Bristol Palin calls it quits with fiance Johnston

[August 04, 2010]  ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The on-again, off-again engagement between Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston is off -- again.

The 19-year-old daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called off her wedding plans after Johnston told her he may have fathered a baby with another woman.

Bristol Palin did not identify the woman when she gave a teary interview to People magazine to announce the breakup. A pregnant ex-girlfriend of Johnston has publicly denied he is the father.

Palin said Johnston told her about the baby on July 14, the day the couple announced their re-engagement. Palin and the 20-year-old Johnston have a toddler son together, Tripp.

Representatives for Palin and Johnston did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday. But Johnston's attorney, Rex Butler, told The Washington Post he doubts the pair have permanently split.

"These young folk have a lot of pressure on them right now," he said. "All you have to do is watch that show 'Bridezillas' -- it's on and off, on and off, depending on the pressures."

Palin had said she didn't have her mother's full support over reconnecting with Johnston. She said both her mother -- the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee -- and father Todd worried she would get hurt again.

Palin said the "final straw" was when Johnston told her he was going to Hollywood to see a hunting show, but actually went there to star in a music video mocking her family.

In the video being shot this month in Los Angeles, Johnston will play a lover whose romance is thwarted by his girlfriend's disapproving mother. The project is based on the song "After Love" by singer-songwriter Brittani Senser.

"He's just obsessed with the limelight, and I got played," Palin told People.

Butler told The Washington Post that Palin, "if she's going to be honest," doesn't want Johnston in Hollywood.

"She wants him to sort of be like Todd Palin in the background while she does the running around," Butler said. "Levi on the other hand is not ready to settle into that role while he has other options."

Relations between the Palins and Johnston and his family have been strained since the couple broke off their first engagement soon after Tripp was born in December 2008. Bristol Palin later became a public advocate for abstinence.

The relationship later devolved into a messy tabloid drama as Johnston posed nude for Playgirl and trashed Sarah Palin in interviews. The sudden re-engagement marked a rapid turnaround for the couple that just months ago was fighting over child support and Johnston's criticism of her family.

Sarah Palin told People that she hopes her daughter will "move forward in life with her same forgiving, gracious, optimistic spirit, but from henceforth she'll know to trust but verify."

[Associated Press]

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