Is Edwards Lying About Timeline Of Affair?

Friend Of Rielle Hunter Tells CBS News Liaisons Began Earlier Than John Edwards Admitted

(CBS)  Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez spoke with Pigeon O'Brien, a friend of former John Edwards mistress Rielle Hunter, about whether Edwards is being forthcoming about the timeline of his relationship with Hunter.

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Maggie Rodriguez: Is John Edwards still lying about his affair with your friend?

Pigeon O'Brien: As of--as of his statement on Friday evening, he is lying about the timeline of the affair and other details about it, yes.

Rodriguez: She told you it started in February or March of 2006.

O'Brien: Yes.

Rodriguez: He says it started five months later when his campaign hired her.

O'Brien: Yeah, that's not true. That's not true. It started in the winter of '06. They became involved at that point, not later in the summer when she was hired to work for the political action committee.

Rodriguez: It started in the winter of '06?

O'Brien: Correct.

Rodriguez: Because that's when he was announcing his candidacy. And as we see in these picture she's still working for him at the time, even though he says this is when the affair was winding down.

O'Brien: It started at the other end of '06, in February, March of '06.

Rodriguez: Oh, at the beginning.

O'Brien: Yes, yes, yes.

Rodriguez: Oh, OK.

O'Brien: At the very--six months earlier than he says that it began.

Rodriguez: So when you looked at those pictures earlier with me, you said "poor thing" about Rielle. Why?

O'Brien: I--she's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful person in a very ugly position, and I really feel for her. I think that--I really have never known someone so insistent upon integrity and honesty and openness. It's one of the most beautiful things about her. There are many beautiful things about her.

Rodriguez: But someone who has an affair with a married man you say has integrity and honesty?

O'Brien: I think she thought that he had quite a bit of integrity and I think that that appealed to her about him. Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we pick people to fall in love with that maybe aren't the greatest choice at the time. I can't judge her in that, I can't fault her in that. She fell in love and she felt loved back by this man. So unfortunately, that doesn't reflect the kind of integrity that everybody might think reflects integrity, but I'm sure she was able to deal with it and really be persuaded by her feelings of love for this man.

Rodriguez: So for her this was about love...

O'Brien: Yes, very much so.

Rodriguez: ...not sex.

O'Brien: No. No, no, no, no, no. No, no.

Rodriguez: Did she describe this as hot and heavy, frequent visits, intense, passionate?

O'Brien: Yes, yes. And intense intellectually, as well. She's a very keenly intellectually engaged woman. She's very insistent upon rigorous dialogue and she's very interested in what makes people tick. She very-digs very deeply about those things. So they would have connected and they did connect on that level as well, as human beings and as souls. They connected very deeply on that level.

Rodriguez: You say that she told you about the night that she met him at a bar.

O'Brien: Mm-hmm.

Rodriguez: Did she describe it as, `I'm so excited to kick off this affair with this married man,' or was she ever...

O'Brien: No.

Rodriguez: ...battling her conscience, like, `I met this great guy, but he's married'?

O'Brien: I don't suppose we ever went into things on the conscience level. It wasn't for me to judge and she didn't want to put me in a position to judge her. We were girlfriends, we trusted one another's decisions.