Politics

Heilemann and Halperin: Who Is Andrew Young?

AJ Contributor
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You’ve been hearing his name for days already, and soon you’re going to be hearing more, what with his network star turn Friday on ABC’s 20/20 and Nightline, followed Saturday by the publication of his tell-all book, The Politician. We’re talking about Andrew Young, of course, the former aide to John Edwards, who, having spent many years effusively praising Caesar, now comes to bury him.

Beyond whatever lurid (or, should we say, more lurid) details Young has to offer about his erstwhile boss’s affair with and impregnation of Rielle Hunter, the public fascination with the 43-year-old attorney revolves around the bizarro role he played in the attempted cover-up of the Edwards scandal. To wit: What kind of fellow would agree to claim paternity of a child that wasn’t his in order to protect his patron? What exactly was the nature of his relationship to Edwards — and, not incidentally, his wife, Elizabeth? Who is this guy, really?

In The Politician, Young claims that Edwards told him at one point that he was “a friend like no friend I’ve ever had.” And this appears to have been true — for a couple of reasons, as we discovered in the course of reporting our own book, Game Change, about the 2008 election. (Read an excerpt on the Edwards campaign from Game Change here.)

Full story: Heilemann and Halperin: Who Is Andrew Young? — Daily Intel