The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Edwards: Already Caught in Blatant Lies as the Media is Exposed for all to see
John Edwards made a false assertion about the nature of his extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter during an interview with ABC on Friday night.
Asked by correspondent Bob Woodruff to detail the beginnings of his romantic relationship, he said that it started after Hunter was hired to direct a series of documentary films for his One America Committee.
WOODRUFF: When you hired Ms. Hunter, that was back in 2006, the committee hired in July 2006, paid her $114,000 to make films for you... Uh was the affair going on when you hired her?EDWARDS: No. No. And again, I always said this to you, I don't think I'm going to go through the details of this, I already did it with Elizabeth-- uh, she was hired to come in and produce films and that's the reason she was hired.
WOODRUFF: But this had nothing to do with the fact that you were having an affair with her?
EDWARDS: Same answer. Same answer -- no I did not.
WOODRUFF: So you hired her before it even started?
EDWARDS: That is correct.
A review of political action committee payments, contemporaneous reporting, and emails obtained by the Huffington Post reveal this statement to be false.
Edwards and Hunter initially met each other sometime during the winter of 2006 (either late December 2005 or early January) in a hotel restaurant in midtown Manhattan. It would be another seven months before Edwards would first pay her for the documentary work. As Woodruff rightfully noted, the initial check cut to Hunter's film company was written on July 5, 2006, for the cost of $12,500.
What happened in between that winter meeting and the start of filming? Emails sent by Hunter suggest that her romance with Edwards was in full bloom that spring. In early April, Hunter wrote about a trip she had taken to North Carolina to see the man whom she affectionately referred to as "my love lips."
A week later she wrote another email in which she described the mental anguish of "being in love with a (still somewhat dysfunctional) married man."
Indeed, the circumstances surrounding Hunter's professional life resoundingly suggest that Edwards hired her as a front to continue their relationship. For starters, she had virtually no film experience prior to being asked by the former Senator to make documentaries. Moreover, Hunter's film company, Midline Groove Productions, was started in the spring of 2006 - months after she and Edwards first met -- suggesting that it was created for the sole purpose of working with him.
As Colin Weil, a film consultant on the project told the Huffington Post back in October 2007: "Neither of them [Hunter and her business partner and friend Mimi Hockman] had done tons and tons of stuff before hand..."
In the context of admitting to an affair, it may seem innocent for Edwards to have misled ABC about the starting point. But the precise date is important. Over the course of nine months Edwards would spend more than $114,000 of the One America Committee's budget on Hunter's films. Whether he did that in an effort to have Hunter around or as a legitimate documentary project would likely make a difference to those who thought they were contributing to a poverty-eradication effort.
Meanwhile the Editor of the National Enquirer begs to differ with Edwards' story. This in particular jumped right out (emphasis mine):
Meanwhile, the editor of the Enquirer, which broke the story of the affair and Hunter's pregnancy, took issue with Edwards's statement distancing himself from photos purporting to be him holding Hunter's baby. Edwards admitted to ABC that he met secretly with Hunter at the Beverly Hilton to try to "keep this from becoming public."
Last week, the Enquirer published a blurry photo of a man who looks like Edwards holding a baby. The tabloid said the photo was taken at the hotel.
"I don't know if that picture is me," Edwards said. "It could well be. It looks like me. I don't know who that baby is. I have no idea what the picture is."
When pressed by Woodruff, Edwards continued: "I mean, do you know how many pictures have been taken of me holding children in the last three years? I mean, it happens all the time."
David Perel, the Enquirer's editor in chief, insisted the photo is authentic. "I think it's amazing, even as the man's coming clean, that he's continuing to lie," he said of Edwards. "Just as I've been saying for 10 months that he had an affair with Rielle Hunter, we know for a fact that is Rielle Hunter's baby and that is him holding the baby in the Beverly Hilton. He's not only hiding things from the public, he's hiding things from his wife."
This is getting seedier by the minute, and every pre-conceived notion I have ever had about John Edwards seems to be coming to ugly life.
And the MSM band played on... Roger Simon comments:
Even the Times of London has noticed the US media being completely out to lunch--on purpose:Meanwhile, the spectacle of the mainstream media suddenly doing wall-to-wall coverage of the subject they wouldn’t touch is hugely entertaining, especially the formerly silent CNN (Eason Jordan News Network) paying more attention to the scandal than nuclear war. (Even so, they got some facts wrong. Rielle Hunter is 44, not 42, and she moved from New York to LA, not vice versa as the news network said.) Of course the big winner here is the National Enquirer who have shown themselves to be far superior reporters to the drones of the MSM. Of course, that’s no surprise. They beat everybody during the OJ trial. [How quickly they forget.-ed. That’s because they want to.]
MEANWHILE, one of the few remaining reporters at the Los Angeles Times had this to say: Several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, had been pursuing the story prior to Friday. Oh, really? As I recall some nitwit editor over there was telling his bloggers not to report the story but to “Keep rockin’” (how sophisticated). No matter. There won’t be anybody left working at the LAT in a few years anyway. In fact, the absurd see-no-evil reaction to the Edwards Affair will be seen as a benchmark in know-nothing journalism by the MSM and one of the last nails in their coffin. Too bad most of their soon-to-be unemployed reporters are not good enough to get jobs at the National Enquirer. [What about PJM?-ed. No comment.]
According to the magazine, Edwards arrived at the Beverly Hilton on Monday at 9.45pm after attending a meeting on homelessness in Los Angeles and was dropped off at a side entrance. Two rooms were allegedly booked for Hunter in a friend’s name.
Edwards emerged hours later and was confronted by journalists from the Enquirer. His usual spokesmen and defenders have scurried for cover behind a wall of “no comment”, while the details of the story have gone unchallenged.
Even so, Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.
Mickey Kaus, a blogger for Slate magazine, leaked the memo. He noted: “This was a sensational scandal that the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again.”
The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.
Don't miss Ed Driscoll's column about the media's complicity either.
It's not even a question anymore. "In the tank" is not even sufficient to fully describe the media's complicity in covering this up. The American press has become a laughingstock.
