Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards says a tabloid story that he had an extramarital affair is untrue.
''The story is false. It's completely untrue, ridiculous,'' Edwards told reporters Thursday after he was asked about the National Enquirer report.
The supermarket newspaper reported that the former North Carolina senator had an affair with a woman who worked on his campaign. It did not identify the woman, nor did it name the source of the information for its report.
Dan McLaughlin openly says what a lot of folks are thinking:
the National Enquirer is retailing a story of Edwards supposedly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife with a filmmaker who was paid a lot of money by the Edwards campaign for work that never saw the light of day. The Huffington Post is likewise pushing the filmmaker angle as a "questions are being raised" story without explicitly mentioning the alleged affair. As with the Kerry story in 2004, the tale is plausible enough that it is of course possible that it is true, but the nature of the disclosures so far - and their sourcing - are more suggestive of a political hit piece that can't be verified but also can't be denied by Edwards without giving the whole ball of mud some credence.
So if it's a politically motivated hit job, and the people who logically stand to benefit are Hillary and Obama, that's where the media should be looking for the culprits...
Interestingly enough, the Enquirer's lawyer, David Kendell, just happens to be connected to, you guessed it, Hillary Clinton:
he began representing President and Mrs. Clinton in November 1993, in what was ostensibly a small savings and loan matter involving Whitewater Development Company, Inc. He went on to represent the Clintons in a variety of matters, including Independent Counsel, Senate, House of Representatives, FDIC, RTC, and bar counsel investigations, civil litigation, and the 1998-99 impeachment proceedings...His clients have included The Washington Post, Newsweek, National Enquirer (where he supervised prepublication copy review for over a decade and a half)...
I'd still like to know how this woman came to be paid $114,000 by Edwards' PAC to make web videos that were never used, but I realize that's a less sexy story, no pun intended.
