Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore said a lawsuit against the Washington Post is imminent after it published allegations from four women who claim he pursued romantic or sexual relationships with them as teenage girls while he was in his 30’s.
Calling the bombshell Post story “a desperate attempt to stop my political campaign,” Moore, who is 70 years old, said the news outlet will be sued in response during a campaign rally Sunday in Huntsville, Ala., according to the Associated Press.
The Post report, published Thursday, contains an allegation of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old in 1979, which Moore has vehemently denied.
Though his initial reaction to the Post piece was to say, “this garbage is the very definition of fake news,” Moore has been less clear about the other allegations in the report, having not ruled out that he dated other teenage girls when he was in his 30’s. He claimed Friday in a radio interview he “generally” does not remember dating girls that young.
Moore, a longtime Alabama state judge, defeated Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP primary in September. Strange had been the preferred candidate of Steve Bannon and President Trump. The general election contest, which aims to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Sessions when he was picked to be Trump’s attorney general, is scheduled for Dec. 12. The Democrat in the race is Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney.
Moore’s effort has also hemorrhaged GOP support from key lawmakers since the Post report came out.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., urged Moore to drop out of the special election on Saturday in favor of a write-in campaign for Strange Other top Republicans, like Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have called on Moore to resign.
Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Steve Daines of Montana un-endorsed Moore on Friday. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., renounced his support of Moore on Saturday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was more cautious, saying Thursday that if the allegations are proven true Moore “must step aside.”
Moore is not without defenders. Notably, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who endorsed Moore, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the Post report goes “deeper than politics — it’s about trying to destroy a man’s life.”
Bannon appears to be going all-in on the effort as it was reported this weekend that his conservative news outlet, Breitbart News, is sending two reporters to Alabama to do reporting in an effort to discredit the Post report.
