After a fifth woman came forward to accuse Senate candidate Roy Moore of improper sexual advances on Monday, Moore held a press conference outside of a volunteer fire station in the small town of Gallant, Alabama, surrounded by his family, church members and supporters.
“I never did what she said I did. I don’t even know the woman, I don’t know anything about her,” he said. “If you look at the situation, you’ll see that because I’m 11 points ahead … this race being just 28 days off, that this is a political maneuver. It has nothing to do with reality. It’s all about politics.”
Moore’s remarks come after a woman named Beverly Young Nelson came forward with her attorney on Monday, alleging that Moore assaulted her and attempted to force her to have sex with him when she was just 16-years-old. Describing the alleged assault, Nelson said she thought Moore was going to rape her and that he told her no one would believe her if she came forward with her story.
“I want to make it perfectly clear. The people of Alabama know me, they know my character, they know what I’ve stood with in the political world for 40 years and I can tell you without hesitation, this is absolutely false,” Moore said Monday.
Moore’s wife, Kayla Moore, spoke out on Monday as well, saying her husband had “never one time lifted a finger to me” and called the accusations the “ugliest politics.”
“I’ve been married to this man for 32 years and we’ve been together for 33 altogether,” she said. “He has never one time lifted a finger to me. He is the most gentle, most kind man that I have ever known in my life. He’s godly, he’s loving and everybody in this community knows it. These are our church members, these are my family, these are my friends, these are people who know him just like I do. These things are false and it’s ugly. It’s the ugliest politics that I’ve ever seen in in my life.”
The mounting allegations against Moore began on Thursday with a bombshell report from The Washington Post where four woman came forward accusing Moore of improper sexual advances toward them when they were teenagers. One was 14 at the time, according to the Post’s reporting.
Watch a video of the press conference below:
