John Edwards lied even when he “came clean” by claiming his affair with vixen videographer Rielle Hunter began after his presidential campaign hired her, a friend of the mistress said yesterday.
“The affair began long, long, long before she was hired to work for the campaign – almost half a year before she was hired to work on those videos,” said Hunter pal Pidgeon O’Brien in an ABC News interview.
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After months of denials, Edwards finally ‘fessed up to the adultery in his own ABC interview Friday – but was adamant that he started sleeping with Hunter only after her firm was retained in July 2006 for $114,000 to produce Internet videos on him.
“She was hired to come in and produce films, and that’s the reason she was hired,” insisted Edwards, whose wife, Elizabeth, suffers from cancer.
But O’Brien said Hunter, 44, began speaking about the former North Carolina senator in amorous terms shortly after they met in a New York City hotel bar in late February 2006 or early March 2006.
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Hunter, a devotee of astrology and New Age spiritualism, said she had met “an amazing man from North Carolina named John,” O’Brien told ABC.
“She said they had a very deep connection and they were spending time together in a romantic and sexual way, very, you know, very early on, in a very intense way.”
Edwards claims the affair ended in 2006, but the National Enquirer is set to report that his trysts with Hunter continued well beyond that and led to the birth of her daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, last February.
Edwards denies fathering the baby, but Hunter’s younger sister, Melissa Druck, has called on him to fulfill his offer to take a paternity test – something Hunter says she doesn’t want.
“If he would just come forward and tell the whole truth, I think then this would all go away,” Druck told The Post yesterday.
Asked whether Edwards is the daddy, Druck sighed, “I’ve probably said more than I should.”
Andrew Young, a former Edwards campaign aide, has claimed to be the father.
Druck said she did not know where Hunter – who has been in hiding for more than a week – is now living. Hunter is being paid a reported $15,000 per month by Edwards’ former campaign finance boss, who had originally set her up in a $3 million California house.
Hunter’s ex-mother-in-law, Harriet Barker, told The Post yesterday that she is tired of media focus on the “beautiful and loving” woman.
“I wish people would concentrate on Russia and Georgia and not on whom John Edwards screwed,” said Barker, whose son was married to Hunter before the pair split in the 1990s.
Hunter has had other famous boyfriends, including author Jay McInerney, who has said he based the promiscuous character in his 1988 novel, “Story of My Life,” on Hunter. Boosted by the scandal, the novel is out of stock after shooting up to No. 470 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list – prompting its publisher to print another 2,500 copies.
Also getting renewed attention is a November 1992 Sports Illustrated article about a series of killings of thoroughbred horses. The brutal murders were committed for insurance purposes by a hit man who learned his trade from Hunter’s late father, James Druck.
Druck, a Florida lawyer, in 1982 taught Tommy “The Sandman” Burns how to rig wires to electrocute Druck’s prize show jumper, Henry the Hawk, for a $150,000 insurance payout, the magazine reported.