Disgraced ex-presidential candidate John Edwards secretly rekindled his steamy affair with his campaign videographer after confessing his infidelity to his cancer-stricken wife, according to an explosive new report.
In admitting their affair to ABC on Friday, Edwards said his “short” romantic relationship with Rielle Hunter began only after Hunter was hired in July 2006 to produce videos for his campaign, and ended that year.
He said he then confessed the relationship to his wife, Elizabeth.
But the National Enquirer is reporting today that Edwards restarted the affair after coming clean to Elizabeth, and that Hunter, now 44, got pregnant shortly afterward.
Meanwhile, Hunter’s sister said yesterday that the mistress’ 6-month-old love child unmistakably “looks like John Edwards. She’s got his eyes and jaw line and lips.
“The most shocking thing was watching him on TV [last week] giving these half truths, these half-baked answers. I wish for everyone involved that he’d have come clean,” Hunter’s sis, Roxanne Druck, told “Entertainment Tonight.”
Despite recent denials in an ABC News interview, Edwards knows he’s the father of Hunter’s daughter, Frances Quinn, the Enquirer is reporting.
Sources have also told the weekly paper Edwards and Hunter orchestrated her public rebuffing of his offer of a paternity test.
“She’s still protecting John because she loves him and thinks they may eventually have a future together,” an Enquirer source said.
Edwards lied to ABC when he said he did not know his former national finance chairman was funneling a reported $15,000 per month to Hunter, the newspaper said.
Former chairman Fred Baron reportedly also is paying $20,000 per month to Andrew Young, the married Edwards campaign official who claims he fathered Frances.
Edwards, the Democratic 2004 vice presidential nominee, has visited Hunter and the love child three times since March at the Beverly Hills Hilton in California, the Enquirer said. The paper’s reporters last month spotted him leaving her hotel room.
Two days before admitting to the affair Friday, Edwards told Hunter to leave the country, and she agreed – hopping a chartered Lear jet flight to a secret location on a trip that cost $50,000, the paper reports.