Embattled Alabama Republican
Roy Moore ignores calls to abandon his Senate campaign and presses ahead with attempts both public and private to intimidate his female accusers and, of course, the media.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — With President Donald Trump standing on the sidelines, Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and his allies on the ground in Alabama are bracing for an extended conflict — not with Democrats, but with their own party in Washington.
The divide between the state and national GOP reached new depths Thursday after more allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against Moore, an outspoken Christian conservative.
Already, the Republican National Committee, the Senate GOP campaign committee and the party’s leading voices in Congress have called on the 70-yearold former judge to quit the race.
Ever defiant, Moore and his supporters lashed out at his accusers in a Thursday news conference in which he refused to answer any questions.
He called the allegations “unsubstantiated,” “unproven” and “fake.”
“They’re not only untrue, but they have no evidence to support them,” he declared.
At least three new allegations of misconduct surfaced the day before, including one by Tina Johnson, who told AL.com that Moore groped her during a 1991 meeting in his law office.
Two others told The Washington Post they were young women when Moore courted them as a district attorney in his 30s.
Three other women told the newspaper last week that they were teens when Moore tried to initiate romantic relationships. One said she was 14 when Moore touched her over her bra and underwear.
The Alabama Republican Party reiterated its support for Moore on Thursday, a day after its 21member steering committee privately contemplated the situation.
“Judge Moore has vehemently denied the allegations made against him. He deserves to be presumed innocent of the accusations unless proven otherwise. He will continue to take his case straight to the people of Alabama,” state GOP Chair Terry Lathan said in a statement.
The state GOP has the power to revoke Moore’s GOP nomination and ask election officials to ignore ballots cast for him, but that would risk a lawsuit and backlash from Moore supporters.
The party has little interest in alienating Moore’s followers a year before elections in which the governor’s office and entire state Legislature will be in play.
The tone was far less friendly in Washington.
“There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children,” Ivanka Trump said Wednesday. “I’ve yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.”
Her father, President Trump, who withstood allegations of sexual assault weeks before his own election, was silent when faced with questions about the scandal.
Washington Republicans had looked to Trump as one of the few remaining hopes for pushing a fellow political rebel from the race.
During a news briefing Thursday at the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that while Trump considers the allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against Moore “extremely troubling,” he doesn’t plan to rescind his endorsement of the former state judge.
“The president believes that these allegations are very troubling and should be taken seriously, and he thinks that the people of Alabama should make the decision on who their next senator should be,” Sanders told reporters.
Sanders said that if the accusations are true, the president wants Moore to drop out of the race, but she repeatedly declined to say whether the president believes the women who have accused Moore of abuse or misconduct.
During the Thursday briefing, Sanders was asked about allegations raised by several women during the campaign that Trump touched and kissed them without their consent.
Trump has repeatedly denied these allegations, and Sanders recently said that the president continues to consider all of those women liars.
“The president has certainly a lot more insight into what he personally did or didn’t do, and he spoke out about that directly during the campaign, and I don’t have anything further to add beyond that,” Sanders said, when asked to compare the charges against Trump to those against Moore.