Rielle Hunter

The ex-mistress of former presidential candidate John Edwards says she will not participate in DNA testing to establish the paternity of her daughter.

Rielle Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, says his client is a common citizen who is not running for public office and wishes to maintain her privacy.

"Rielle is therefore making no statement on the matter now or in the future," Gordon said. "Furthermore, Rielle Hunter will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter's privacy now or in the future."

Friday, John Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter in 2006 but denied he was the father of Hunter's 5-month-old daughter.

John Edwards dodges a bullet as Rielle Hunter nixes DNA testing.

Edwards offered to take a paternity test to prove it, but Hunter's statement means the issue of who the father is remains an open question.

A former Edwards campaign staff member, Andrew Young, professes to be the father, but the baby's California birth certificate lists no dad.

After months of speculation, John Edwards, the Democratic party's vice presidential nominee in 2004 and a contender again in 2008, confessed to ABC News on Friday that he lied repeatedly about his affair with Rielle Hunter.

Elizabeth Edwards says husband John Edwards "made a terrible mistake" by having an affair with Rielle Hunter, but coping with the revelation was "oddly made somewhat easier" by her battle with an incurable form of cancer.

"None of these (problems) has been easy," she wrote on the political blog Daily Kos. "But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him."

Elizabeth, 59, says her husband, 55, told her about the affair with Rielle Hunter two years ago – months before her breast cancer returned.

"John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March 2007."

She says she wanted to keep it a "private matter" because it would be even more difficult to deal with on a public stage.

But, Elizabeth Edwards adds, "Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private."

Many people may consider the behavior of John Edwards to be disgraceful, following the Senator's admission that he had an affair with Rielle Hunter in 2006.

But the filmmaker - who met Edwards while doing a documentary on him - referred to the former candidate as an "inspiration" in an interview with Extra.

"He was very real and authentic," Hunter said in the 2007 interview, which you can watch below. "He was an inspiration to me. One of the great things about John Edwards is that he's so open and willing to try new things and do things in new ways."

Sadly, for fans of monogamy, that Rielle Hunter quote can now be taken in a very different, sexual context.

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has admitted having an affair with Rielle Hunter even as his wife battled cancer.

He denies fathering her daughter, as has been widely speculated.

John Edwards told ABC News that he "lied repeatedly" about the affair with "a 42-year-old woman" but said that he didn't love her.

He has not taken a paternity test but "knows he isn't the father" of her love child because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

Rielle Hunter's daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born February 27, 2008. The birth certificate filed in California lists no father's name.

A former Edwards staffer, Andrew Young, claims he is the father (on a side note, Young, like Edwards, is married and has three children).

The 2004 Democratic nominee for Vice President, Edwards was a top contender for the party's presidential nomination this year, pursuing his party's nod even after announcing that his wife, Elizabeth, had a deadly form of cancer.

In 2006, John Edwards' political action committee paid $114,000 in a four-month span to a newly formed firm run by Rielle Hunter.

This is hysterical.

The National Enquirer has released a photograph that it claims is the first and only picture of former U.S. Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards and his love child with mistress Rielle Hunter.

The problem? It's a tad grainy.

The stunning “spy photo” (their quotes, not ours) shows John Edwards holding what we are led to believe is his child with Rielle Hunter, daughter Frances Quinn Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles ast month.

That's where the Enquirer recently caught him visiting the baby’s mother, forcing the politician to take refuge in a supply closet. Here's the "damning" picture ...

According to the Enquirer, John Edwards is holding his love child while standing in front of a distinctive striped curtain.

The same window covering hangs in each one of the hotel’s rooms – and is clearly visible in photos of guest rooms on the hotel’s website.

“These photos are damning proof,” said a source. “He’s been caught lying about his affair with Rielle Hunter and their love child for many months – and now the proof against him is piling up. His elaborate coverup is unraveling.”

Okay, look. We've been saying for weeks that the mainstream media should cover this celebrity scandal. We would not be that surprised if an affair and/or John Edwards-Rielle Hunter love child actually existed.

But come on, Enquirer. Either you have a photo or you don't. What appears above is basically a John Edwards avatar cradling a cyber-baby.

... [blank].

The birth certificate of a baby girl born to Rielle Hunter on February 27 - a baby the National Enquirer claims is the love child former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina - doesn't identify the child's father.

The document, obtained through a routine records request, shows that Frances Quinn Hunter was born to Rielle Hunter, a former Edwards campaign staffer.

But the space for the name of the father is blank, although the child was born more than two months after Hunter identified Andrew Young, Edwards' campaign finance director, as the father of her then-unborn child.

Young claimed paternity in a statement from his lawyer in what some celeb news sources hypothesized was an effort to cover for John Edwards.

The birth certificate shows the girl was born at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif., to Rielle Jaya James Druck, also known as Rielle Hunter.

With unmarried couples, California law requires parents sign a "Declaration of Paternity" form before the father's name is put on the birth certificate.

If the father isn't present, his name may be added to the birth certificate later, after proper forms are obtained from the Department of Vital Records.

Refusing to call it quits despite being dissed by mainstream media, The National Enquirer has released more scandalous John Edwards allegations!

The celebrity gossip tabloid reports that Edwards' alleged mistress / baby-mama, Rielle Hunter (also known as Lisa Druck), will not say a word about their affair and love child because she's being paid to zip it - $15,000 a month!

The money is reportedly being funneled to Hunter by a colleague of John Edwards, the former U.S. Senator from North Carolina, 2004 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee (running with John Kerry) and 2008 presidential candidate.

This same man is also supposedly paying off John Edwards’ friend and aide, Andrew Young, who tried to take the heat off the ex-Senator when the story broke in December by claiming he fathered the baby of Rielle Hunter.

A campaign insider told the National Enquirer the following: “A super-rich pal – who was closely involved with the campaign finances – is helping John. It’s likely this man doesn’t know all the dirty details of John’s extramarital affair, but is acting out of loyalty and is not asking a lot of questions – just writing the checks.”

John Edwards has spoken only briefly (and awkwardly) in sort of denying the story.

One would think that the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter scandal would trigger an all-out war within the mainstream media as various outlets run with it while others claim "journalistic integrity" and refuse to go down that road.

Instead, it's confined entirely to the Internet. What gives?

Given that John has effectively been busted twice by the National Enquirer, you'd think some media sources would at least pull the old standby, “We’re not claiming this happened, but some are saying...” Nothing, though.

Here's his awkward denial of it (30 seconds in) when a reporter asked Friday if the supposed Rielle Hunter love child would doom his V.P. hopes ...

Why does Edwards get the benefit of the doubt even after being caught in a hotel with Rielle Hunter and the baby? We have some theories:

• Liberal bias (default)
• Too busy worshiping Barack Obama to care (also default)
• A belief that once a presidential candidate drops out of the race, he or she is no longer subject to such scrutiny (despite the fact that the Rielle Hunter scandal was first broken while he was running for president)   
• Disdain for celebrity news sources like the Enquirer, despite all the other solid stories (Isaiah Washington's gay tirade, for one) they’ve broken that were eventually picked up by “legitimate” media?

Six months ago, we reported a juicy piece of celebrity gossip: That John Edwards, then a top-tier candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, had gotten a mistress named Rielle Hunter pregnant with his love child.

Soon after, it was dismissed as just that: gossip.

But Tuesday, at 2:40 a.m. Pacific Time, John Edwards was supposedly caught visiting Rielle Hunter and the secret love child in a Los Angeles hotel!

Not only does the National Enquirer say this took place, but the magazine claims it was there in person - and that it had been investigating John Edwards for the past six months after breaking the alleged affair initially.

The married ex-senator from North Carolina - whose wife Elizabeth continues to battle cancer - met with his divorcée mistress at the Beverly Hilton on Monday night, July 21 - and didn't leave until early the next morning.

According to the Enquirer, Rielle Hunter had driven down to L.A. from Santa Barbara, Calif., with a male friend for the rendezvous with John Edwards.

The former senator attended a press event Monday afternoon with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the topic of how to combat homelessness.

But a months-long investigation had yielded information that Rielle Hunter and John Edwards had arranged to secretly meet afterward to spend time with both his mistress - and the possible love child he has denied is his.

Here's how it supposedly went down...

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is lagging behind both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the polls. A potential love child scandal, as claimed by the National Enquirer after a "blockbuster investigation," certainly can't help.

The Enquirer has learned that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to John Edwards in a cheating scandal earlier this year, is more than six months pregnant â€" and she's told a close confidant that Edwards is the father of her baby!

Man. Who would've guessed that John Edwards and Jamie Lynn Spears' baby daddy, Casey Aldridge, had so much in common!? The National Enquirer even (falsely) reported a story involving a pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears back in July!

This political bombshell comes just weeks after Edwards emphatically denied having an affair with Rielle Hunter, who once worked on his campaign and told a friend she was romantically involved with the married ex-senator.

Well, the Enquirer says it is now confirming that Rielle is expecting, and that she's gone into hiding with the help of a former aide to John Edwards.

Rumors of an affair between Rielle Hunter and presidential hopeful John Edwards have persisted for months - and now there's an unexpected pregnancy twist.

The visibly pregnant blonde relocated from New York to Chapel Hill, N.C., where she's living in an upscale gated community near political operative Andrew Young, who's been extremely close to John Edwards for years.

And, in a bizarre twist, Andrew Young â€" a 41-year-old married man with young children himself â€" now claims HE is the father of Rielle's baby!

Others are skeptical, wondering if Young's paternity claim over Rielle Hunter's alleged offspring is a cover-up to protect John Edwards.