Roy Moore Finds a Rival From Afar: Gloria Allred
December 2, 2017 by admin
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“I think she has provided a convenient excuse for Republicans to look the other way, and that’s unfortunate,” Elizabeth BeShears, a Republican communications consultant, said. “Because Roy’s camp has turned this conversation into being about Gloria Allred,” she added, the stories of the accusers “are getting buried.”
For Mr. Moore, a former State Supreme Court chief justice who was effectively removed from the bench twice over debates about the Ten Commandments and same-sex marriage, the tactics are those of political preservation in the closing weeks of a race he was favored to win. But the contest, to fill the seat that Jeff Sessions held before he became United States attorney general, was upended when nine women accused Mr. Moore of unwanted advances or sexual assault. One woman, Beverly Young Nelson, made her claim at a news conference in New York alongside Ms. Allred.
Mr. Moore’s campaign began attacking Ms. Allred before the news conference even began, when the campaign chairman, Bill Armistead, called her “a sensationalist leading a witch hunt.” In the weeks since, Mr. Moore has used his Twitter account to point to Ms. Allred’s refusal thus far to allow an independent party to review a yearbook belonging to Ms. Nelson, which, she and Ms. Allred said, contains an inscription written by Mr. Moore around the time of the alleged assault in the 1970s.
“Good Morning, Alabama!” Mr. Moore wrote Friday, in what has become almost a daily ritual. “Day 17 of attorney Gloria Allred’s refusal to turn over her fake yearbook for third party examination.”
In making Ms. Allred a foil, political strategists said Mr. Moore’s campaign had made a calculation tied to a fundamental of Alabama politics: Voters recoil when they sense someone from out of state is seeking to push them one way or another.
“I don’t know that you could say she’s toxic, but she has a reputation of being a self-promoter and a lawyer who shows up with high visibility clients,” said John D. Saxon, an employment and discrimination lawyer in Birmingham who was the chairman of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns in Alabama. “The same way people in Alabama don’t want outsiders telling them how to vote, there’s a resentment for that kind of person and, frankly, for that kind of lawyer sometimes.”
Indeed, Mr. Moore’s overarching strategy, besides stoking conservative anger on issues like transgender rights, seems to clash with other national figures, including Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader who called on him to drop out of the race. Late this week, after a character from Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show disrupted a church campaign event for Mr. Moore, the candidate urged Mr. Kimmel to come to Alabama himself.
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“Despite D.C. and Hollywood Elites’ bigotry towards southerners, Jimmy, we’ll save you a seat on the front pew,” Mr. Moore wrote on Twitter.
But Ms. Allred has been the target of the campaign’s ire for longer. Ms. Allred, 76, has never shied away from controversy, and became one of the country’s best-known lawyers by taking on high-profile cases relating to abortion, gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment beginning in the 1970s.
In a telephone interview, Ms. Allred brushed aside criticisms of her involvement in Alabama and her influence on the Senate race.
“Democrats and the Democratic Party don’t tell me who I should have as a client and what my strategy should be, nor are Republicans permitted to tell me,” she said. “I mean, they can opine, but I don’t take my directions from any party or any person. The only person I serve is my client.”
“I’m a civil rights attorney, I’m a women’s rights attorney,” Ms. Allred said. “Rights for women and minorities are often not popular. Those who advocate for them are sometimes castigated.”
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Most of the complaints about Ms. Nelson’s allegations come back to the yearbook that spawned a mix of amateur analyses and conspiracy theories. Mr. Moore and his allies have repeatedly questioned the veracity of the inscription, claiming there are discrepancies between Mr. Moore’s alleged signature and other words that follow in the inscription.
Ms. Allred, who has refused repeated requests by The New York Times and other news organizations to examine Ms. Nelson’s yearbook, said that she would only release it to congressional investigators if a hearing is convened about the allegations against Mr. Moore. A hearing, she said, would offer “a dignified venue where there is testimony that accompanies the examination of all of the evidence.”
Pressed over whether she could guarantee the authenticity of the yearbook, Ms. Allred did not answer directly. She would not comment about whether she had commissioned her own review of the yearbook.
“The most important witnesses in all of this are Beverly, and Roy Moore,” Ms. Allred said. “Why won’t he subject himself to cross-examination and testimony under oath?”
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Glen Browder, an emeritus professor at Jacksonville State University and a former Democratic congressman from Alabama, said Mr. Moore and his supporters have seized on Ms. Allred, and the yearbook, to bolster their arguments that allegations against Mr. Moore are an unfair attack.
Other experts said many voters had already made up their minds. The distrust of the allegations was already there, said Joseph Smith, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama.
And some women in Alabama are simply grateful Ms. Allred has taken up the cause. “When I see Gloria Allred and she’s beside someone, it verifies their creditably,” said Sheila Gilbert, the chairwoman of the Calhoun County Democratic Party.
As the lingering questions about the yearbook have become fodder for conservative outlets — including Breitbart News, where the executive chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, is a vocal supporter of Mr. Moore — they have also begun to exasperate some supporters of Mr. Jones.
“Frankly, I think it should be produced,” said U. W. Clemon, a retired federal judge who supports Mr. Jones. “Any corroboration that will put to rest a claim that he does not know this woman would be very helpful.”
For Julie Lowe, 56, a bartender, the doubts about Ms. Allred, whom she finds “fishy,” were enough to cut through her confusion over the allegations against Mr. Moore.
“I think it’s kind of trying to sabotage him,” Ms. Lowe, an independent voter, said. “He’ll most likely get my vote.”
Ms. Allred, for her part, said that the attacks reflect attitudes about accusations of sexual misconduct, and that she did not regret the approach she has taken.
“Is it popular in some places for some people in Alabama to care about women over the denial of a powerful man?” she said. “Maybe not, O.K.? But Beverly is now empowered. The women are empowered. There’s no going back now.”
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Trump Rejects Reports That His Top Diplomat is Departing
December 2, 2017 by admin
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Mr. Trump had also sidestepped questions on Thursday about Mr. Tillerson’s future. “He’s here. Rex is here,” Mr. Trump said then, in an underwhelming display of support that did not challenge the reports of Mr. Tillerson’s pending departure.
By Friday morning, Mr. Tillerson told reporters at the State Department during a brief appearance with Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of Libya that the reports were “laughable.” He then headed to the White House for two meetings with Mr. Trump, including a lunch with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — one of Mr. Tillerson’s allies. The president tweeted after those meetings.
Despite his years as a reality-TV star who routinely issued the line, “You’re fired,” Mr. Trump has struggled with ousting his staff, even after he has chosen to do so. Two White House advisers said the president ultimately decided on Friday to bolster Mr. Tillerson with the tweet to avoid undermining his chief diplomat right before he heads overseas to work on a host of global crises.
Mr. Tillerson is leaving for Europe on Monday on a weeklong trip, when he will attend a NATO meeting in Brussels and then fly to Vienna for a discussion at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe about the yearslong unrest in Ukraine.
The two White House advisers insisted, however, that Mr. Tillerson is expected to leave sometime in January.
In the plan revealed on Thursday, Mr. Tillerson would be succeeded by Mike Pompeo, currently the C.I.A. director, who is more closely aligned with Mr. Trump on a series of important foreign policy matters. Mr. Tillerson’s refusal to resign despite his disagreements with Mr. Trump — and the president’s reported dislike for the diplomat — may have been the reason senior administration officials leaked Mr. Kelly’s plan this week to replace him.
Mr. Tillerson had previously and repeatedly denied reports of his impending departure, even going so far as to hold a news conference in October to say, “There’s never been a consideration in my mind to leave.”
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The debate over Mr. Tillerson’s status is the latest outgrowth of a White House that has been beset by internal battles, high-level departures, indictments of two top former campaign officials and guilty pleas from a former national security adviser and a campaign adviser. All have contributed to a generalized sense of chaos that shows few signs of abating, even as the administration nears the completion of its first year in power.
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Mr. Tillerson is a phlegmatic former chief executive of Exxon Mobil whose personal net worth is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. His continued service to a White House that so obviously wants him gone has led to something of a cottage industry of speculation in Washington about his reasons for remaining.
One theory, frequently repeated at the State Department, is that an early departure would cost Mr. Tillerson millions of dollars in taxes for assets he sold to take the diplomatic post. Tax experts have dismissed this notion.
After being nominated, Mr. Tillerson was granted a so-called Certificate of Divestiture that allowed him to sell off Exxon stock without having to immediately pay capital gains taxes on those holdings. Two lawyers involved in issuing these documents said that the federal law creating this process — which is intended to eliminate a disincentive to qualified individuals joining the government — has no provision to withdraw this benefit, assuming that Mr. Tillerson completed the sale of his stocks before he left his government job.
The ethics agreement that Mr. Tillerson signed in January, after he was nominated, indicated that he planned to complete the sale of his Exxon stock and other potentially problematic stock assets within 90 days of his confirmation. As long as Mr. Tillerson followed that plan, the timing of his resignation would have no impact on his tax liability, the lawyers said.
It is also believed that Mr. Tillerson has become so wedded to a State Department reorganization that he launched earlier this year that he will not leave until it is in place. That is expected to occur early next year.
Mr. Tillerson has said the reorganization is his highest priority. He intends to slash the State Department’s personnel by 8 percent and its budget by 31 percent. The cuts are needed, he has said many times, because many of the world’s conflicts will soon be resolved. This view is dismissed as naïve both within the State Department and the broader foreign policy community.
Mr. Tillerson has made clear he has little use for much of the day-to-day diplomacy conducted by his work force. Diplomats across the State Department spent much of Thursday and Friday checking their phones for news announcing Mr. Tillerson’s departure.
His personal press aide, R.C. Hammond, is expected to leave his post this month, according to three people in the department with direct knowledge of the situation and who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.
Mr. Hammond denied he would be leaving soon.
“You are not so lucky,” Mr. Hammond wrote in an email. “You still get to work with me.”
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