Days before the release of a tell-all book, John Edwards now admits he is the father of his mistress Rielle Hunter's child. INSIDE EDITION has the details.
"I am Quinn's father." With those words, former democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is finally admitting he fathered this two-year-old girl named Quinn during an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.
"I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves," he says in a statement. "It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me."
Immediately after releasing this statement, we learned that Edwards left for Haiti to help with the relief effort.
INSIDE EDITION spoke about the Edwards bombshell with John Heilemann, the co-authors of Game Change, the best-seller on the 2008 presidential campaign. Diane McInerney asked, "Why would he engage in such an elaborate cover-up?"
"Well, he wanted to be the president of the United States. He was, I think, very depressed for a period of time, and I think it's taken some time for him to kind of come to terms with the whole truth with what he did, what he did to his family, and what he did to his own political career," said Heilemann.
Edwards' political advisor Harrison Hickman went on The Today Show to make the announcement on national TV.
"The senator wants to say first of all that he's the father of Quinn. Secondly, he wants people to know that he has provided for her and will continue to provide for her, as he should, both financially and emotionally," said Hickman.
Edwards reportedly purchased a $535,000 house for Rielle Hunter and his daughter in Charlotte, North Carolina. We've learned it has four bedrooms and three-and-a-half baths, a large kitchen, a comfortable living room with a fireplace, and it has a walled garden. The house is two-and-a-half hours away from Edwards' mansion in Chapel Hill, where Edwards' wife Elizabeth and their twins are now living.
We now know Edwards was lying in a famous interview on Nightline in 2008, where he was asked if Rielle Hunter's baby was his. Edwards responded with, "Not true."
The confession comes just days before the release of a tell-all book The Politician, written by his former campaign aide Andrew Young, who now admits he lied at behest of Edwards when he said he was baby Quinn's father.
"He also asked me and Fred Baron to arrange for a fake paternity test," said Young. Holding his wife Sherry's hand, Young spoke to ABC's 20/20 in an interview airing next Friday.
"He asked me and Sherry to steal a diaper from the baby so that he could secretly do a DNA test to find out if it was indeed his child," said Young.
Heilemann said, "It's a great example of how people under extreme pressure and with extreme amounts of self-confidence think they can get away with almost anything."
