What Really Happened (19 page)

My lawyer, Rob, had to have security escort members of the press out of his waiting room and building in New York City. Mimi and her family were hounded and seriously harassed.

I called Jonathan Darman and asked him what would happen if I responded to ABC, as opposed to issuing a statement online, which is what Prince wanted me to do. He told me that if I responded to mainstream, everyone would report on it, but if I kept it online, chances are it wouldn’t jump. But if I were to give it to anyone, I should give it to him. I don’t remember if he pitched himself first but I remember feeling angry. I was asking him as my friend to tell me how the media works, and he pitched himself. (He showed me how the media works, all right.) We hung up and soon after, he sent me an email. It’s one of the few I saved. It said:

Hey, Left you a message a little while ago. I wanted to talk with you because our last conversation left me with a weird feeling. I know this is the last thing you’re thinking about right now but I think for the sake of our friendship, which has always been based on mutual trust and demands openness and honesty to survive, we need to set up some ground rules for going forward. From here on out, as long as this stupid story is alive, I can’t talk to you “between you and me.” We can talk off the record from now until the end of time if you wish and I can give you MY WORD—as a friend, as a journalist, as a human being—that nothing you tell me will ever appear in Newsweek unless you want it to. But the fact remains that I cover John Edwards and I have to be able to talk openly with my bosses about a story that involves him. Even if I’m not involved in our coverage, I can’t conceal information from them, nor do I want to, especially when you’re telling me this whole story is bullshit. I can tell my bosses that anything you say to me is off the record and it can’t show up in our coverage, if we ever choose to pursue this story. But I am required to be open with them about this, and everything else. It’s not that I don’t value our friendship. This is the way I’d have to operate with a story concerning anyone, even a member of my own family. In fact, it IS the way I operate with a member of my own family, my dad. SO considering all that, I understand if you choose not to talk to me in the same way you would another friend. And I understand if you choose not to talk to me at all. That would suck, of course, because I don’t want to lose touch with you, now or ever. And I also think it is in your interest to keep talking to me, because I think this story is total bullshit, while every other journalist in the world starts with the assumption that it’s true. Even if I can’t be completely helpful to you as a friend right now, I can be helpful to you as a journalist, much more helpful than anyone else around. Anyway, I hope you’ve read this far without getting really pissed off or feeling dirty. Please understand that I’m saying all of this not to put distance between us, simply to make sure we preserve total honesty. You’ve got a million other things to think about right now, you don’t need weirdness from me. So I hope I hear from you soon. I’ll be thinking about you, as always. XO J

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 31
^st
, 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.”

—
J
OHN
W
AYNE

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 12
^th
.

Yes, December 12
^th
, 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.