This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” February 12, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And tonight there are even more bizarre twists in the scandal surrounding John Edwards.
Now earlier this week, his former aide Andrew Young revealed that Elizabeth Edwards has threatened him with a lawsuit. Now, if filed, the so-called alienation of affection suit would allege that Andrew Young was partially responsible for the breakup of the Edwards marriage.
But even with a legal battle looming, the man who was at one time John Edwards’ closest confidante is continuing to tell his side of the story. And tonight, for the first time, he and his wife revealed never-before-heard voice mails that he says Elizabeth Edwards would not want you to hear.
And joining me now are Andrew Young and his wife, Cheri. Andrew is also the author of the New York Times best seller, “The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’ Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal that Brought Him Down.”
Andrew, welcome to the program. Welcome back.
And Cheri, welcome for the first time to the program. Thank you both for being with us.
ANDREW YOUNG, AUTHOR, “THE POLITICIAN”: Thank you for having us. Thank you.
HANNITY: All right. Now, just to set this up, when you were here launching your book in launch week, we were going to play these voicemails, but just prior to air, you told us we were not allowed to air them because of a lawsuit. Can you give us a little background?
A. YOUNG: Well, there was some kind of — we were very — we were caught by surprise by the threat — the lawsuit hasn’t been filed yet. But the lawsuit claimed that she was going to sue me for alienation of affection, and she asked for two things. One, that I give $250,000 to her, to a foundation that — for their son. And that I turn over all of the voicemails and e-mails that she had left on my cell phone and sent to my e-mail account. Clearly — things that are clearly my property.
And just like the lawsuit with Rielle Hunter, they were seeking to get items that corroborate not only my book, but they’re also potentially evidence in the grand jury investigation against — against John Edwards.
HANNITY: All right. Now, I read this book cover to cover, and Cheri, I had an opportunity to meet you when your husband was doing his first interview with us. And I said to you, and I’ll say it publicly, you really came off as the hero in this book.
But before we play the voice messages, can you explain how, from your perspective, when your husband comes to you and says, “I’ve got to accept paternity for John Edwards’ baby,” why did you go along with that?
CHERI YOUNG, WIFE OF ANDREW YOUNG: That’s a long answer, but I’ll try to do it. There were several things that came into play that day. And he didn’t come to me and say, “I had to do this.” He said he was asked. He was very honest and told me exactly what happened.
And at this point, we were — just as a reminder, Rielle had already moved to North Carolina. We had gotten her a house, a car. She had already, you know, filled a house, the house that we rented for her with, I guess, $100,000 of furniture. Andrew had already been taken off the campaign payroll and John had lined him up a job and health care. So at this point we were so far — Andrew was already getting money to take care of Rielle. We were really far in this mess.
HANNITY: You were locked in.
C. YOUNG: Yes.
HANNITY: But he describes in the book, you were the one saying, “What are we doing here?” Pretty much all along.
A. YOUNG: Right.
HANNITY: And this was not something you wanted to do.
C. YOUNG: No. Actually, I wasn’t happy with him for years, with working with the Edwards. But I believed in him…
A. YOUNG: She never liked John Edwards. She liked his causes. But…
C. YOUNG: Right. And I did believe in — that Edwards had the ability to be president, and I believed in Andrew.
HANNITY: All right. Let me…
C. YOUNG: So…
HANNITY: Go ahead.
C. YOUNG: No, and just going back to that day, what ultimately changed my mind, because at first I said, “Heck no.” I mean, it was much, much worse than that. I actually said, “Why would you even bring this up? Why did you just not tell him no?” I mean, this is hours of going back and forth.
But what it came down to is I listened to a conversation between he, Rielle — and I was on the line — and Edwards went into this mess about, you know, it was his chance. He could win. Elizabeth was going to die. He didn’t want her to know about this, and it wasn’t going to be long. And he would come clean, either after the election was over or if he won — it didn’t matter. He would come clean, and this would be short term for us.
HANNITY: All right. All right, and so you believed that.
All right. These voicemails — and I read the transcript. I’m going to hear them for the first time right now, along with our audience here, but I read the transcript. Now, these voice mails were from Elizabeth Edwards to you, Cheri. And why don’t we play them first and get the context, because they’re pretty shocking. So let’s roll the tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBOTIC VOICE: July 8, 2008, at 7:47 p.m. Eastern Time.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS, WIFE OF JOHN EDWARDS: (HEAVY BREATHING)
(LAUGHTER)
ROBOTIC VOICE: July 23, 2008, at 8:54 a.m. Eastern Time.
EDWARDS: Andrew needs to pay for that baby!
ROBOTIC VOICE: August 10, 2008, at 12:04 p.m. Eastern Time.
EDWARDS: Hey, Cheri. Umm, yeah, when you move from North Carolina, Andrew and Rielle both asked if they could please be really close together. Uh, hope you like that!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Cheri, first of all, it didn’t sound exactly like her. How did you know that that…
C. YOUNG: No, she…
HANNITY: Go ahead.
C. YOUNG: Well, some of the phone calls came in with her number. These are only three of the many voice mails. So you know — but the cackle at the end of the breathing is the same cackle that she did on a voicemail left in January of ’08.
So her voicemails targeting me, at first I didn’t understand. But then it became clear to me that she really knew the truth, and she was angry at me for going along with the story.
HANNITY: It’s like she’s taunting you in these e-mails.
Now, when I first read the book, I was — I was kind of shocked at how Elizabeth Edwards came off in the book, as we discussed the last time, Andrew, is that there’s another instance and again, Cheri, this is to your voicemail, not to Andrew’s, and it has to do with these — this baseball card situation, accusing you, Andrew, of stealing her son, Wade’s baseball cards. This is the son that they’d lost. Why don’t you set that up before we play it?
A. YOUNG: They’re — they’re — they were building the mansion over in Chapel Hill, and they were living in a rental house in Chapel Hill. Their old house in Raleigh had a pipe burst that flooded.
And when they finally got a hold of me and when I finally got over there, there were 30 or 40 people working to mitigate the damage. And the senator asked me to take charge of it.
And I — I worked for a good month and a half on trying to save all the items for this house that they lived in for 15, 18 years.
HANNITY: Right.
A. YOUNG: And you know, the house was so damaged that you couldn’t even close the front door at night. And I called Elizabeth one day and said, you know, “There’s a box missing from Wade’s room. Did you — did you remove it, because it was valuable?”
And I called the police. It was a box of sports material. And they actually arrested somebody who was related to the water mitigation people, trying to pawn baseball cards and sports cards. She knew that.
HANNITY: And she — so she knew this, but she called Cheri anyway, and let’s play this tape to Cheri.
A. YOUNG: Right. And let me remind you —
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBOTIC VOICE: September 11, 2008, at 9:27 a.m. Eastern Time.
EDWARDS: Uh… Andrew stole some of Wade’s sports cards. Everybody else that had possibility of getting them has taken a lie detector test, leaves Andrew.
I can’t believe he would have stolen from my dead son. But he did. I want Wade’s cards back. Wade would want Jack to have them. Not Andrew and honestly, not your children either. He would want Jack to have them. It’s the only decent thing to do. I’m asking you all to return them, to return Wade’s cards.
ROBOTIC VOICE: End of message.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: We’re running out of time. A quick response, Cheri, from you first?
C. YOUNG: That was two or three years after the incident. And we have never heard a thing before that. She was desperate.
A. YOUNG: And they were trying to destroy my reputation, to make the story about me being the father more credible. And they were trying to destroy my ability — it was painful.
HANNITY: Right. And there are more tapes coming.
A. YOUNG: There’s a lot of them.
HANNITY: All right, guys. Thank you for being with us. The book is called “The Politician.” Appreciate you being here.
— Watch “Hannity” weeknights at 9 p.m. ET!
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