Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks said Tuesday that a woman who accused Republican nominee for US Senate Roy Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16 is “clearly a liar.”
The woman, Beverly Young Nelson, now 56, showed reporters at a news conference earlier this month what she said was Moore’s inscription in her yearbook in 1977, which read, “To a sweeter more beautiful girl, I could not say, ‘Merry Christmas.’ Love, Roy Moore DA, 12-22-77, Olde Hickory House.” Moore has denied writing the inscription and his lawyer Philip L. Jauregui demanded earlier this month that Nelson and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, hand over the yearbook to be examined by a third party. Allred said Tuesday that they’d only do so if the Senate holds a hearing on Moore and the former Alabama Chief Justice testifies.
Brooks, who said Tuesday that he voted for Moore in the Alabama Senate race, said in a radio interview the yearbook inscription was forged and that the accusations against Moore were political attacks that would not lead to a jury conviction in a court.
“What you have is the mainstream leftwing socialist Democrat news media trying to distort the evidence to cause people to reach the conclusion that Roy Moore engaged in unlawful conduct with a minor and my analysis of the evidence is that is not the case,” Brooks said on “The Dale Jackson Show” on WVNN Alabama radio. “Most importantly, the media likes to say ‘well, there are nine complainers.’ Seven of them aren’t complainers. In fact, I would be calling seven of those ladies as witnesses on behalf of Roy Moore on the issue of whether he is engaged in any kind of unlawful conduct.”
He continued, “There are only two that have asserted that Roy Moore engaged in unlawful conduct. One of those is clearly a liar because that one forged the ‘love, Roy Moore’ part of a yearbook in order to try to for whatever reason get at Roy Moore and win this seat for the Democrats and there’s a lot more to it as to why I believe that the evidence is almost incontrovertible about whether the yearbook was forged.”
Several top Republicans in Washington have called on Moore to drop out of the race, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Moore continues to draw support, however, including from President Donald Trump, who has pointed to Moore’s denials of the allegations and said that the US Senate doesn’t need another liberal Democrat, in reference to Moore’s opponent, Doug Jones.
Brooks went on in the radio interview to assert that the account of another one of Moore’s accusers, who told The Washington Post earlier this month that Moore assaulted her when she was 14, was undermined by the stories of other women who said Moore dated them as an adult when they were in their teens.
“So, now you’re down to one witness who said that Roy Moore engaged in nonconsensual sexual contact, okay?” he said. “Well, that one witness’ testimony is in direct and stark contrast with that of the other seven ladies, who said that he acted like an officer and a gentleman. And you look at the preponderance of the evidence and then you add Roy Moore’s denial and you add his long deeply held Christian beliefs and I just don’t think there’s any way in the world that a jury would agree with the assertions of The Washington Post and others that are trying to make us believe in the state of Alabama that we would be electing a pedophile.”
