This morning, I corresponded with a prominent Alabama attorney who reviewed the filings in Nelson’s 1999 divorce case. Based on those filings, the attorney insisted, Moore’s claims in the open letter are “completely disingenuous.” Nelson, this attorney told me, “was never before Moore,” since the divorce was not litigated. Rather, as court documents show, the divorce was filed, continued, and then dismissed. “These are all unilateral actions by the lawyer for the plaintiff,” the attorney went on. “A lawyer for the other side never even appeared. It is doubtful that these documents were even given to Nelson.” In any case, the attorney told me, Moore, whose signature is only on the motion for dismissal—not the original filing or motion to continue—had no actual discretion over the case.
“When an agreed motion to dismiss is filed, Moore would have no discretion and have to sign,” the attorney continued. “Most likely, he never even looked at the parties’ names and Beverly had a different last name by then anyway.” The attorney concluded, “Moore’s lawyer’s statement that Beverly Nelson was before Moore in court and never objected to this circumstance was a lie.”
As ThinkProgress noted earlier today, the claim that Moore made in his statement was reiterated by his attorneys on Wednesday evening. “As it turns out, in 1999, Ms. Nelson filed a divorce action against her then-husband, Mr. Harris,” the lawyer Phillip Jauregui said at a press conference. “Guess who that case was before? It was filed in Etowah County, and the judge assigned was Roy S. Moore, circuit judge of Etowah County. There was contact.” ThinkProgress reviewed the case file, and concluded that there was no contact.
Nelson’s divorce attorney, Rodney Ward, still practices in Gadsden. He concurred with this attorney’s analysis of Nelson’s divorce case. “I reviewed my file, and there was no hearing set in front of Judge Moore,” Ward told me this morning. “Looking at a copy of the order, it looks like Moore didn’t sign it. It looks like it was stamped by his assistant.” Had Beverly Nelson known who the presiding judge was, Ward went on, “my client would have filed a motion to have the judge recuse himself, to have a different judge appointed. So I don’t even think she knew who the judge was. It was only, like, sixty days from the time the divorce was filed to the time it was dismissed. Maybe ninety.” Ward concluded, “If Moore is claiming that she appeared in front of him, I do not believe that’s true.”
Hannity, meanwhile, seemed satisfied with Moore’s letter.
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When you think homosexuality should be illegal but you once tried to fuck a 14-year-old girl. #RoyMoore pic.twitter.com/tKn1QuN59T— Sky Palma (@DeadStateTweets) November 9, 2017
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Democrat Doug Jones has an 8-point lead over embattled Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama special Senate election, according to a new poll released Thursday that shows voters are equally divided on the accusations of sexual misconduct against the GOP nominee.
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Yesterday’s spite rally for Roy continues to reverberate as the guest list becomes known. For a pol who rejects outsiders’ telling him what to do, it’s interesting that 19 of 20 speakers in his two-hour hatefest were from out of state.
Among them, lunatic fringer Alan Keyes, who-after losing a 2004 Senate race to a guy called Obama, sought the Republican, Libertarian and Constitution Party nominations for president in 2008 and lost them all. Roy Moore, btw, flirted with the Constitution Party ticket in 2004. It’s the rump of the late Alabama segregationist’s 1968 vehicle, the American Independent Party (a later standard bearer was CA Congressman John G. Schmitz, whose daughter, Mary Kay LeTourneau, is another famous hebephile).
Another spittle-flecker at the Moore Moment was Concord, North Carolina’s Abort The Gays street preacher, Flip Benham, father of the twin bigot property flippers.
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White House: Only men who admit to sexual assault should be investigated for it
The administration stands by Trump's claim that all of his accusers are liars.
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Another zany proved how delusional gay Republicans are imagining acceptance by their party:
“We will be so marginalized, and ‘marginalized’ probably doesn’t even capture it. You can already see how hated we are. He has stood so strongly for the Ten Commandments and marriage between a man and a woman. The reason Drudge is so dreadful toward Moore is because Matt Drudge is a homosexual.” – American Family Association radio host Sandy Rios, doubtlessly referring to yesterday’s “JUDGE WHORE” headline on the Drudge Report.
A Minnesota state lawmaker is under fire for a tweet and subsequent apology that both personally attack a newly minted member of the Minneapolis City Council for being transgender.
Tuesday night, Andrea Jenkins became the first trans woman of color elected to a city’s governing body, winning a seat on the Minneapolis City Council. State Rep. Mary Franson responded Wednesday morning by tweeting, “A guy who thinks he’s a girl is still a guy with a mental health condition.” The tweet has since been deleted.
Thursday night, Franson issued an “apology,” wherein she reiterated her belief that no one can change their gender and refused “to go along with fantasy and participate in it”:
There are times I don’t practice kindness. For that I am sorry. While I do believe that one can’t change their gender based on their feelings, I didn’t need to tweet out my thoughts. God created man and woman but then sin entered the world and disrupted his perfect plan. He then sent His one and only son, Jesus, to take away our sins and to restore a broken relationship with God. I should have shown grace and not come across the way I did. For that I apologize. I do not apologize for not conforming to the PC world where I’m supposed to go along with fantasy and participate in it. This isn’t the first time I’ve offended the social justice warriors and it won’t be the last.
Tuesday night, Andrea Jenkins became the first trans woman of color elected to a city’s governing body, winning a seat on the Minneapolis City Council. State Rep. Mary Franson responded Wednesday morning by tweeting, “A guy who thinks he’s a girl is still a guy with a mental health condition.” The tweet has since been deleted.
Thursday night, Franson issued an “apology,” wherein she reiterated her belief that no one can change their gender and refused “to go along with fantasy and participate in it”:
There are times I don’t practice kindness. For that I am sorry. While I do believe that one can’t change their gender based on their feelings, I didn’t need to tweet out my thoughts. God created man and woman but then sin entered the world and disrupted his perfect plan. He then sent His one and only son, Jesus, to take away our sins and to restore a broken relationship with God. I should have shown grace and not come across the way I did. For that I apologize. I do not apologize for not conforming to the PC world where I’m supposed to go along with fantasy and participate in it. This isn’t the first time I’ve offended the social justice warriors and it won’t be the last.
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The GOP’s insistence on sexual orthodoxy causes eruptions in all sorts of ways. Josh Dugger, incest-loving spawn of Arkansas pol Jim Bob and his broodmare, leveraged a big policy job at Family Research Council to troll for whores online and go selfies with GOP presidential candidates.
Now it emerges that the Ohio family values legislator who got popped in a Far From Heaven office scene was also on Tony Perkins’ payroll, and was gay as a maypole, in a creepy, Congressman Mark Foley way (Foley is an apt exemplar of GOP sexual eccentricities: “Moore could agree to step down if elected, and allow the seat to be temporarily filled by Alabama’s Republican governor. This would be similar to the “punch Foley for Joe” campaign that Republican Joe Negron ran in 2006. After Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) left office due to an underage sexting scandal, Negron was unable to get his name on the ballot to replace Foley. So Negron urged his supporters to cast a vote for Foley in order to effectively leave the seat open for Negron. (It didn’t work; Democrat Tim Mahoney was elected to fill the seat.)”).
Rep. Wes Goodman turns out to be a true Foleyist:
On a fall evening two years ago, donors gathered during a conference at a Ritz-Carlton hotel near Washington to raise funds for a 31-year-old candidate for the Ohio legislature who was a rising star in evangelical politics.
Hours later, upstairs in a hotel guest room, an 18-year-old college student who had come to the event with his parents said the candidate unzipped his pants and fondled him in the middle of the night. The frightened teenager fled the room and told his mother and stepfather, who demanded action from the head of the organization hosting the conference.
“If we endorse these types of individuals, then it would seem our whole weekend together was nothing more than a charade,” the stepfather wrote to Tony Perkins, president of the Council for National Policy.
“Trust me . . . this will not be ignored nor swept aside,” replied Perkins, who also heads the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group. “It will be dealt with swiftly, but with prudence.”
That “rising star” was former Ohio state Rep. Wes Goodman, who resigned this week after being caught having sex with a man in his office.
Hours later, upstairs in a hotel guest room, an 18-year-old college student who had come to the event with his parents said the candidate unzipped his pants and fondled him in the middle of the night. The frightened teenager fled the room and told his mother and stepfather, who demanded action from the head of the organization hosting the conference.
“If we endorse these types of individuals, then it would seem our whole weekend together was nothing more than a charade,” the stepfather wrote to Tony Perkins, president of the Council for National Policy.
“Trust me . . . this will not be ignored nor swept aside,” replied Perkins, who also heads the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group. “It will be dealt with swiftly, but with prudence.”
That “rising star” was former Ohio state Rep. Wes Goodman, who resigned this week after being caught having sex with a man in his office.
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