Financier says he was unaware of Edwards' affair

The former campaign finance chairman for John Edwards said this morning he was unaware of Edwards' affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter when he paid to move her to California last year.

In an e-mail this morning to The News & Observer, Dallas lawyer Fred Baron wrote, "I will re-state what I have previously stated on one point: I learned of the affair only a few weeks ago and had previously presumed that the 'tabloid' stuff was all bogus."

In an interview Friday with ABC's "Nightline," former Senator Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter but denied being the father of her daughter, born Feb. 27 in Santa Barbara, Calif. Former campaign aide Andrew Young, who moved to the Santa Barbara area with his wife and three children last year with Baron's assistance, released a statement online last year claiming paternity.

A key national fundraiser for Democratic Party causes, Baron released his own statement Friday declaring that he had decided independently, without notifying Edwards, to help Hunter and Young "rebuild their lives when harassment by supermarket tabloids made it impossible for them to conduct a normal life." He paid for their move from Chapel Hill to California.

Baron declined to comment further this morning, but in an interview posted online by the publication Texas Lawyer, Baron said he paid for several months' rent for Hunter and the Youngs without informing Edwards. Baron denied media reports that he was paying as much as $15,000 a month.

"I never discussed it with John. He was on the campaign trail in Iowa at the time," Baron said in the Texas Lawyer article.

According to an article published Sunday, Baron told The New York Post that Hunter, Young and Young's family lived together in California until tension in the household grew.

"They lived in a single house most of the time and split to two houses recently," Baron told The Post.