A New Twist In The Story Of Jewish Attorney Cited By Kayla Moore

Kayla Moore, the wife of failed Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, confirmed the identify of the lawyer to whom she was referring when she said “one of our attorneys is a Jew” at a December rally.

In an interview with Al.com, Martin Wishnatsky said he accepted Jesus Christ in the 1970s, and calls himself a Messianic Jew.

“I had an experience of the reality of God at 33,” Wishnatsky, 73, told the publication. “I knew God was real but I wasn’t sure who he was.”

Kayla Moore’s comment, one day before the special election in which Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) won his shocking victory, briefly took attention away from allegations that Roy Moore had pursued relationships with, and sexually assaulted, in some cases, teenagers when he was an assistant district attorney.

Wishnatsky’s interview with Al.com complicates Kayla Moore’s claim, to say the very least. Wishnatsky said his “background is 100 percent Jewish.” 

“You’re both,” the Liberty University Law School graduate told the outlet, asked if he was a Jew or a Christian. Wishnatsky said he first practiced Mormonism before attending an Evangelical Christian church for the first time and pursuing the faith.

“You’re a Jewish person that’s accepted Christ,” he continued. “Jesus was a Jew. Most Jews are not religious. That’s how I grew up. There are the Orthodox who are very serious about Judaism. It’s about whether you think God is real, and whether you’re accountable to him. It’s whether you take God seriously. It took me quite a few years to take God seriously.”

Wishnatsky served as a clerk for Roy Moore when Moore was chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, according to Al.com, before serving as a staff attorney for the court. He started as a staff attorney at Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law in 2016 after Moore was removed from office for ordering probate judges to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage, the outlet reported.

Wishnatsky told Al.com that he’d been served a total of 18 months in jails and prisons since the 1980s for protesting outside of abortion clinics, including by blocking the facilities’ entrances.