Congressman Mo Brooks (shown), who lost to Judge Roy Moore in the Republican primary of the U.S. Senate race in Alabama, declared on Tuesday that the woman who claims Moore wrote in her high school yearbook in 1977 is “clearly a liar.”
“What you have is the mainstream left-wing 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, a former prosecutor, said during an appearance on an Alabama radio program, The Dale Jackson Show.
Brooks finished third in the Republican primary, but quickly endorsed Moore in the run-off against Senator Luther Strange, who was considered the candidate of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and much of the Republican Establishment.
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Beverly Young Nelson showed her high school yearbook to reporters at a news conference a few weeks ago, in an effort to support her claim that Moore sexually assaulted her in the parking lot of a restaurant in 1977, when she was just 16 years old. At the time of the alleged incident, Moore was 32 years old. The yearbook included an inscription, allegedly written by Roy Moore, that stated, “To a sweeter more beautiful girl, I could not say, ‘Merry Christmas.” Love, Roy Moore DA, 12-22-77, Olde Hickory House.”
Moore denied that he wrote this inscription in Nelson’s yearbook.
“I believe tampering has occurred,” Moore wrote in an open letter to Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Brooks has reached the same conclusion, and explained why. “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. There are only two that have asserted that Roy Moore engaged in unlawful conduct.”
Brooks added, “One of those [Nelson] 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.”
The Moore campaign has challenged the yearbook inscription, demanding that Nelson’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, allow the yearbook to be subjected to handwriting analysis, arguing that the signature does not match that of Moore. Philip Jauregi, Moore’s attorney, said, “We demand that you immediately release the yearbook to a neutral custodian, so that we can see the ink on the page, we can see the indentations, and we can see how old is that ink. Is it 40 years old or is it a week old?”
Allred has flatly refused to do so, offering to “loan” the book to a U.S. Senate committee, but only after the election. In other words, if Moore loses, largely as a result of these accusations, no neutral third party would be allowed to examine the yearbook. Moore will have lost the election, his reputation would be damaged, but the yearbook — the only physical evidence offered thus far against Moore — will never have been examined by a neutral third party.
Appearing on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Allred was asked if the signature could have been forged. She responded, “Well, all I’m saying is, we will permit an independent examiner of the writing…. We will allow this to be asked and answered at the [Senate] hearing.” When Blitzer shot back, “But that’s not an answer, Gloria,” Allred responded, “Well, all I’m saying is, we’re not denying, we’re not admitting, we’re not addressing. We will not be distracted.”
Jauregi questioned whether Nelson might have used Moore’s signature from her 1999 divorce case, in which Judge Moore signed the order of dismissal, to forge his signature in the yearbook. Interestingly, in the order of dismissal, “D.A.” appears after Moore’s name. Jauregi explained that D.A. were the initials of Judge Moore’s assistant at the time, who would routinely initial the judge’s signature in court documents.
In Nelson’s yearbook, “D.A.” also appears after Moore’s alleged signature, with the implication that Moore added those two letters to indicate that he was the Etowah County district attorney. But at the time, Moore was deputy district attorney, not district attorney. Nelson has claimed that the reason she had allegedly had Moore get into the car with her outside the restaurant was because she felt safe with Moore, him being the district attorney.
Moore told Hannity, “The ‘7s’ in ‘Christmas 1977’ are in noticeably different script than the ‘7s’ in the date ’12-22-77.’ I believe tampering has occurred. Are we at a stage in American politics in which false allegations can overcome a public record of 40 years, stampede the media and politicians to condemn an innocent man, and potentially impact an election of national importance?”
Brooks clearly agrees with Moore’s protestations of innocence, noting that only two of the nine accusers have alleged “unlawful conduct” on the part of Moore and that “the other seven ladies … said that he [Moore] acted like an officer and a gentleman.” Brooks added: “And you look at the preponderance of the evidence and then you add Roy Moore’s denial in it; 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.”
Photo of Rep. Mo Brooks: AP Images
