Roy Moore’s vintage signature in an accuser’s yearbook had become the most visual proof that the sex abuse allegations against the Alabama Senate candidate from five women are true.
So his attorney, Phillip Jauregui, called its authenticity into question today.
At a Birmingham press conference Wednesday afternoon, Jauregui floated a theory of how Beverly Young Nelson, who accused Moore of attempted rape, could have faked the signature, which is supposed to be from December 1977.
Roy Moore’s lawyer Phillip Jauregui spoke to reporters Wednesday afternoon and called into question the authenticity of a signature found in a sex assault accuser’s yearbook, tying the Alabama Senate hopeful to the victim
Alabama Senate hopeful Roy Moore said he’s staying in the U.S. Senate race, despite pressure to drop out from fellow Repubicans over five women accusing him of sexual misdeeds
Jauregui first noted that Nelson was wrong when she said she had no further contact with Moore after the incident, which she alleged happened several weeks after the signing of her high school year book, when she was 16 and the candidate was in his 30s.
In 1999, Moore’s lawyer noted that Nelson had filed a divorce action against her husband.
‘Guess who that case was before?’ Jauregui said. ‘It was filed in Etowah County and the judge who signed it was Roy S. Moore, circuit judge of Etowah County.’
‘There was contact,’ he noted.
As for the yearbook, Jauregui asked the journalists on hand, and the greater American audience, to look more closely at the signature, suggesting a difference in how the ‘7’s were written, along with the line ‘Old Hickery House,’ which Nelson said Moore wrote, as it was her place of employment at the time.
‘Judge Moore says there’s no way in the world that’s his handwriting,’ his lawyer protested.
At the end of the yearbook John Hancock, there are the initials ‘D.A,’ which accuser Nelson and her attorney Gloria Allred say stand for ‘district attorney,’ Moore’s position at the time.
‘Well he wasn’t, he was the assistant district attorney,’ Jauregui first said.
‘Judge Moore says he can’t ever remember ever signing his name with D.A. after it, but he had seen it before,’ the lawyer went on. ‘You know where he had seen it?’
Jauregui explained that Moore’s assistant in the late 90s had the initials ‘D.A.’ and would sign his initials alongside legal documents he would stamp with Moore’s signature.
‘That’s exactly how the signature appears on the divorce decree that Judge Moore signed dismissing the divorce action with Miss Nelson,’ Jauregui said.
He then called out Nelson and Allred.
‘Do you still hold that everything written in that yearbook was written by Judge Moore or was it written by somebody else?’ he asked. ‘That’s not an allegation, it’s a question.’
Moore’s attorney said the only way to settle this dispute is to allow the yearbook to go into the hands of a ‘neutral custodian’ and have experts take a look.
Jauregui suggested those handwriting experts would be able to date the ink used.
‘Is it 40 years old or is it a week old?’ he asked. ‘Release the yearbook,’ he demanded.