunter publicly declared through attorneys that he was the father. Fred Baron, who was Edwards' national finance chairman and a wealthy Dallas-based trial attorney, said last year he quietly sent money to Hunter and to Young's family to resettle in California.
Baron, who died following complications from cancer just a few months after Edwards acknowledged the affair, said he provided the money on his own, to "help two friends and former colleagues rebuild their lives when harassment by supermarket tabloids made it impossible for them to move forward on their own."
The New York Times said the book proposal states Edwards knew from the start that he was the father of the child and expended considerable effort trying to conceal that. The proposal says Edwards pleaded with Young to claim paternity and asked Baron to check whether a doctor would fake the results of a paternity test.
John Edwards' Wife Elizabeth Was A "Condescending Crazywoman"
It was "the lie of Saint Elizabeth," the courageous, cancer-stricken, wronged-wife persona that endeared Elizabeth Edwards to Americans.
Behind the scenes, she and John Edwards fought viciously and she erupted in irrational outbursts, a new book says.
"Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime," by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, says John Edwards' campaign staffers suffered her wrath for years and felt like "battered spouses."
"There was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing," the book says. In the mainstream media, the worse John Edwards looked and the more tawdry his profile became, the more heroic his wife seemed.
A dissection of the 2008 presidential campaign that has made news for juicy revelations, "Game Change" paints Edwards as "an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazywoman."
Through all of John Edwards' denials of his affair and his love child, Edwards was publicly a noble buttress. But for years, Edwards denigrated her husband as a hick and said his parents were rednecks.
The book also shows moments of her pain and vulnerability: In 2007, the day after the National Enquirer broke news of her husband's affair with Rielle Hunter, the Edwardses fought in an airport parking lot, and Edwards cried and tore off her blouse, imploring her husband, "Look at me!"
In April 2008, when the supermarket tabloid published a photo of John Edwards holding his love child, Edwards insisted her husband wasn't the father.
"I have to believe it, because if I don't, it means I'm married to a monster," she told an aide.
John Edwards finally admitted Thursday that he fathered a daughter with Hunter. A former aide, Andrew Young, who had claimed to be the father, is due to spill all in a TV interview next week.
The baby, Frances Quinn, is nearly 2 years old.
"Game Change" says Elizabeth Edwards swung between anger at her husband and trying to convince herself that Young was the father. She ordered staff to compile an elaborate chronology to establish nights when Young and Hunter were in the same city.
In March 2007 when her cancer had returned, spreading from the breast to bone, she insisted her husband stay in the race for the Democratic nomination.
After his affair was revealed, John Edwards became more deferential to her, and she grew more assertive. The book says she steamrolled over his close aides in profanity-laced tirades, which she had also done during the 2004 presidential race, when John Edwards ran as John Kerry's vice president.
Edwards gained more saintly notoriety last year with her book, "Resilience," which recounted her grief over her son's death and her battle with cancer.She wrote, "I am imperfect in a million ways, but I always thought I was ... the kind of wife to whom a husband would be faithful."
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Aide: Mellon's Cash Hid Edwards Affair
An interior decorator's visit to a country church set in motion events that led a wealthy heiress to meet John Edwards, bankroll his pet projects and, at least inadvertently, subsidize the cover-up of his affair.
The decorator, Bryan Huffman of Monroe, eventually became the conduit for as much as $700,000 from Rachel "Bunny" Mellon - what the Edwards camp called "Bunny money" - to help cover the expenses of Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young, the aide who claimed to be the father of her baby.
Mellon's money was part of more than $1.5 million that Young told ABC News was used for the cover-up. He said the money paid for a coast-to-coast odyssey that included trips on private jets, expensive lodging and even a BMW for Hunter. Some of the money, he said, even came in cash from the late Fred Baron, a Texas lawyer and Edwards' friend.
Federal prosecutors in Raleigh are looking into whether Edwards misused campaign money to pay for the cover-up of his affair and the child he finally acknowledged is his.
Details of the affair, and costly efforts to conceal it, were described this week in Young's book "The Politician." Young publicly described those efforts for the first time Friday night on ABC's "20/20."
In a statement earlier in the day, Edwards' attorneys, Wade Smith of Raleigh and Jim Cooney of Charlotte, urged "extreme caution" with the claims.
"It is obvious that there are many allegations which are simply false," they said in an e-mail. "It appears that Andrew Young is primarily motivated by financial gain and media attention."
What Huffman calls his and Mellon's innocent role in the scandal first came to light in Young's book.
"I knew nothing about what that money was used for, nothing about Rielle Hunter, nothing about the senator's personal life or the child, (and) Bunny knew nothing about it," Huffman said. "To have her get tainted ... by her connection to Sen. Edwards is very upsetting to me, because I introduced them."
Young writes that when Hunter found out she was pregnant in 2007, Edwards, a multimillionaire, couldn't access his own money "without his wife finding out." So, Young's book says, they scrambled for help.
Young approached Edwards' former law partner David Kirby.
"I told him no," Kirby said Friday.
So they turned to Mellon.
A wealthy Widow
Now 99, she was the widow of billionaire philanthropist Paul Mellon and herself heir to the Listerine fortune. She'd been a close friend of Jackie Kennedy and helped design the White House Rose Garden.
Young writes that Mellon's checks "were made as payment to ... Huffman so that she wouldn't have to offer an explanation to the professionals who handled her accounts.
"These funds ... were gifts, entirely proper, and not subject to campaign finance laws. She did not know that the money was being used in part for Rielle."
Young writes that Huffman sent him the checks, which he deposited into his account "to be used to keep Rielle happy and hidden from the media."
He told ABC News that Mellon's checks amounted to $700,000.
While Young describes the money transfers as "entirely proper," others aren't so sure.
"Whenever people try to circumvent campaign finance laws, they often try to argue that it was a gift instead of a political contribution," said Jack Knight, a former assistant U.S. attorney from Charlotte. "That's the kind of thing that will certainly pique the interest of federal prosecutors in Raleigh."
Huffman and Young have testified before the grand jury.
A chance encounter
The connection might never have happened had Huffman not visited a church a few years ago that Mellon designed in Upperville, Va., in the shadow of the Blue Ridge mountains.
Impressed, he wrote her a note. She replied with an invitation to lunch on her 4,000-acre estate.
Huffman learned she was interested in Edwards' candidacy. Because Huffman's sister was a law school classmate of Young's, he called the Edwards aide.
A profitable tea
As a result Mellon invited Edwards for tea at her farm. She went on to give the Edwards-related Alliance for a New America $3.48 million in 2008 and more to other groups tied to the then-Democratic presidential candidate.
Her attorney told the New York Times last year that when Young later told her Edwards needed money for personal use, she agreed.
Huffman said he agreed to forward the money to Young. He said both he and Mellon are disappointed to be dragged into the scandal.
"She's a fascinating person," Huffman said. "And I just hate that she's getting all this tawdry association at this point in her life. She's been drawn into something that neither of us knew. ... She just thought he was going to be great for the country."
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How John Edwards Got Caught
Among the revelations in Andrew Young's new book about John Edwards is that once the whole sordid truth about Edwards and Rielle Hunter emerged, Bill Clinton "called the senator and said, in effect, 'How'd you get caught?' " It's not a surprising question, given the source. But the better question may be how Edwards got away with it for so long.
Between early 2006, when the senator's dalliance with his campaign videographer began, and August 2008, when he confessed to it, Edwards engaged in all sorts of subterfuges in an attempt to hide his liaison with Hunter from his wife, his staff, and the press. The Politician, written by Edwards' primary romantic facilitator, provides a blow-by-blow account how he did it—and why he failed. Consider this list a kind of public service to any elected official ever considering a secret romp.
Get a cell phone and use it exclusively for your affair.
Once the affair took off, Edwards bought a cell phone to take calls exclusively from Hunter, which he dubbed the "Batphone." Edwards failed, however, to keep the phone hidden from his wife. Elizabeth discovered it ringing one night in his bag, answered it, and heard Hunter launch into a "romantic monologue." That's when Edwards confessed to Elizabeth that he'd had a "one-night stand." (An understatement.) From then on, Edwards and Young arranged handoffs so Edwards wouldn't have the Batphone while Elizabeth was around.
Use your calling plan's enhanced features.
When Edwards didn't have the Batphone, Young set up three-way conference calls and had both Edwards and Hunter dial-in. That way there would be no record of the call when Elizabeth would check Edwards' call log, as she routinely did.
Make fake hotel reservations.
When Hunter traveled with Edwards, Young would reserve a room in his own name and tell the hotel staff that his "wife" would be checking in on that account. That way, there would be no evidence Hunter stayed in the hotel. Hunter would then join Edwards in his suite and leave before aides came to wake him up.
Use separate doors.
And don't forget to stagger your entrances. Heading back to the campaign office in South Carolina after a rally, Edwards had Young drop him off in the parking garage, and he took the elevator up. Hunter entered through the front, where she ran into Elizabeth. Elizabeth later "confronted her husband about the glowing blond woman who had obviously arrived with him from the road."
Use cash.
When Edwards gave Hunter his bank card, Elizabeth noticed money inexplicably withdrawn in New York. From then on, Edwards—through Young—gave her cash stipends and her own separate credit card. As one Edwards donor tells Young: "Old Chinese proverb: Use cash, not credit cards."
Funnel money.
When Edwards started paying Hunter's living expenses, the money came from the nonagenarian philanthropist Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon, who didn't ask any questions about where the cash was going. Mellon would pay her interior decorator, who would pass the money along to Young. The cash would be concealed in boxes of chocolates.
Destroy all evidence.
Edwards was not as careful as he could have been. At one point, Edwards' nanny discovered a Marriott key card on the kitchen counter. Young noticed that when Edwards would receive notes from "eager women" on the campaign trail, he "occasionally pocketed" them instead of handing them off for disposal. And many nights, Edwards would take mysterious 2 a.m. "jogs."
Seriously, destroy all evidence.
Elizabeth spent days going through the footage Hunter shot for the never-aired "Webisodes" of the Edwards campaign, searching for evidence of cheating. However, she was never able to find the tapes shot at the Edwards house while she was away. Young and his wife later allegedly found a half-destroyed tape, allegedly shot by Hunter, of her and the senator allegedly having sex. Allegedly. (Hunter has now filed for a restraining order to keep Young from releasing it.)
Don't canoodle in front of aides.
While Elizabeth was on a book tour in 2006, Hunter came over to Edwards' house and the two spoke openly in front of Young about getting married in a rooftop ceremony with music played by the Dave Matthews Band. (The band didn't like her when they met her.) Hunter and Edwards would kiss in front of Young and cuddle in front other another aide, prompting him to ask Young, "What the hell is going on?"
Choose a discreet lover.
Hunter was a noticeable presence on the trail, according to Young. She dressed in bright colors, talked loudly, and flirted constantly. She spoke to "close friends" about their affair, but trusted them because of their "spiritual connection." She recounted their sexual exploits to Young and his wife. She even talked to Newsweek's Jonathan Darman about having an affair with a powerful man whom she wouldn't name. (Darman knew she worked with the Edwards campaign.) When rumors of the affair started circulating, she continued to risk getting spotted in hotel lobbies and grocery stores. "I think she wanted to get caught," Young writes.
Maintain plausible deniability.
Even after Young learned about the affair, Edwards continued to use vague language while on the phone with Hunter—just in case he or Young, who overheard them, had to deny it. When Hunter said she loved him, Edwards "would say only, 'Me too.' And if she asked him if he missed her, he would say, 'That's correct' … but never, 'I miss you.' " On calls with Young, top Edwards donor Fred Baron would refer to Edwards as "the principal" and to Hunter as "her."
Don't sign any cards you send to the new mother of your child.
When Hunter gave birth to their daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, Young asked Edwards if he wanted to send her flowers. "Yeah, that's a good idea," Edwards said. "But don't sign it from me. Someone might see it.
Wear a condom.
Edwards claims that Hunter told him she couldn't get pregnant. You know the rest.
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