The cover-up begins to unravel...
In 2007, reporters first started to question the relationship between Edwards and Hunter, who produced video "webisodes" for his campaign. The New York Post had published a gossip item about a presidential candidate with a New York City girlfriend and another reporter had written about the abrupt disappearance of the videos from the Edwards campaign web site.
The National Enquirer in December discovered a then-pregnant Hunter, who had moved from New York to a few miles from the Edwards presidential campaign headquarters in North Carolina. She was driving a car registered to Andrew Young, a top Edwards aide, and living in a gated community a few streets away from where Young lived with his wife and three children, the paper reported.
Shortly afterward Young claimed, through his attorney, that he was the father of Hunters child, and that he had left the Edwards campaign and sought privacy as he worked to heal his family. The Enquirer and others have reported a number of facts that, while not proving paternity, indicate a complicated effort to finance and hide the pregnant woman.
Reports stated Hunter moved within blocks of Andrew Young, his wife, Cheri, and their children, even sharing meals. When questioned by the Enquirer, Hunter first denied her identity and then refused all questions. Andrew Young was also coy about his identity and blocked the Enquirer reporter's car in his driveway, while Cheri Young called 911. No charges were filed against the reporter, Alan Butterfield.
Within months, Hunter and the Youngs had moved to the West Coast. Enquirer reporters say that they all moved into the same house in a gated section of Montecito, an exclusive section of Santa Barbara, Calif., and one of the nation's most expensive communities.
FOXNews.com confirmed that public records connect Cheri Young to the rented home worth approximately $4 million. Since leaving New York, no public records exist of Hunter living anywhere, however, when her daughter, Frances Hunter, was born, she signed the birth certificate in Santa Barbara on Feb. 27.
The space for "father" was left blank.
Financing Two Families
As for reports that Edwards is paying "hush money" to Hunter and Young, Edwards has stated that he never paid money to anyone to keep them quiet about the affair.
A source close to Edwards former campaign confirmed to FOX News reports thatFred Baron, a Dallas lawyer and former campaign finance chairman for Edwards, secretly provided financial help to both Hunter and Young. He apparently paid with his own funds and has told other news outlets Edwards did not know about the arrangement.
Edwards said he learned of the payments through reporters and that he "had no knowledge" of the payouts outside of that.
The payments reportedly have been towering $15,000 a month to Hunter, according to reports, plus other payments to Young.
The Youngs previously lived in an upscale, gated North Carolina community just south of Chapel Hill, renting a property then owned by a top Edwards donor, former NBA star Eric Montross. He told FOXNews.com the Youngs paid market rates and the arrangement was "totally free of any ties to the political campaign."
Multiple calls left to the owner of the California house have not been returned.
