Rielle Hunter Settles John Edwards Sex Tape Suit
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Steve Exum/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The long-running court battle over a sexually explicit videotape featuring former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his mistress, Rielle Hunter, was settled out of court Thursday, ABC News has learned.
According to North Carolina court officials and a Hunter spokesperson, Hunter and former Edwards aide Andrew Young, along with his wife Cheri, agreed to end their dispute more than two years after the case was originally filed. Terms of the settlement were not immediately available, but Hunter spokesperson RoseMarie Terenzio told ABC News that “Ms. Hunter is very pleased. She won.”
According to Terenzio’s statement, an alleged sex tape and a series of private photographs that were the center of the legal dispute will be returned to Hunter.
Hunter sued the Youngs in January 2010, claiming the couple had stolen from her a “personal and private” videotape that came to be known in court filings as “the Edwards sex tape.” She asserted that the Youngs were using the tape to help promote Young’s book, The Politician, which chronicles Edwards’ 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nomination and the candidate’s affair with Hunter.
Edwards gave a lengthy deposition in the case that eventually ended up in the hands of federal prosecutors who are pursuing a felony campaign finance case against the one-time North Carolina senator. That trial had been scheduled to begin in January, but it has been delayed because Edwards needs treatment for a heart condition.
In the civil suit, Hunter claimed that the Youngs had entered her former rental home in North Carolina and took the tape from a hat-box containing her personal items. Young, who once falsely claimed to be the father of Hunter’s child, disputed Hunter’s account, claiming he found the tape partially damaged and discarded in a box of trash in another home they had all previously shared.
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