Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore criticized Wednesday what he called false allegations of sexual misconduct while remaining defiant in the face of calls by party leaders for him to drop out of the December special election in the southern state of Alabama.
Two women have accused Moore of unwanted sexual advances when they were teenagers and Moore was in his early 30s. Three other women said that about the same time in the late 1970s, Moore pursued them for dates when he was a local prosecutor and they were in high school.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and two former Republican presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain, have all said that the 70-year-old Moore should exit the race.
McConnell told reporters this week that the women who have come forward are “entirely credible” and that Moore is “obviously not fit to be in the United States Senate.”
Moore responded with a brief Twitter message late Wednesday: “Dear Mitch McConnell, Bring. It. On.”
President Donald Trump has yet to weigh in on the situation.
Moore is facing Democrat and former federal prosecutor Doug Jones in the race to fill the remaining three years of a Senate seat once held by Jeff Sessions, who resigned to join Trump’s Cabinet as attorney general.
Accusations
Moore has blamed the media for harassing his campaign and said he would sue The Washington Post, the newspaper that a week ago published the first wave of accusations from four women in on-the-record interviews.
On Wednesday, a sixth woman accused Moore of groping her while she was in his Alabama law office on legal business in 1991. Unlike the earlier cases that involved teenagers, Tina Johnson was 28 and in a strained marriage at the time. She was at the law office with her mother, who had hired Moore to handle a custody case involving Johnson’s son.
As the women left Moore’s office, Johnson said he groped her buttocks.
“He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” she said.
Earlier in the week, Beverly Young Nelson alleged that Moore assaulted her one night in the late 1970s after she finished work at a barbecue restaurant that Moore frequented in Gadsden, Alabama. Moore claimed to not know the woman, but Nelson said in 1977 he had wished her Merry Christmas in her high school yearbook.
“To a sweeter more beautiful girl I could not say ‘Merry Christmas’ … Love, Roy Moore D.A.,” the inscription said, referring to his job as a district attorney.
Moore’s lawyer, Phillip Jauregui, on Wednesday questioned whether Moore had written the inscription.
In a statement posted late Wednesday on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, Moore adamantly denied the accusations by Nelson and another woman, Leigh Corfman, who says that Moore initiated sexual contact with her when she was 14. Moore added that he “did not date underage girls.”
Moore, a judge twice removed from his post as state Supreme Court chief justice, said he is investigating the “origin and motivation” of the accusations.
“Are we at a stage in American politics in which false allegations can overcome a public record of 40 years, stampede the media and politicians to condemn an innocent man, and potentially impact the outcome of an election of national importance?” he said.
Political dilemma
Political surveys show Moore and Democrat Jones in a close contest in the politically conservative state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in last year’s presidential election.
Trump, while traveling overseas, deflected questions about Moore.
“I have to get back into the country to see what’s happening,” he said.
Trump faces a political dilemma in dealing with Moore. The candidate could ignore any entreaty from the president to quit the race because Trump supported Moore’s opponent in a September Republican party primary election, appointed Senator Luther Strange. But after Moore won the primary, Trump voiced his support.
In addition, if Trump says, as other Republicans have, that he believes the women’s accusations against Moore, Trump critics are likely to question why the women’s accounts are to be believed, but not those of 11 women who during the 2016 presidential election accused Trump of unwanted touching or kissing. Trump said they were liars and promised to sue them, but has not.
McConnell and other Republican officials have floated the idea of mounting a write-in candidacy to try to defeat Moore. Some have suggested that Strange attempt to keep the Senate seat in Republican hands with a write-in bid, while others have suggested that Sessions resign as attorney general and attempt to reclaim the Senate seat he held for 20 years.
Other Republicans are saying that if Moore wins the election and is seated in the 100-member Senate, they would immediately try to expel him as morally unfit to be a U.S. senator.
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