EXCLUSIVE: Roy Moore to Sue The New Yorker for Defamation
Peter D'Abrosca
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Judge Roy Moore, who narrowly lost the 2017 Alabama U.S. Senate Special Election, plans to sue The New Yorker for defamation for falsely claiming that he had been banned from the Gadsden Mall in the 1980’s.
Johnny Davis, a former criminal defense attorney who currently runs an international and Constitutional law consulting firm, told Big League Politics by email that Moore plans to sue the magazine after his defamation suit against Highway 31, the Democratic Super PAC that funded anti-Moore billboards claiming he had been banned from the mall. Davis actively worked on cases when Moore was the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and knows the Judge personally.
According to Davis, The New Yorker ran the story “after the Mall Manger [sic] and Security Manager during the period in question denounced the story as entirely false.”
“This past weekend, I spoke or messaged with more than a dozen people—including a major political figure in the state—who told me that they had heard, over the years, that Moore had been banned from the mall because he repeatedly badgered teen-age girls,” the magazine said on Nov. 13, 2017. “Some say that they heard this at the time, others in the years since. These people include five members of the local legal community, two cops who worked in the town, several people who hung out at the mall in the early eighties, and a number of former mall employees.”
Moore has always maintained his innocence in the face of the allegations against him. His primary accuser, Leigh Corfman, who the Judge is also suing for defamation, has never signed a sworn affidavit declaring that Moore sexually abused her. Instead, she only spoke with reporters at The Washington Post.
“What we have to believe [in order] to believe Corfman’s story is that essentially Roy Moore grew up behaving himself, went to West Point and showed exemplary character there, served in Vietnam, went to law school, started practicing, in his early 30’s was a sexual predator for a while, and then was never a sexual predator again,” Davis told Big League Politics in an earlier phone interview.
“That’s not how it works,” he continued. “You don’t have an isolated year, 40 years ago of sexually predatory behavior. The pathology does not work that way.”
Davis also noted Corfman’s claim that the pair had a relationship of a sexual nature, but never had intercourse. The statute of limitations has run on any potential crimes with which Corfman could press charges against Moore. If she had claimed that the pair had had intercourse, he said, the statute of limitations would not have run. She would still be able to press charges against him to this day, and would have to face questions as to why she has not done so.
In that vein, Davis also said that it is highly implausible that an alleged sexual predator would act in a predatory nature, but stop acting in that nature before having intercourse with his victim.
Looking at all the facts together, Davis said that Corfman’s story simply does not add up, and that she likely will not be able to face cross-examination without perjuring herself.
For their part, The New Yorker followed up their pre-election piece about the alleged mall ban with a satirical piece claiming that Moore was headed to the Gadsden Mall to “cheer himself up” after his election loss.
The Judge might just get the last laugh.
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