Sam Stein is writing that Edwards (not shockingly) lied in his ABC interview:

A review of political action committee payments, contemporaneous reporting, and emails obtained by the Huffington Post reveal this statement to be false. Edwards and Hunter initially met each other sometime during the winter of 2006 (either late December 2005 or early January) in a hotel restaurant in midtown Manhattan. It would be another seven months before Edwards would first pay her for the documentary work. As Woodruff rightfully noted, the initial check cut to Hunter’s film company was written on July 5, 2006, for the cost of $12,500. What happened in between that winter meeting and the start of filming? Emails sent by Hunter suggest that her romance with Edwards was in full bloom that spring. In early April, Hunter wrote about a trip she had taken to North Carolina to see the man whom she affectionately referred to as “my love lips.” A week later she wrote another email in which she described the mental anguish of “being in love with a (still somewhat dysfunctional) married man.”