I read this and thought, “I will address this tomorrow. Right now I need to write a statement.” It was difficult for me but I did the best I could. The National Enquirer had inadvertently helped because (thanks to Pigeon’s assumptions) it had gotten so many facts wrong.
Rob sent my statement to MyDD, a political blog. It read:
The innuendoes and lies that have appeared on the internet and in the National Enquirer concerning John Edwards are not true, completely unfounded and ridiculous.
My video production company was hired by the Edwards camp on a 6 month contract, which we completed December 31st, 2006.
When working for the Edwards camp, my conduct as well as the conduct of my entire team was completely professional.
This concocted story is just dirty politics and I want no part of it.
I said my piece. It was a total nondenial, and boy, did I want no part of what was going on. From what I could see online, it looked like it seemed to work. Mostly everyone accepted what I said.
I responded the next day to Darman:
thanks for your email. what i meant by “between you and me” was in fact “OFF THE RECORD” the mistake in language was my mistake, given the swirl i was in. so let me be perfectly clear, EVERYTHING that i have EVER said to you was said OFF THE RECORD. with the exception of course when you did that piece on the webisodes in nov 06. thanks. i’ll be in touch. until then, lots of love to you, rielle
He responded:
Cool. FYI, Charlotte Observer called me today looking for a number for you, New York mag and NY Post yesterday. Obv didn’t return any of the calls. And from what I’m hearing, Sam Stein says he was personally given the original assignment by Arianna. Mickey Kaus, her buddy, had a weird item today on “knowing how this whole thing got started.” You holding up?
I did not respond.
I really loved Darman; in fact, I still do. I valued our friendship greatly but there was no way I could talk to him. As any mother knows, my baby was my number-one priority, and I was going to do everything in my power to protect her safety, privacy, and peace. Everything else paled in comparison.
I was done. No more media for me.
Or so I thought.
FIFTEEN
“She Even Denied
She Was Rielle Hunter!”
“Life is hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.”
—John Wayne
I moved into my rental house with no furniture. I slept on an air mattress provided by the Youngs for the few nights before the beds were delivered. Andrew had taken me to a mattress store to buy a queen, full, and two twin mattresses for the small three-bedroom house.
Mimi packed up all my stuff in New Jersey, including my hatbox and all its contents, and drove it all down to me. She helped me unpack it all and stayed for the weekend.
Mimi later brought the boys back down for Thanksgiving, and we had a great time together. In early November I got an email from Jonathan Darman telling me he’d had a dream about me and he woke up thinking about how much he missed me. He hoped I was well and asked me to call when I could. I thought of him lovingly while I read the email but I did not respond.
In the kitchen of my North Carolina rental house, November 2007.
I saw Johnny twice while I was living in my rental house. Once, Andrew met him at the gate, and once I did. I later wondered many times whether Andrew somehow taped us without our knowledge on these occasions, but I just didn’t know.
Frequently I would go to the Youngs’ rental house to walk on the treadmill. I never took anything with me other than a bottle of water and my cell phone. I would drive over, walk on the treadmill (usually during The Chris Matthews Show), and then drive home.
After exercising one day, I was standing in the kitchen talking to Cheri about Andrew and how he had such an easy time lying. He could just lie about anything and everything at the drop of a hat. Cheri claimed that she had a difficult time lying, that she couldn’t even lie when she was returning something to a store about why she was returning it. Either she was lying then or she learned well by studying at the feet of a master—her husband.
Cheri was always very generous about sharing food. They had a big pantry that was always filled with food, and she would constantly tell me to help myself. I did think the way they shopped was odd. They shopped as though they were made of money, not like a family living on a political staffer’s salary. I shrugged it off and figured that having three kids, you’d always want to be fully supplied. I also thought it was odd that Andrew purchased a TV for my rental house. It was too large for the armoire I had ordered from a Pottery Barn catalogue. I thought Andrew would return the super-large TV, but it instead ended up in his house. They weren’t using it but it was out of the box, saved. I shrugged that off and decided he just hadn’t gotten around to returning it yet.
I never extended the same liberties with my rental house. I value my privacy and have many boundaries about my personal space. The only time they came to my house was to drop off groceries or to help me assemble a piece of furniture. They never came to my house just to hang out. Cheri and I were friendly to each other. We tried hard to bond. We even went out to dinner once, but it was just not easy between us. There was no easy flow of communication. Andrew, on the other hand, was my friend. I loved him. He was easygoing, fun to talk to and joke with, and handy around the house. He would often go to the grocery store for me, put up curtains, or assemble furniture. He was always available and always offering to help.
My house was sparse, but I was trying to make it homey. I was nesting, after all. During the two months in my rental house in North Carolina, even though we saw each other only twice, Johnny and I spoke on the phone constantly.
Once, Johnny told me he was walking into the NPR debate, and Hillary Clinton stopped him and asked if she could talk to him for a minute privately. This was his first real interaction with her, before he began to get to know her and before he began to see her as a real human being and not just an opponent. When he was relating this story to me, I could feel his defensiveness, his posturing at her request. He retorted with, “Anything you need to say to me you can say right here.”
She replied, “I didn’t have anything to do with the National Enquirer.”
He said, “What do you mean?”
“The Rielle Hunter story. I had nothing to do with it.” Looking him straight in the eye, she went on, “Given my life, it is not something I would do.”
He said, “Yeah, you might not have, but that doesn’t mean your campaign didn’t.”
After he told me this story, I was silent. I paused for a long time. It had just hit me for the first time that two different realities had collided. All I could think was: Hillary Clinton knows my name?
While I was busy nesting and making a baby—going for walks, doing yoga, napping, etc.—Andrew told me he was going to ask David Kirby, Johnny’s best friend, for money for reimbursement. He told me that he told David that he needed to borrow money for his new house (to pay his builder or something), and David was hesitant. So Andrew told me that he asked Johnny to call David and tell David that he was good for it, and that Johnny would pay him back if Andrew couldn’t. Johnny did.
From what I gathered, I was never mentioned as the reason for the reimbursement; it was a loan for Andrew. But there was a problem: Andrew was annoyed that David couldn’t lend him more than twenty-five thousand dollars at the time. Andrew wanted more so Andrew said no. Of course, now I am thinking, why would Johnny tell David, his best friend, that he was good for the money if he knew Andrew had already received three hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Bunny Mellon?
What I find even more astonishing is that, after saying no to David, Andrew then told me he was going to ask Bunny for money and he told me that she gave him two checks, each for twenty-five thousand dollars.
He said that he never deposited those two checks because of what happened on December 12th.
Yes, December 12th, 2007, was a big day.
That was the day that the National Enquirer showed up in Cary, North Carolina, and took a picture of me pregnant in the Whole Foods Market parking lot. This is, hands down, the worst picture of me ever taken in my life.
So there I was on December 12th in North Carolina, living a happy, secluded, making-a-baby, don’t-even-go-to-the-grocery-store life (unless it’s a store that’s far, far away from Elizabeth’s neck of the woods), and this was my big “I am in so much pain I can barely move” outing of the week, which was to go to the OB/GYN office in Cary, and to the Whole Foods store, which was across the street. It was my first visit to a grocery store in a very long time (Andrew or Cheri would usually shop for me to prevent the possibility of me running into anyone), and, despite my pain, I was very excited about that.
At that point in my pregnancy, I was in a lot of pain. I could barely walk. I was sitting on a “special” pillow in the car, which also didn’t help. During the drive to the doctor, I was talking to Andrew on the phone. He claimed he had just returned from Bunny’s house in Virginia, and that she had given him twenty-five thousand dollars, which he claimed he never deposited. (According to public records, he actually received $175,000 on that day!) I remember this call vividly, given that later, in my head, I went over and over my drive to the doctor’s office, and I am positive I was not being followed. These were long country roads; I would have seen someone following me.
I got to the office, parked right by the door, and went in. On my way out, I thought about putting my sunglasses on but decided against it given I was just popping across the street to Whole Foods. It hurt too much to try and maneuver my bag to the other shoulder to dig for the sunglasses. Pregnancy was not kind to my forty-three-year-old body!
When I walked outside and got in my car, I noticed a man standing about two cars away on the sidewalk. I started the car and drove across the street. I went into Whole Foods and shopped slowly. It was evening by the time I was done—no need for those sunglasses while I pushed the filled cart slowly to the car. I saw that same guy who had been standing outside the doctor’s office walking toward me. I opened the trunk of the car and began putting the bags there.
He continued walked quickly toward me. “Rielle, I am from the National Enquirer. Are you pregnant with John Edwards’s baby?”
To my right, a photographer appeared out of nowhere and began snapping pictures, circling all around me.
“Are you six months pregnant with John Edwards’s baby?”
“Please leave me alone. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I kept loading my groceries. I just kept repeating the same thing over and over to every question he asked: “Please leave me alone. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave me alone.”
“Are you Rielle Hunter?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. Please leave me alone.”
He kept firing questions while the photographer snapped photos. It was an ambush.
I remember someone coming up to me, a fellow shopper, and asking if I were all right and asking if I needed any help. Team National Enquirer buggered off, and this shopper said to me, “What were they doing? I have never seen anything like that.” I said, “Yes, thank you. I’m all right,” and got in my car. I called Andrew.
As I drove away, I saw the so-called reporter in his car and the photographer in another car, a blue SUV.
I told Andrew that the National Enquirer had just photographed me in the parking lot of Whole Foods. He laughed as though he thought I was kidding. “I’m not kidding. This isn’t a joke. I was just photographed by the National Enquirer.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes!”
I related as much as I could. “Shit,” Andrew said. “Okay, let me find him. Are they following you?”
“No, they’re not. I saw their cars. They are not.”
“Okay, I’ll call you back.”
Johnny was on the campaign bus preparing for an event when John Davis told him that Andrew was on the line. Johnny told me he said, “I’ll call him later,” and John replied, “It’s urgent.”
Johnny went to the back of the bus and got on the phone. “What’s up?”
“We have a problem, boss. They photographed her,” Andrew said.
“Who?”
“The National Enquirer. They photographed her in a parking lot. It’s really weird, boss. She acts like nothing happened.”
When Johnny told me about this exchange later, we both wondered why Andrew said that. If you know me, and Johnny does, it’s an odd thing for Andrew to say, so it stuck in Johnny’s head when Andrew said it. Of course, now we understand that Andrew had an entirely different agenda. Was he trying to deflect from himself?
Was he insinuating that I had tipped off the National Enquirer? Believe me, I have been accused of that countless times. In fact, in 2009 I signed a statement under oath saying that I had never directly or indirectly contacted the National Enquirer or any other tabloid, or received money from them, directly or indirectly. Shockingly enough, I am actually not a big fan of the National Enquirer. Aside from stalking me via satellite, completely invading my privacy, printing the worst possible pictures of me, and continually making up stories, the publication’s staff has continually and relentlessly attempted to contact me and anyone who knows me. The Enquirer’s audacity never ceases to amaze me. In fact, recently the Enquirer contacted one of my lawyers to offer me yet another interview for compensation. The only compensation I would accept from the Enquirer would be if it agreed to shut down forever!
Andrew called back with Johnny on the line. I related to him everything about the incident. He said that he had to go do an event but that he would call back.
I drove back to my house and, instead of turning into the driveway, drove by it. Sure enough, within minutes I saw the blue SUV inside the gated community, headed toward my rental house. I started following him. He knew I was following so he sped up and lost me. I drove to Andrew’s rental house, put my car in the garage, and went inside. I called my lawyer, Rob Gordon, and told him, “So I was just photographed by the National Enquirer. And there’s a bit of a problem. In the photos, it will look like I’m seven months pregnant.”
“But you’re not,” Rob said.
“I am.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But John Edwards isn’t the father.”
“He is.”
It may have appeared as if I was running around blabbing that John Edwards was the father of my baby. Simply not true—I hadn’t even told my lawyer!
Johnny called from the back of the bus. He was livid. He was screaming at me, one of the two times he had ever screamed at me during our entire relationship. Andrew was sitting next to me (we were in his home office), and he said, “Just tell him I’ll say the baby is mine.”
I looked at Andrew as if to say, “Don’t be ridiculous.” I didn’t repeat what Andrew had said to Johnny. I simply discarded it.
It was very dark outside by the time Johnny and I hung up. Andrew drove me back to my rental house in their white van. We went from their garage to my garage, and once inside, I pulled all the curtains in my house.
By the time Andrew had gotten back to their house, Cheri had noticed the National Enquirer guys peering in her window. She called 9-1-1. Apparently, the Enquirer had rented a room for golfing, inside the Governors Club which gave the Enquirer staff access to the gated community and entitled them to be there. I don’t know what exactly happened with the Enquirer over at Andrew’s house, but I was told there was screaming and yelling between them and the Youngs, and the cops came. The Enquirer was booted out of the gated community.
&nbs
p; Johnny and I spoke on the phone off and on that entire night. He did not sleep a wink. He wanted out of the race but his conflict was that he didn’t want to be forced out by a tabloid. I totally understood not wanting to be bullied.
What Really Happened Page 14