Senate hopeful's campaign digs in

Moore attorney questions credibility of sex-assault accuser

Phillip Jauregui, the attorney for U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, and Moore campaign chairman Bill Armistead (right) hold a news conference Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala.
Phillip Jauregui, the attorney for U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, and Moore campaign chairman Bill Armistead (right) hold a news conference Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala.

GADSDEN, Ala. -- The campaign of Roy Moore, the Republican Senate nominee in Alabama, on Wednesday sharply questioned the credibility of a woman who accused Moore of assaulting her in 1977.

At a news conference outside the Birmingham, Ala., headquarters of the state Republican Party, a lawyer for Moore's campaign, Phillip Jauregui, suggested that Beverly Young Nelson had lied when she said she had no contact with Moore after the alleged assault.

He suggested that a purported message from Moore to Nelson in a yearbook may have been a forgery, and he demanded that Nelson and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, allow the yearbook to be studied.

"Release the yearbook," he said.

Moore, meanwhile, offered fighting words in a tweet addressed to the top Senate Republican: "Dear Mitch McConnell, Bring. It. On."

Gloria Allred, Nelson's attorney, later said her client would allow the yearbook to be examined only if Moore is questioned under oath by a Senate committee.

Nelson on Monday alleged sexual advances or misconduct from Moore -- the GOP's pick for next month's special election for the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and currently held by Luther Strange.

"I tried fighting him off while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck, attempting to force my head onto his crotch," Nelson said at a news conference in New York. She said the assault happened after she finished an evening of work at the northeast Alabama restaurant where she was a server.

Nelson and Leigh Corfman, who was the first to accuse Moore of sexual misconduct, have said Moore molested them in the 1970s when Corfman was 14, Nelson was 16 and Moore was a deputy district attorney in Gadsden in his 30s. Three other women said he pursued romantic relationships with them around the same time.

Moore faced fresh allegations Wednesday.

Gena Richardson told The Washington Post that she agreed to a date with Moore in 1977, around her 18th birthday, when Moore was 30. Richardson said the date ended with Moore giving her an unwanted, "forceful" kiss.

Becky Grey, who worked in the same mall as Richardson in 1977, said Moore was so persistent about asking her out that she complained to her manager. Grey was 22 at the time.

Tina Johnson told AL.com that Moore flirted with her during a 1991 meeting in his law office and afterward grabbed her buttock. "He didn't pinch it; he grabbed it," Johnson told the Alabama outlet.

President Donald Trump kept out of the dispute Wednesday as national Republicans called even more insistently for Moore to abandon his campaign and as party officials debated their options.

Trump, who withstood allegations of sexual assault weeks before his own election, ducked questions about the Alabama race and whether he would join GOP congressional leaders in urging Moore to step aside.

Even as Moore's would-be colleagues threatened to expel him should he win and the Republican National Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee pulled their support, Trump was seen as the best hope for pushing a fellow political rebel from the race.

Instead, Moore, who was twice removed from his post as state Supreme Court chief justice, confronted his party with two damaging potential election outcomes. His victory would saddle GOP senators with a colleague accused of abusing and harassing teenagers, a liability heading into next year's congressional elections, while a loss to Democrat Doug Jones would slice the already narrow GOP Senate majority to a 51-49.

It's too late to remove Moore's name from the ballot, and fielding a Republican write-in candidate at this point could hand the election to the Democrats unless he withdraws and persuades his supporters to vote for that substitute.

Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby said in Washington that he'll write in another name on his ballot and that Attorney General Jeff Sessions would be an "ideal candidate." But he also said that "I don't see any movement" toward an effective effort with the election less than a month away.

Alabama Republican Party officials convened by phone late Wednesday to discuss the situation. The 21-member party steering committee's hourslong meeting ended without a vote on whether the party should pull its support for Moore.

The party has little interest in alienating Moore's supporters a year before elections in which the governor's office and entire state Legislature will be in play.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, McConnell said Trump had been involved in dealing with the Moore situation "in great detail" during his Asia trip. McConnell said he had spoken about Moore to the president, Vice President Mike Pence and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

McConnell has encouraged Sessions to mount a write-in campaign, but Sessions is said to have told friends that he has no interest in that.

Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity joined Moore's GOP critics during his show Tuesday evening, saying he was giving Moore 24 hours to explain "inconsistencies" in his response to allegations of child molestation or else exit the Alabama race. On Wednesday, though, Hannity said he couldn't be the judge of Moore.

"The people of Alabama deserve to have a fair choice," Hannity said, continuing later: "It shouldn't be decided by me, by people on television, by Mitch McConnell."

Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, weighed in, saying: "There's a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I've yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts." She did not call for Moore to exit the race.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said the women accusing Moore of sexual misconduct appear to be believable.

"Roy Moore faces specific, credible allegations and he hasn't offered a specific, credible defense. I haven't supported him, I don't support him, and I can't urge Alabama voters to support him," the Republican from Dardanelle said Wednesday through a spokesman.

Information for this article was contributed by Alan Blinder of The New York Times; by Zeke Miller, Steve Peoples, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Jay Reeves and Kimberly Chandler of The Associated Press; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A Section on 11/16/2017

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