According to the ABC TV on-line report about the interview, the 55-year-old former North Carolina senator said he did have an affair with Rielle Hunter, 42, who has been hired to make documentaries about his campaign, but not out of love.
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Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. He talks at a campaign stop at the Gignilliat Community Center in Seneca, South Carolina, January 24, 2008.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) |
The confession was a sharp turn from his persistent denial of having romantic relation with Hunter.
However, Edwards insisted that he is not the father of Hunter's girl, Frances Quinn, as many tabloids reported, because he finished the affair too soon to make her carry a baby who was born on Feb. 27 this year.
The ABC report said that a former campaign staffer of Edward had claimed he was the father of Hunter's baby.
Citing Hunter's friends, the ABC report said that the two met each other in New York in 2006, and then Hunter was paid over 100,000 U.S. dollars by Edwards' political action committee to produce campaign documentaries for his website.
The two kept their extramarital relation when they traveled together to campaign nationwide and even in Africa, and the affair was aware by Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, later in the year, it said.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2004 launched the second bid for the White House this year but only ended at the third place in the primary season.
After he quit the race, Edwards was still considered as a top candidate for the vice president.
Elizabeth has been suffering from an incurable form of cancer.
