Washington, Feb. 2 (ANI): Andrew Young, a close aide of controversial former US senator John Edwards, has claimed that he was offered "gigantic amounts of money" for a sex tape of the failed presidential candidate and his mistress.

"And we've said no," The New York Daily News quoted Young, as saying.

While Young didn't reveal who offered the big bucks, Edwards' ex-mistress Rielle Hunter is desperate to get back the tape.

"I'm not clear anything she's asking for is hers," said Young.

Young, who is due to release a tell-all book to reveal how President Barack Obama's rival for the democratic candidature last year asked him to pretend to be the father of his love child, said he found the sex tape just months before the January 2008 Iowa caucus.

It was in a box left in a home that Young said he and his wife, Cheri, briefly shared with Hunter.

"I could not have told this story without including this sex tape," said Young, who also claims to have phone messages from Edwards to back up his seamy story.

Never think that success is down to your own performance alone. If you start listening only to yourself you take the first step back towards the bottom. The flowers of victory belong in many vases.

According to Young, the video clearly shows Edwards in the middle of a "sexual encounter" with a visibly pregnant woman wearing a thumb ring similar to one that Hunter often wears.oung said, after he told Edwards he couldn't pretend anymore, he began to fear for his life - especially when the senator showed up "out of the blue" and took him for a ride.

"All I could think about was Vince Foster," Young said, referring to the former President Clinton aide whose suicide sparked speculation that maybe he was rubbed out to cover up a White House scandal.

Last month, in advance of the release of Young's book, Edwards finally came clean and admitted he lied about being Quinn's daddy. (ANI)