Day 295: Alabama Republicans Line Up to Defend and Excuse Alleged Pedophile Running for Senate

One cited Jesus as the result of a successful relationship between a grown man and a child.

The Washington Post broke a major story yesterday about Alabama’s Republican Senate-nominee Roy Moore initiating a sexual encounter with a 14-year old girl back when he was a 32-year old assistant district attorney.

Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.

It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

Though Corfman was the youngest, Moore had a pattern of dating teenage girls.

Wendy Miller says she was 14 and working as a Santa’s helper at the Gadsden Mall when Moore first approached her, and 16 when he asked her on dates, which her mother forbade. Debbie Wesson Gibson says she was 17 when Moore spoke to her high school civics class and asked her out on the first of several dates that did not progress beyond kissing. Gloria Thacker Deason says she was an 18-year-old cheerleader when Moore began taking her on dates that included bottles of Mateus Rosé wine. The legal drinking age in Alabama was 19.

While the Moore campaign called the article a hit piece by the Post and the Democrats, Corfman supported Donald Trump.

Corfman, 53, who works as a customer service representative at a payday loan business, says she has voted for Republicans in the past three presidential elections, including for Donald Trump in 2016.

Even in the most cynical of times, one would think these allegations would be treated with horror and derision across the board. Indeed, many Republicans have publicly rebuked their nominee and asked him to immediately step down. (Though some, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), still have ringing endorsements of Moore on their websites, urging voters to elect someone who will “proudly defend Alabama values.”)

And then there are others, mostly alt-right nuts, Fox News hosts and Republicans in Alabama, that have taken a far, far more dangerous view of the Moore allegations. People who proudly propagated absurd conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and Uranium One, or who believed the credible allegations when they were against powerful men in Hollywood like Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey, are now implying (or outright asserting), at least when it comes to those against Republican candidates, that pedophilia allegations are just that: allegations.

You have the ones that proclaim that the claims are too old to matter.

The ones laser-focused on timing more than substance.

The ones that blame the publication who printed direct quotes from accusers and their friends and family.

“My gosh, it’s The Washington Post. If I’ve got a choice of putting my welfare into the hands of Putin or The Washington Post, Putin wins every time,” he said.

“This is going to make Roy Moore supporters step up to the plate and give more, work more and pray more.”

— Paul Reynolds, Republican National Committeeman from Alabama, as told to The Hill:

The ones that use the Vietnam War as some sort of strange attempt at mitigation.

The ones who implied that the accusers are being paid to lie.

And then there are just the ones from Alabama, who make up everything above and more.

Some Republicans see what’s happening to their party.

Trump, who publicly supported Luther Strange in the Republican primary, supported Moore after he secured the nomination.

Trump has yet to issue any statement regarding the allegations surrounding Moore.

295 days in, 1167 to go

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