August 11, 2008

Elizabeth Edwards has "bad energy," claimed the woman who had an affair with two-time presidential candidate John Edwards, according to Monday's online edition of Newsweek magazine. Rielle Hunter, the mistress at the center of the political storm around Edwards, held the former North Carolina senator in high regard.

However, the party girl-turned-healer-turned-videographer was apparently less generous with her former paramour's wife. "I've only met her once," Hunter told Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman in late 2006 during a lunch in which she mistakenly cast him as a friend. "She does not give off good energy. She didn't make eye contact with me."

Weeks later, Hunter was fired from her job documenting Edwards on the campaign trail. She called the reporter to tell him, saying Edwards did not defend her when she was relieved of her $1114,000-plus job. But her scorn for Elizabeth Edwards was evident, blaming her for her misfortune. "Someday, the truth about her is going to come out," Hunter told Newsweek.

Darman, who first met Hunter in Iowa in July 2006 while she was filming the documentary series for the Web, said the woman described Edwards as an old soul who had barely tapped into his potential, but had the power to be a "transformational leader" on par with Mahatmas Gandhi and Martin Luther King.