Examples: She would never make the first move. But after the street corner meet, she calls his room ten minutes later. He calls her back and invites her to his hotel room. She says it's not about sex and no way would she have sex with him, she was going there to sell him on her ability to help his campaign. What happens in the hotel room? She describes the physical attraction as if she were writing a Harlequin novel and then says "Fade to black."
She was in love with him four days later. They talked on the phone for four hours every night after that. (This is 12 weeks before Iowa and they talked on the phone for four hours every night?) How she describes their love:
[It's] bigger than you, bigger than us, bigger than everyone. We could not stop it. It was so big. And it's still big. It's astonishing.
On knowing he was married:
[I]nfidelity doesn't happen in healthy marriages. The break in the marriage happens before the infidelity. And that break happened, you know, two and a half decades before I got there. So the home was wrecked already. I was not the Home Wrecker.
On "Johnny's" lies. He might lie to the whole country and his wife but not to her.
To what does she attribute his poor judgment? "His fear of the wrath of Elizabeth."
As for him running for the Presidency, she thought he shouldn't. But thinks if he wanted to, he should have waited until April. (The Iowa caucuses were in January.) Why? Because that's what his astrological chart told her.
She says the Edwards' relationship had been "toxic" and "dysfunctional" for many years and she wasn't his first extra-marital affair. In the next paragraph, she says "Johnny really loves Elizabeth."
How ego-centric is she? She measures the time the Edwards' have been together by her own age. "[T]hey've been together since I was 13 years old."
She talks about how gracious Edwards' was when she told him she was pregnant (that same month he and Elizabeth renewed their marriage vows.) He never pressured her to have an abortion. Yet, in the next paragraph, she says he said "There's just nothing I can say to make you change your mind about this." and I said, "Nope." So he accepted it.
I just felt like Quinnie needed to come into the world and this wasn't our timing, this was divine timing and he needed to get on board.
The sexual affair ended in July, 2008 when the Enquirer broke the story. But their relationship kept evolving and she continued to fly around to see him. She denies it's because of his position.
If Johnny was working at a gas station, I would still be in love with him.
On her childbirth, which was an emergency C-section:
Johnny called me in recovery, and we spoke all night on the phone from the hospital. He went through the whole process with me.
On Andrew Young's book:
If his grand-jury testimony matches his book, I would suspect that they will be looking at him for many, many counts of perjury.
On the grand jury:
They spent a lot of time asking me detailed questions about Andrew Young, and about my relationship with Johnny. They asked a lot of questions about the sex tape.
[Who's the "they"? The prosecutor or the grand jurors? She doesn't say and the interviewer doesn't follow up. At a grand jury session, the prosecutor asks questions and when done, asks the jurors if they have any questions. The investigation is into campaign finance law violations, not his sex life.]
As for whether she thinks Edwards will be indicted. The answer is no. His only "crime" was in not firing Andrew Young ten years earlier.
Despite the Nirvanna-ish way she describes her and Johnny's relationship, apparently it wasn't always that way.
Johnny was screaming at me about the National Enquirer finding me and photographing me. He was very angry. And Johnny doesn't scream. He's not a screamer. But he was screaming at me that day, and Andrew suggested, right then and there, "Hey, tell him that I'll claim I'm the father."
Why did she go along with the plan to have Andrew Young say he was the father? She thought it was best for her daughter.
On the sex tape: She won't disclose the details, but says:
I think Andrew will grow and evolve, even if it's behind bars.
Her final comment:
He in fact did say to me the first night, "Falling in love with you could really f*ck up my plans for becoming President." And of course I said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."
As for the sex tape, that Andrew Young has denied showingto many people, apparently multiple sources have described it to the Daily Beast. Here's what allegedly is on it, according to Diane Dimond. Yes, Monica's blue dress pales by comparison. According to a "person with a medical background" who has seen it:
Hunter appears four or five months pregnant based on the swollen state of her belly and nipples. This would would place the tape's filming somewhere around September or October of 2007, smack in the middle of Edwards campaign for the presidency.
Young apparently talked to the Daily Beast:
Young told The Daily Beast that Edwards begged him, "let Elizabeth die with dignity… don't let Elizabeth die knowing the truth." The senator promised to correct the public record after Elizabeth's funeral.
Dimond ends her sex tape article with the same conclusion the Enquirer recently made:
Sources with knowledge of that grand jury investigation say the case is now complete and an indictment is imminent.
I'm still not buying it. It's not against the law to make a sex tape, and the grand jury is investigating financial crimes, not adultery. But, if he is indicted, all I can say is G*dspeed, John Edwards. I doubt Rielle and Quinnie will be visiting every weekend or there for you on the day you get out. And a few years in a federal prison camp might be less of a sentence than a lifetime with Rielle and her astrology predictions.
Our prior coverage of John and Rielle is assembled here.
