Reuters – 1 hr 43 mins agoNEW YORK (Reuters) - Rielle Hunter, the woman who had an affair with former U.S. Senator John Edwards during his U.S. presidential bid, said on Tuesday that she was no longer in a relationship with him.
In an interview to promote her tell-all memoir, Hunter, 48, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that she and Edwards had split, but would continue to see each other as they share parenting duties of their now 4-year-old daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter.
"We are a family, but as of the end of last week, John Edwards and I are no longer a couple," Hunter told the morning program. "Not at all."
Hunter appeared on the show on the day of the U.S. release of her memoir, "What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me." It is billed as giving Hunter's inside story of the affair that Edwards hid for months from his cancer-stricken wife and the American public.
It follows Edwards' federal trial in North Carolina, which ended in May with an acquittal on one campaign finance charge and a mistrial on five other charges after the jury deadlocked.
Hunter, who has been the subject of various tabloid articles in the past week due to details leaked from the memoir, attributed part of the reason for the split to public pressures.
"For me, for my part in it, it's because I'm no longer interested in hiding," she said. "Hiding our relationship. Hiding. Not living out in the - we've had a lot of media scrutiny ... It's complicated, and it's hard, and it wears you down after a while."
Edwards, 59, was accused at his trial of seeking more than $900,000 from two wealthy supporters to conceal Hunter and her pregnancy with his child from voters during his unsuccessful bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination four years ago.
At the time, Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, was battling cancer. She died in December 2010.
Calls for comment to the two law firms that represented Edwards at his trial were not returned on Tuesday.
Hunter said she had written the book in part to change perceptions that she was a home wrecker.
"Many things in the relationship were a mistake, but I don't regret loving him," Hunter said.
Asked if Edwards still loves her, she said: "You'd have to ask him that, but I think he does, and I feel that he does."
(Reporting By Christine Kearney and Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Gunna Dickson and Lisa Von Ahn)
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