Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations

In November 2017, multiple women made allegations of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and the Republican nominee in the U.S. Senate special election scheduled for the following month.

[2] Prominent Republicans such as John McCain, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell called for Moore to drop out of the race after the allegations were reported.

[10][11] The Republican National Committee initially cut ties with Moore after the allegations were reported but later restored funding to his campaign.

[9] Moore lost the Senate special election to Democratic candidate Doug Jones in what was considered an upset in the deeply Republican state.

[13] On August 13, 2022, Roy Moore was awarded $8.2 million in a defamation lawsuit against the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC by a jury trial; the case is currently on appeal.

[14] On November 9, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Leigh Corfman alleged that Moore had initiated a sexual encounter with her in 1979, when she was 14 and he was 32 years old.

[20] Following the report about Corfman in The Washington Post, Beverly Young Nelson, appearing with lawyer Gloria Allred, said she had received unwanted attention from Moore when she was 15 years old.

But ThinkProgress and WHNT-TV in Huntsville reported that a different judge handled the initial matters in Nelson's 1999 divorce proceeding.

[33] On November 27, 2017, The Washington Post reported that a woman had approached them with a claim that Moore impregnated her at the age of 15 in 1992, and that she had an abortion afterward.

The woman was later seen at the New York office of Project Veritas, an organization that targets and attempts to entrap the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups.

[34] Also, Post reporters discovered a GoFundMe page on which someone with the same name as the woman said, "I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt [sic] of the liberal MSM.

[34] In 2018, the Post was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for its coverage of the allegations against Moore, including its exposé of the unsuccessful Project Veritas sting.

[40] Local news channel WBRC interviewed Barnes Boyle, a manager of the mall from 1981 to 1998, who said that, to his knowledge, Moore was not banned.

[42] Faye Gray, a retired detective, said that she had heard that Moore had been banned from the Gadsden Mall, and that she and fellow officers were told to ensure "that he didn't hang around the cheerleaders.

"[43] In November 2017, Gena Richardson, a registered Republican, was reported as saying that Moore had started pursuing her when she was a senior in high school, near her 18th birthday.

She said that during their dates, he provided bottles of Mateus Rosé wine and tropical cocktails, although the legal drinking age in Alabama at the time was 19.

"[39]Retired detective Faye Gray, a 37-year veteran of the Gadsden police force, said that in the 1980s, she was told to look out for Roy Moore due to his known harassment of cheerleaders at local school athletic events.

"[43] On November 10, Moore responded to the initial allegations by Corfman, Miller, Gibson, and Deason in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Radio.

[50] On November 15, Moore posted an open letter to Sean Hannity in which he wrote, "I adamantly deny the allegations of Leigh Corfman and Beverly Nelson, did not date underage girls, and have taken steps to begin a civil action for defamation."

In June 2019, Lexi Corfman's lawyers put forth an affidavit by Barry Colvert, an FBI interrogator with a long experience with polygraphs.

[58] Prominent Republicans such as John McCain and Mitt Romney called for Moore to drop out of the race after the allegations were reported.

[64] Days later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he believes the women who made the accusations and that Moore should "step aside".

[5] The White House initially said that President Donald Trump "believes that these allegations are very troubling" and that Moore should drop out of the race if they are true.

[74] Marion County Republican chair David Hall said that the accusations were irrelevant, presumably because the alleged crimes happened "40 years ago".

Bibb County Republican chair Jerry Pow said that he would support Roy Moore even if he committed a sex crime because he "wouldn't want to vote for Doug" Jones, the Democratic candidate.

[75] Covington County Republican party chairman William Blocker stated that he would still vote for Moore even if he had committed a sex crime.

[79] Some Republicans, including senators Lisa Murkowski and Orrin Hatch, floated the prospect of a write-in campaign to elect Luther Strange.

Stetzer added, "'If Moore continues to maintain his innocence, he should still step down so he can fight to clear his name, for the good of his state, for the success of his party, and to end the embarrassment he is causing evangelicals'".

"[98] A separate letter was signed by 59 Christian ministers, mostly from mainline Protestant denominations, who wrote that "Even before the recent allegations of sexual abuse, Roy Moore demonstrated that he was not fit for office.

Based on Christian beliefs, Brewbaker concluded that it was "wrong to attack one's critics, as Mr. Moore did recently on Twitter, as 'the forces of evil' and attribute their questions about serious allegations to 'a spiritual battle'".