The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lawyer: Moore backers asked me to drop client
Eddie Sexton said the two men offered him $10,000 to disavow accuser Leigh Corfman, give statement to Breitbart News.
BIRMINGHAM, ALA. — Days after a woman accused U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual impropriety, two Moore supporters approached her attorney with an unusual request.
They asked lawyer Eddie Sexton to drop the woman as a client and say publicly that he did not believe her. The damaging statement would be given to Breitbart News, then run by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon.
In exchange, Sexton said in recent interviews, the men offered to pay him $10,000 and promised to introduce him to Bannon and others in the nation’s capital. Parts of Sexton’s account are supported by recorded phone conversations, text messages and people in whom he confided at the time.
The effort to undermine Leigh Corfman’s allegations — beginning Nov. 13, a month before the election — shows how far some of Moore’s most fervent supporters were willing to go to salvage an Alabama campaign that many hoped would propel a nationwide populist movement and solidify Bannon’s image as a political kingmaker.
Help ‘cloud’ the claims
In the phone conversations and texts, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post, one of the men spoke of ties to Moore and Bannon while urging Sexton to help “cloud” the allegations, which included other women’s claims that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.
“What they’re saying, all they want to do is cloud something,” Gary Lantrip, who attended at least one private fundraising event for Moore, said during a phone call recorded by Sexton. “They said if they cloud, like, two of them, then that’s all they need.”
Lantrip also made references to money — at one point speaking haltingly about “the ten [pause] dollars,” a shorthand for the $10,000 offer, Sexton said.
“We got some chance to do something, make some quick little-bitty for you ... and then, on down the line, we can go to D.C.,” Lantrip said during the recorded call.
Sexton was initially reluctant to talk publicly about the alleged offer, because the men — Lantrip and Bert Davi, business partners in a small construction firm — are his clients in an unrelated court case, a dispute over a real estate venture. Sexton decided to speak publicly after repeated requests over months from Post reporters, who contacted him after obtaining one of the recordings.
Sexton vouched for the authenticity and accuracy of the recordings and messages.
In a statement, Moore said Thursday that Lantrip and Davi had attended rallies but that the campaign was not involved in any effort to pay Sexton. “I nor anyone else in the campaign offered anyone money to say something untrue, nor did I or anyone else authorize someone else to do such a thing,” he wrote.
A spokesman added that, although Lantrip and Davi had met Moore, “they did not have any special access to Judge Moore, nor were they ever commissioned with any special tasks by the campaign team.”
A spokeswoman said Bannon, who worked in the White House until August, could not be reached for comment.
In separate interviews on Monday, Lantrip, 55, and Davi, 50, acknowledged seeking the statement and arranging a meeting between Sexton and two Breitbart reporters but denied doing anything improper.
During a 20-minute interview, Davi said he has known Bannon for years but declined to say how they met or describe the nature of their relationship. He added that Bannon never knew about any offer to pay Sexton.
“Our effort was really to let the truth come out,” Davi said.
At one point, Davi suggested it was Sexton who raised the idea of payment, saying the lawyer indicated that if he were to issue a statement about Corfman, he “wouldn’t do it for free.” Sexton denied that.
Lantrip declined to comment on whether Sexton was offered money or about his own references to money during the recorded call. He acknowledged telling Sexton, however, that if he made the statement he would get legal
work from Bannon as part of a Breitbart expansion in Alabama.
“I’ll protect what I did, because I know I didn’t do nothing,” Lantrip said shortly before ending the interview.
A spokeswoman for Breitbart said the two reporters were not aware of any offer to pay Sexton or provide him with legal work and did not know who penned a handwritten statement he says he was asked to sign.
Two people interviewed by The Post said Sexton told them about the alleged offer around the time it was made, including a lawyer he was consulting for advice. They provided time-stamped texts and private Facebook messages that show their discussions with Sexton as he considered how to handle the situation.
Also, Sexton said he reported the incident to a federal prosecutor in Alabama. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Posey told Sexton in a Dec. 5 email that the events Sexton had described by phone did not appear to constitute a federal crime.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
The accuser
In October and November, Corfman told Post reporters that she met Moore in an Alabama courthouse nearly 40 years ago, when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. She said he later drove her to his house, where he took off her shirt and pants and touched her sexually.
Corfman asked Sexton to help manage the media scrutiny that would follow the story’s publication, Sexton said in a recent interview. Sexton was an unconventional choice. A partner at a small firm outside Birmingham, he specializes in product liability cases and had spent most of the past decade on a class-action lawsuit involving defective drywall. But Corfman and Sexton were childhood friends from Gadsden, Alabama, Sexton said.
After the story broke on Nov. 9, Alabama website AL.com identified Sexton as Corfman’s attorney and quoted him as saying she stood by the account she gave The Post. Amid the barrage of media calls, Sexton said a partner at his firm expressed angst about being associated with such a politically charged issue. Sexton said that, though they made no public announcement, he and Corfman privately agreed to part ways.
Prediction by Moore
Two days later, on the campaign trail, Moore predicted that Corfman’s claims would unravel under scrutiny. “There are investigations going on. In the next few days there will be revelations about the motivations and the content of this article,” Moore said at a news conference.
Breitbart jolted into action, too.
The conservative website had a lot riding on Moore. Bannon had backed him in a primary against Luther Strange, the favorite of establishment Republicans. The website had heralded Moore’s win in the primary as proof of Breitbart’s “enduring power and reach.”
On Breitbart’s daily radio show, Bannon called The Post’s report a “weaponized hit” during a segment with Matt Boyle, one of three Breitbart reporters he dispatched to Alabama after the story broke.
“We expect that there will come out evidence that demonstrates the collusion between the Democrat establishment, the Republican establishment and the media,” Boyle said.
Lantrip reached out to Sexton that same day.
“Hey buddy call me if you can. It’s important,” Lantrip wrote.
Sexton and Lantrip had been friends for decades, both men said. Sexton had represented him in several civil cases, including a bankruptcy and construction billing disputes, records show. Their kids, now grown, had been friends when they were younger, Sexton said.
The men spoke by phone on Nov. 12, a Sunday, and agreed to meet Monday at Sexton’s law office in Hoover.
Lantrip brought Davi, his partner in the construction firm they launched in 2015.
The three chatted on a concrete slab behind the law office, Sexton told The Post. Davi mentioned that he knew Bannon, Sexton said. Davi said the Breitbart executive wanted to talk about whether Sexton would say publicly that he did not believe Corfman, Sexton said.
Sexton said he told them such a statement would not be credible, in part because he had already made supportive statements about Corfman on his Facebook page. He sent Lantrip images of those comments by text message early that afternoon, records show.
Sexton said Lantrip told him by phone a short time later that “Bannon’s group” still wanted to talk to him.
Sexton said he doesn’t recall whether money first came up during this phone call or at the meeting behind his law office, but he said Lantrip or Davi told him that he could collect $10,000 — and possibly more.
Sexton said he was disturbed by the offer but also intrigued by the prospect of meeting Bannon.
A turbulent past
On Nov. 1, Davi and Lantrip attended a Moore fundraiser at a townhouse in Washington, D.C., arriving in a black SUV with an unidentified third man, video obtained by The Post shows. The private gathering, hosted by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., featured a handful of senators and other high-profile supporters. Moore was there, as were Bannon and Boyle, according to footage shot by operatives with the progressive group American Bridge.
Davi said during the interview that he has long known Bannon but would not say how. “Let’s just say that I know Steve,” he said. “I’ve known him for a while.”
Davi has the kind of background that most campaigns try to avoid.
He spent years in state and federal prison in the 1990s, convicted of multiple felonies including auto theft in both Colorado and California, forgery in Wyoming, and a federal charge in Louisiana for being a felon in possession of a firearm, records show.
Davi had claimed to be a former member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, federal prosecutors wrote in the 1997 weapons possession case. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. In 2005, he pleaded guilty in San Diego for distributing methamphetamine, identity theft and firearms violations, records show. He was sentenced to five years in state prison.
“My past has nothing to do with any story,” Davi wrote in a text message.
Fallout from defeat
On Dec. 12, Moore lost the election. The stakes for Bannon and Breitbart were soon clear.
“Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans,” President Donald Trump said in a statement on Jan. 3.
Less than a week later, Bannon was pushed out of Breitbart News.
During an interview Monday, Davi said he and Lantrip initially did not believe Corfman’s claims but do now.
“At the end of the day we came to believe the allegations,” Davi said. “We stepped away from Roy Moore.”