Edwards' ally explains $14,000 payment to mistress

John Edwards' political action committee paid his mistress $14,000 after she stopped working for it to obtain 100 hours of unused videotape she had shot for his unsuccessful presidential campaign, an associate said on Thursday.

The woman, Rielle Hunter, already had been paid $100,000 for the programs.

The explanation - which Edwards' advisers declined to discuss on the record - is the first effort to justify the payment in April 2007 to Hunter. That payment came months before Edwards' chief fundraiser quietly began sending money himself to the pregnant woman.