Tracking the Edwards Lies
John Edwards is a lawyer, so he tends to be careful about, you know, "lies." Like Bill Clinton before him, he tries to make them technically true and hope no one notices the outs he leaves himself. Today, the Enquirer claims (reports?? who knows with them) that Edwards "restarted" his affair with Rielle Hunter after he says he confessed to his wife and ended it. Also he "was sexually involved with Rielle when she became pregnant." (Speaking of pregnant-click to see the totally helpful contextual ad that pops up when you hover over that word at the Enquirer's site.) Ha ha also: "Experts are now calling for a federal investigation into Edwards' use of campaign funds." Experts in what? So John's lying about everything, right? Kind of... "The story is false, it's completely untrue, it's ridiculous," Edwards said when confronted with the first Enquirer story on his affair. Then, when he admitted the affair this month, he explained that that wasn't actually a lie: "When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99 percent honest is no longer enough." As others have noted, that math does not make very much sense. But Edwards is helped in his crusade to be 99% honest by the fact that flaky Rielle Hunter seems unreliable and prone to flights of fancy. So her affair with Edwards actually happened, yes, but how many of the details as she recounts them are accurate? How many of the stories she told her friends are based on reality and not fantasy? Sources close to Hunter can only reveal what Hunter told them, which is hardly concrete proof of anything. So is this story true? Did the affair start up again? In Edwards' confession, he said: "But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then." That misconduct. Leaving himself room to not admit to a further, separate misconduct that happened later. See what he did there?