These last two lines in the message, copies of which went to eight additional staffers, referred to Rielle Hunter’s phone number. For months, Mrs. Edwards had been demanding that Jonathan Prince hand it over, and he had dodged these requests. Eventually, he would be able to tell her that he didn’t have the number, because, in fact, we changed it many times. I thought he was wise to avoid being triangulated between the senator and his wife. Joe Trippi responded this way:
It has been an honor working for you and John. I have done the best I could under the circumstances. But I will step aside. Your email makes it clear to me that I have outlived any usefulness to the campaign. I am sorry for that.
Mrs. Edwards’s outburst had revealed how her dark side was coming to the fore to obscure all of her better qualities. The better parts of John Edwards were as real as his faults, and these gifts-his intelligence, compassion, energy, and courage-had led me, over the years, to invest my future in his success. In that same time I had learned that many, if not most, powerful men operate with the same sense of entitlement shown by the senator.
By the year 2008, Internet outlets had buzzed with rumored affairs involving Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and both John and Cindy McCain, so I thought that all of the viable candidates for president faced potential scandal. Republican rule had been such a disaster for America that I was almost desperate to see a Democrat win, and I believed Edwards had the best shot, especially since he might win a few states in the South that I believed were beyond the reach of the others. This concern, combined with our long-standing relationship, explains why, even after I knew so much about his shortcomings, helping him remained a reflex.
I thought we would get a break from Edwards duty at Thanksgiving. Cheri and I took the kids to her parents’ house in Illinois while Rielle entertained her old roommate from New Jersey, Mimi, and Mimi’s two adolescent sons. Most of the communication I got from her over the holiday was innocuous. Comically, after the turkey feast she sent me a text message that said she was watching the movie Knocked Up and “it’s great.” Two days later, she wrote that her holiday was going well except for the fact that she was “not hearing from him.” I was off duty until Sunday, when I would have to go home to North Carolina to get the Batphone and deposit it in the campaign jet before the senator left on a speaking tour.
Leaving Illinois ahead of my family, I flew into Raleigh and drove to the Montross house. Thinking I was late, I grabbed the phone and raced to the fixed base of operations (FBO) that served the jet Fred Baron had bought to lease to the campaign. The only help I had for this mission would come from a personal assistant (who was paid by the campaign) at the Edwards mansion who was still my friend. She called my cell phone to warn me when they left the house for the airport.
I was relaxed when I reached the FBO because I now thought I had plenty of time. I saw Fred’s plane, which had the tail number N53LB, and I talked my way past the maintenance crew and out to the stairway. Once on board, I could see the plane was dirty and hadn’t been stocked with food, drinks, or periodicals. Realizing something was wrong, I went back down the steps and noticed that one of the two engines had been removed for repair. This jet wasn’t going anywhere.
A quick call to the personal assistaƒersnt brought me the name of a different FBO where Edwards was to board a replacement jet. I talked one of the ground crew into driving me over there in a golf cart. When we reached the plane, I persuaded the pilots to let me board. Here all the skills of bluff and bluster that I had acquired as a political operator came in handy. They had never handled a presidential candidate’s schedule, so I explained that they should always expect an advance man to come for a preflight cabin check. As I walked down the narrow aisle, I slipped the phone into the right seat-back pocket. After giving the pilots a thumbs-up, I emerged from the cabin doorway to see the Edwards caravan approaching. I jumped onto the tarmac, trotted to the golf cart, and left before I got caught. From a distance, I saw Elizabeth outside the plane, kissing her husband good-bye.
They caught me, Andrew! It’s the National Enquirer. They surrounded my car taking pictures. What should I do?”
Rielle was calling from her BMW as she drove away from a supermarket near her obstetrician’s office. She was giddy with excitement, but also a bit worried about what it might mean for the paper to publish photos of her, heavy with child-and possibly not so pretty-running errands just a few miles from the Edwards mansion. She asked me to connect her with the senator, and I did, immediately. When their call was finished, he rang my phone. He sounded both desperate and demanding. “This is bad, Andrew,” he said. “You have to get her under control.”
In a rapid-fire conversation, we reviewed what had happened and concluded that Rielle should come to my house. Before he hung up, the senator asked me if I had any idea how the Enquirer had found Rielle in North Carolina. “Just between us,” he said, “I suspect she’s talking to them. Do you think so?”
I told him, “Hell yes. All she does is talk on her damn phone about you.”
He didn’t want to believe it. He preferred to theorize that the paper had staked out Mimi’s house and followed her by car to the Governors Club at Thanksgiving. Ultimately, it didn’t matter how Rielle had been discovered. All that mattered was the picture they had captured and the fact that the Iowa caucuses were three weeks away. Edwards was neck and neck with Barack Obama for the lead in the polls. (Hillary Clinton was a distant third.) After years of work and a huge investment in cash, the hopes of the millions who saw a bright future in John Edwards might be realized if he won Iowa and received the inevitable rush of donations that could power him through the primaries. Of course now, with the Enquirer guys chasing Rielle as if she were Princess Diana (a thought that both scared and thrilled her), the campaign could be ruined by scandal. After all, as Rielle said, she was “tired of living a lie.”
As far as I could tell, no one followed her to our place, but I had Rielle park in the garage behind the closed door just in case. She came inside grinning and shaking and talking excitedly about how the photographers haƒhotd rushed up to her and barked questions while they took her picture. She was happy to think that she looked cute in her jeans, a flowing black top, Louis Vuitton handbag, and silver shoes. But she was also worried about how the senator might react.
By the end of the evening, after we fed Rielle dinner and Cheri started the roundup for bed, I drove the candidate’s mistress to her house, leaving her car in the garage. It was visible because we had opened the door to walk out. As I arrived back home, I saw that a dark-colored Jeep Liberty (a boxy sport utility vehicle with four doors) had been backed into our driveway. All of its doors were open, and no one was in sight. I stopped my car in a spot where I blocked the Jeep from leaving and walked into the garage. I could hear the kids squealing inside and thought for a moment that some friends must have come to visit. When I opened the door to the house, I saw they were all running around half-naked (it was bedtime), and Brody screamed, “There are two big men looking in the kitchen window!” Cooper and Gracie ran to me and grabbed my legs.
In an instant I figured it was probably the Enquirer guys, which meant they weren’t burglars or rapists. But I still felt we were being threatened, even violated, and I could feel anger rising through me. I called out to Cheri, telling her to take the kids upstairs and get behind a locked door. I went back out to the garage and, before reaching the driveway, grabbed a broom and hit the switch to close the big door.