Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump remains silent as Moore storm rages
As new allegations surface, Moore remains defiant
President ducks questions about whether he would join GOP leaders in urging Senate candidate Roy Moore to step aside.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump kept silent and out of the fight Wednesday as national Republicans called ever more insistently for Roy Moore to abandon his Alabama campaign for the U.S. Senate and as party officials sourly debated options that none of them liked.
Far from surrendering, Moore’s camp fought back against allegations of sexual impropriety with teenage girls years ago when he was in his 30s.
Even as he fought back, new allegations surfaced Wednesday: that Moore, when in his early 30s, would pursue teenage girls who worked at an Alabama mall.
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. With Moore’s would-be colleagues threatening to expel him should he win and with the Republican National Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee pulling their support, Trump was seen as the best hope for pushing a fellow political rebel from the race.
Instead, Moore confronts his party with two damaging potential election outcomes. His victory would saddle GOP senators with a colleague accused of abusing and harassing teenagers, a troubling liability heading into next year’s congressional elections, while a loss to Democrat Doug Jones would slice the already narrow GOP Senate majority to 51-49.
Behind the scenes, aides described Trump as vexed by the Moore issue.
Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity joined the GOP critics during his show Tuesday, saying he was giving Moore 24 hours to explain “inconsistencies” in his response to allegations of child molestation or else exit the Alabama race.
Moore responded in a letter late Wednesday: “I adamantly deny the allegations of Leigh Corfman and Beverly Nelson, did not date underage girls, and have taken steps to begin a civil action for defamation. Because of that, at the direction of counsel, I cannot comment further.”
Showing no signs of surrender Wednesday, Moore’s campaign chairman and personal attorney addressed the media, trying to undercut the story of the latest woman to accuse Moore of sexually accosting her when she was in high school.
The attorney, Phillip Jauregui, demanded that Nelson “release the yearbook” she contends Moore signed. He questioned that the signature was Moore’s and said it should be submitted for handwriting analysis. Neither the attorney nor the campaign manager addressed the original allegations from Corfman concerning sexual contact she said Moore initiated when she was 14, or the other allegations of impropriety with teenagers.
According to internal polling conducted by the Senate GOP campaign arm and reviewed by The Associated Press, Moore trails Democrat Jones by 12 points — 39 percent to 51 percent — in the survey conducted on Sunday and Monday. Moore led by 9 points the week before in the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s internal numbers.
In new allegations Wednesday, two women told The Washington Post that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers or young women working at the Gadsden Mall in Alabama.
Phyllis Smith, who was 18 when she began working at Brooks, a clothing store geared toward young women, said teenage girls counseled each other to “just make yourself scarce when Roy’s in here, he’s just here to bother you, don’t pay attention to him and he’ll go away.’ ”
The encounters described by the women occurred between 1977 and 1982, when Moore was single, in his early 30s and an attorney in Etowah County in northeastern Alabama. In October 1977, he was appointed deputy district attorney.
Gena Richardson said she was a high school senior working in the men’s department of Sears at the mall when Moore approached her.
They eventually ended up going on a date, she said, with Moore driving her to her car in a dark parking lot behind Sears and giving her what she called an unwanted, “forceful” kiss that left her scared.
“I never wanted to see him again,” says Richardson, who is now 58.
Moore faced another fresh allegation Wednesday: Tina Johnson told AL.com that Moore flirted with her during a 1991 meeting in his law office and grabbed her buttock.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, weighed in, saying to the AP: “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.