John Edwards, who has been mentioned as both a possible vice-presidential candidate and candidate for attorney general in a Barack Obama administration has been caught visiting his mistress and her secret love child by the National Enquirer at 2:40 am this morning in a Los Angeles hotel.

The married ex-senator from North Carolina - whose wife Elizabeth continues to battle cancer ¡ª met with his mistress, blonde divorcee Rielle Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton on Monday night July 21 - and the NATIONAL ENQUIRER was there! He didn¡¯t leave until early the next morning. Rielle had driven to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara with a male friend for the rendezvous with Edwards. The former senator attended a press event Monday afternoon with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the topic of how to combat homelessness.

But a months-long NATIONAL ENQUIRER investigation had yielded information that Rielle and Edwards, 54, had arranged to secretly meet afterward and for the ex-senator to spend some time with both his mistress and the love child who he refuses to publicly acknowledge as his own. The NATIONAL ENQUIRER broke the story of Edwards¡¯ love child scandal last year, when Rielle was still pregnant and Edwards was still considered a strong candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Both parties denied the NATIONAL ENQUIRER report and a close friend of Edwards¡¯ came forward and said he was the father of Rielle¡¯s baby. But sources told the NATIONAL ENQUIRER a far different story - they revealed that Edwards was engineering a massive cover up of his shocking infidelity.