The attorney of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore held a press conference at 5:00 p.m. ET that smelled of total desperation just hours after a Republican poll surfaced showing him trailing Democrat Doug Jones by 12 points.
To quickly recap, let’s start with what Moore’s attorney, Phillip Jauregui, didn’t say: He didn’t give a flat-out denial of (or even mention) any of the allegations made against him by four women in a Washington Post report last week. He also didn’t directly deny the accusations made by a fifth woman, Beverly Young Nelson.
What he did say was that they working through the allegations and needed more time to process them.
Now, the allegations that have come out, I hope you understand, it takes time to work through this. We don't have a $20 million budget as a campaign. It takes time and we want to be correct. Make sure when we say something, it's proper.
He also tried to plant the seed of doubt in the minds of Alabama voters by questioning certain parts of the narrative of Moore’s fifth accuser, Beverly Young Nelson. In particular, Jauregui focused on the yearbook evidence Nelson and her attorney Gloria Allred presented in which Moore allegedly signed a note to Nelson, “Love, Roy Moore, D.A.” He suggested there were inconsistencies in the way Moore signed the book and demanded that Allred make the yearbook available to a “neutral custodian.”
We demand that you immediately release the yearbook to a neutral custodian so that our expert—you can send your expert as well, if you'd like to—so that our expert can look at it. Not a copy on the internet. The actual document so we can see the lettering. We can see the ink on the page. We can see the indentations and we can see how old is that ink?
Jauregui left without taking any questions. Roy Moore doesn’t appear to be going anywhere for the moment.
In the meantime...
Wednesday, Nov 15, 2017 · 10:47:50 PM +00:00 · Kerry Eleveld
UPDATE: Also from that AL.com article: “In 1982, Kelly Harrison Thorp was working as a hostess at the Red Lobster restaurant in Gadsden. She was 17 years old.”
Thorp said Moore asked her if she'd go out with him sometime.
"I just kind of said, 'Do you know how old I am?'" she recalled.
"And he said, 'Yeah. I go out with girls your age all the time.'"