Judge Roy Moore has categorically denied even speaking to Leigh Corfman, who claims he dated her and touched her inappropriately when she was just 14 years old in 1979.
‘I never talked to her, never had any contact with her,’ Moore told radio host Sean Hannity on his radio show Friday.
‘I never knew this woman I never met this woman and these charges are politically motivated,’ he said of the bombshell reports that appeared in the Washington Post just weeks before his election for an Alabama Senate seat.
‘I have never known this woman,’ he said.
‘I had nothing to do with this. This is a completely manufactured story made to defraud this campaign,’ Moore said.
Judge Roy Moore, a far-right candidate for U.S. Senate backed by Steve Bannon, is seeing his political future crumble away, as a number of women have come forward and alleged Moore preyed on them as teens
Moore also said his conduct was always appropriate when he was dating, and contested elements of claims made by other women quoted in the story who said he tried to date them when they were teens.
‘These allegations are completely false and misleading,’ Moore told Hannity, who gave a sympathetic interview.
‘It hurts me personally,’ Moore said, noting that he is a father and grandfather. ‘I have a special concern for the protection of young ladies,’ Moore said.
Moore also disputed elements of the Post report that say he dated girls as young as 16 and 17 who he met at the Gadsden Alabama mall when he was in his early 30s.
‘I don’t remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother,’ Moore said at one point.
He did allow: ‘After my return from the military I dated a lot of young ladies.’
‘In their statements that they made these two young girls say their mothers actually encouraged them to be friends with me, that’s what they said,’ Moore told the host.
‘I don’t remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother,’ he said.
Hannity pressed him on whether he had ever dated girls 16 or 17 years old. Albama’s age of consent remains 16.
He said he has ‘never’ dated such a young girl.
‘It would have been out of my customary behavior that’s right,’ Moore said.
Moore slammed the report on Sean Hannity’s radio show
He also said his campaign is doing its own investigation, and hinted that his accusers were working with Democrats. ‘We have some evidence of some collusion here,’ he said.
Speaking about the case before he had Moore on his show, Hannity said he woudl not ‘rush to judgement.’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there 38 years ago. Nor does anybody else who is convicting him,’ said Hannity.
‘I’m not willing to rush to judgement. I’m willing to listen to both sides,’ Hannity said.
Hannity raised doubts about Moore’s accusers immediately after their on-the-record accusations appeared – and later apologized for his word choices.
‘You’ve got the establishment — they hate Roy Moore,’ Hannity said Thursday. ‘Roy Moore, to them, is another Ted Cruz, another Mike Lee, somebody they can’t control.’
‘Do some people do it for political reasons?’ he asked.
Hannity tweeted Thursday that he was ‘not totally clear’ in his immediate defense of Moore on Thursday.
Hannity apologized afterward.
‘As I said on TV tonight, I apologize when I misspoke and was not totally clear earlier today. It’s really sad when the lazy media in this country cuts and pastes a deceptive and out of context comment by a Soros funded radical left-wing group that has purposefully taken me out of context for years,’ he said, in reference to Media Matters, which sent out his comments.
‘My comments on the topic of Judge Moore were clear and unambiguous both on radio and on TV, if people would do their own research and reporting. People need to listen to the totality of my remarks if they care about the truth. I interview guests of all points of view, but I speak for myself,’ Hannity said.
The GOP’s 2012 nominee for president, Mitt Romney, became the latest Republican to say Alabama Senate hopeful Roy Moore should get out.
‘Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections,’ Romney tweeted Friday morning. ‘I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside.’
Both Alabama and Washington, D.C., were rocked yesterday when the Washington Post put out a story documenting the stories of multiple women who were pursued by Moore, sexually, while they were in their teens.
Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney leveled likely the harshest criticism at Roy Moore yet, calling him ‘unfit for office’ and suggesting he ‘step aside’
Mitt Romney voiced his opinion in a tweet, sent out Friday morning, noting that he believed the woman’s account in the Washington Post
Leigh Corfman’s account led the story, as she explained how as a 14-year-old a 32-year-old Moore, a district attorney at the time, asked for her telephone number outside an Etowah County, Alabama, courtroom, telling Corfman’s mother he would look after the teen as her mother attended a child custody hearing.
Moore soon called on the underage girl, took her to his house and kissed her.
The second time they went, he took off his clothes and hers, touched her over her bra and panties and guided her to do the same to him.
The details were corroborated by Corfman’s friends from that era, along with her mother who learned about the interactions with Moore more than a decade later.
Other women who had similar, underage, encounters with Moore also spoke out.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who had supported Moore’s primary opponent, incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, in the special election’s GOP primary said Thursday that if the allegations were true it was time for Moore to ‘step aside.’
Also on Thursday, Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, said Moore needed to ‘immediately step aside.’
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trump ‘believes if allegations are true [Moore] will do the right thing and step aside.’
A day later, and he still hasn’t.
Using a card from the Trump playbook, he’s labeled the allegations fake news, even sending a fundraising plea out addressing them.
‘The Obama-Clinton machine’s liberal media lapdogs just launched the most vicious and nasty round of attacks against me I’ve EVER had,’ Moore wrote in the email, asking for support from ‘God-fearing Christians like you.’
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, speaking to an audience in New Hampshire on Thursday, drew parallels between the Post’s reporting on Moore and the paper’s release in October of last year of the infamous Access Hollywood ‘p****’ tape, which practically derailed Trump’s presidential campaign.
He spoke of the link in a conspiratorial way.
‘But it’s interesting, the Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped that dime on Donald Trump, is the same Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped the dime this afternoon on Judge Roy Moore,’ he said.
In last month’s primary, Moore was the candidate backed by Bannon, who split from his ex-boss, the president, who had backed the McConnell-approved Strange.
Strange had been appointed by Alabama’s governor to take the seat that was vacated by now Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
But Bannon wanted to see the more conservative Moore in the seat as he’s started waging his war against GOP Senate incumbents, who Bannon blames for the president’s inability to get any major legislation passed in the almost 10 months since Trump’s swearing-in.
In a way, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie’s loss Tuesday night, was a Bannon win, proving that a candidate can’t only be halfway in when it comes to Trump.
Gillespie had used some of Trump’s messaging to his advantage, though also kept the unpopular president a distance away.
He was creamed by his opponent, Democrat Ralph Northam.
However, come Thursday, now Bannon’s meddling seems like a bad decision again, as Strange would have easily won in next month’s general election, as Alabama is pretty solidly a red state.
Moore is set to compete against Democrat Doug Jones in a special election slated for December 12, 2017 – just 32 days away.
Alabama’s Secretary of State John Merrill said on CNN yesterday that under Alabama law Moore’s name can’t be removed from the ballot, though the state GOP could ask Merrill to disqualify Moore.
Merrill suggested to CNN’s Erin Burnett that the allegations leveled against Moore could indeed be disqualifying.