2nd teen sex assault allegation hits Moore
McConnell believes GOP candidate should ‘step aside.’
WASHINGTON — A second woman abruptly emerged Monday to accuse Roy Moore of sexually assaulting her as a teenager in the late 1970s, this time in a locked car, further roiling the Alabama Republican’s candidacy for an open Senate seat. Leaders of Moore’s own party intensified their efforts to push him out of the race.
Anticipating a tearful Beverly Young Nelson’s allegations at a New York news conference, Moore’s campaign ridiculed her attorney, Gloria Allred, beforehand as “a sensationalist leading a witch hunt.” The campaign said Moore was innocent and “has never had any sexual misconduct with anyone.” He insisted he was in the race to stay.
In the latest day of jarring events, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Moore essentially declared open war on each other. McConnell said the former judge should quit the race over a series of recent allegations of past improper relationships with teenage girls. No, Moore said, the Kentucky senator is the one who should get out.
Cory Gardner of Colorado, who heads the Senate GOP’s campaign organization, said not only should Moore step aside but if he should win “the Senate should vote to expel him because he does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate.”
Two other Senate GOP leaders — No. 2 John Cornyn of Texas and No. 3 John Thune of South Dakota — withdrew their endorsements of Moore. And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took back his support and said the allegations merit “criminal prosecution” though the statute of limitations has expired.
McConnell took a remarkably personal swipe at his party’s candidate for a Senate seat the GOP cannot afford to lose. “I believe the women,” he said, marking an intensified effort by leaders to ditch Moore before a Dec. 12 special election that has swung from an assured GOP victory to one that Democrats could conceivably swipe.
McConnell, speaking Monday at an event in Louisville, Kentucky, said Moore “should step aside.”
Moore, an outspoken Christian conservative and former state Supreme Court judge, fired back at McConnell on Twitter.
“The person who should step aside is @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell. He has failed conservatives and must be replaced. #DrainTheSwamp,” Moore wrote.
Nelson’s news conference came after that exchange and injected a new, sensational accusation in the story.
She said Moore was a regular customer at the restaurant where she worked after school in Gadsden, Alabama.
One night when she was 16, Moore offered to drive her home, she said, but instead parked behind the restaurant and touched her breasts and locked the door to keep her inside. She said he squeezed her neck while trying to push her head toward his crotch and tried to pull her shirt off.
“I thought that he was going to rape me,” she said.
Moore finally stopped and as she got out of the car, he warned that no one would believe her because he was a county prosecutor, Nelson said. She said her neck was “black and blue and purple” the next morning and she immediately quit her job.
Nelson said that shortly before that, days before Christmas, she’d brought her high school yearbook to the restaurant and Moore signed it. A copy of her statement distributed at the news conference included a picture of what she said was his signature and a message saying, “To a sweeter more beautiful girl I could not say, ‘Merry Christmas.’”
Nelson said she told her younger sister about the incident two years later, told her mother four years ago and told her husband before they married. She said she and her husband supported Donald Trump for president.
Last Thursday, The Washington Post reported that in 1979 when he was 32, Moore had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl and pursued romantic relationships with three other teenage girls around the same period. The women made their allegations on the record and the Post cited two dozen other sources.
Moore has called the allegations “completely false and misleading,” but in an interview last week he did not unequivocally rule out dating teenage girls when he was in his early 30s.
Asked by conservative radio host Sean Hannity if that would have been usual for him, Moore said, “It would have been out of my customary behavior.”
He assured supporters Sunday night at a Huntsville, Alabama, gym that the Post article was “fake news” and “a desperate attempt to stop my political campaign.” He also said he would sue the newspaper.
McConnell, speaking Monday at an event in Louisville, Kentucky, acknowledged that a write-in effort by another candidate was possible. He said, “We’ll see,” when asked if the Republican alternative could be Sen. Luther Strange, whom Moore ousted in a September party primary.
But Strange told reporters late Monday “a write-in candidacy is highly unlikely.”
“I made my case during the election,” Strange said.
McConnell’s comment pushed him further than he’d gone last Thursday, when he said Moore should exit the race if the allegations were true.
The tumult comes with Republicans holding a scant 52-48 Senate majority..