Media-Omitted Elizabeth Edwards Bare-Chested Freakout Story Emerges in Trial

May 3rd, 2012 7:43 AM

One of the more colorful anecdotes in the campaign memoir “Game Change” re-emerged yesterday in the courtroom, about what happened when Elizabeth Edwards confronted her husband about adultery stories in the National Enquirer, a scene that didn’t receive any attention on network TV (and obviously not in the Palin-bashing HBO movie).

The New York Post reported “John Edwards’ humiliated wife had a meltdown a day after his tawdry affair went public — hysterically taunting her husband by groping him and exposing her breasts in front of stunned campaign staffers, according to testimony yesterday in his federal campaign-finance trial.”

“You don’t see me anymore!” a bare-chested Elizabeth Edwards screamed at the presidential hopeful at the height of her fury.

The confrontation came the day after the National Enquirer splashed the affair on its Oct. 9, 2007, front page — complete with a photo of mistress Rielle Hunter, testified Cheryl Reynolds, a campaign aide and confidante to Elizabeth...

“Elizabeth was very upset. She was very vocal,” said Reynolds, who had worked for John for 10 years and later worked in President Obama’s White House.

“She stormed off and collapsed into a ball in the parking lot.”

Reynolds helped her to a restroom in a private hangar.

“She seemed a little calmer, and then stormed out of the bathroom and tried to engage Mr. Edwards,” Reynolds said.

That’s when Elizabeth — who had undergone a lumpectomy in 2005 — dramatically ripped off her clothes, haranguing him bare-chested.

Coldhearted John “didn’t have much of a reaction,” Reynolds said, adding that Elizabeth, however, was “mortified” and “humiliated” that the affair had gone public.

The Edwards trial is getting more network TV attention than another trial (albeit with less tawdry sex and less potential to hurt Democrats at the polls). In 1996, as President Clinton sought re-election, his Whitewater business partners were on trial in Little Rock. The networks were remarkably quiet -- but the quietest was NBC, who never assigned the trial to a reporter, unlike in the Edwards trial.