Roy Moore has hit back against claims that he gave a 14-year-old girl alcohol in 1979 and molested her, saying that the claims are ‘fake news’ intended to disrupt his Senate run.
Moore was accused by Leigh Corfman in a Washington Post article on Thursday, but outright denied the claims in a Veterans Day speech in Alabama on Saturday.
Instead, he said, the story was seeded by either Democrats or ‘the established Republicans’ in an attempt to derail the election, scheduled for December 12.
‘I think that a grown women would wait 40 years to come right before an election to bring charges is absolutely unbelievable,’ he said, to applause.
Denial: Roy Moore, 70, told an audience of veterans on Saturday that claims he molested a 14-year-old in 1979 were ‘fake news’ fabricated by ‘Democrats or established Republicans’
Moore said the allegations were ‘completely false and untrue’ in a speech to veterans of the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Outside, campaigners held signs denouncing him as a pedophile.
He characterized the Washington Post’s article about him as ‘an attack on moral law, myself and my wife’, saying that the paper also printed ‘distorted’ stories about his salary, and tax allegations.
Moore said Corfman’s claim that he kissed her, partially undressed her and made her touch him through his underwear when he was 32 were ‘a desperate attempt’ to stop his campaign.
He pointed to his history as a lawyer and judge, and said he has ‘the highest regard for the protection of young children’.
The Senate hopeful also said he was incredulous that the claims should appear just before the election.
‘Why now?’ he asked, saying that as someone who has been in the public eye for 40 years, he had been ‘investigated more than any other person in the country’.
Instead, he said ‘the Democrats and the Republican establishment’ were plotting against him, and that they are ‘desperate’ to ‘divert attention’ from issues like immigration and debt.
Moore also told a rambling anecdote about his wife Kayla (pictured). He goes up against Democrat Doug Jones in December for a Senate seat
He added that his team ‘do not intend to let the Democrats or the established Republicans or anybody else behind this story continue,’ and that there would be ‘revelations in the next few days.’
Moore preceded his statement with a bizarre and rambling speech in which, after thanking his allies, he remarked: ‘Go back to my wife – she is pretty, and I appreciate that.’
He then said: ‘Ladies sometimes put these masks on at night, and you wonder how they stay so pretty, but they put these masks on, I guess.’
Moore then went on to tell a rambling story about how his wife, Kayla, had told her granddaughter that the mask was to make her beautiful – and that the child, on seeing the mask washed off, asked: ‘Did you give up?’
Moore has had resistance from Republicans since the claims emerged.
On Friday, Senator John McCain tweeted: ‘The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying. He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of.’
But on Saturday President Donald Trump declined to comment on Moore’s story, saying he hadn’t ‘gotten to see too much’ about the story, adding that he was too busy to watch the news on TV.
The president, whose Twitter feed is filled with missives about Saturday Night Live and Fox News told reporters: ‘I don’t get to watch much television. Primarily because of documents. I’m reading documents. A lot.’
In a radio interview with Sean Hannity on Friday, Moore denied having any contact with Corfman.
‘I never talked to her, never had any contact with her,’ he said. ‘I never knew this woman I never met this woman and these charges are politically motivated.’
‘With regard to the other girls, you understand this is 40 years ago,’ he said, referring to the three other women named in the article – Wendy Miller, Debbie Wesson Gibson and Gloria Thacker Deason.
A crowd of protesters outside the building denounced him as a pedophile and demanded that Republicans not endorse him
They said that Moore, then in his 30s, pursued and kissed them when they were aged 16-18 – something they were flattered about at the time, but have since found troubling.
Moore admitted to knowing two of the girls but denied dating anyone as young as 16 or 17. The age for consent in Alabama is 16.
He said that ‘after my return from the military I dated a lot of young ladies. I do recognize however the names of two of these 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.
‘I don’t remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother,’ he said.