The Senate Republican fundraising operation on Friday pulled out of a joint committee it had set up with Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore's campaign, after allegations that the former judge initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl nearly four decades ago.
Republican divisions are deepening over how to respond to the allegations, with national GOP leaders distancing themselves from Moore and calling for him to drop out of the race, while officials in Alabama have largely stood by the candidate.
Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday urged an immediate severing of party ties with Moore.
"Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections," Romney tweeted, before referring to the woman who had accused Moore of inappropriate sexual contact when she was 14. "I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside."
Romney joined his former rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in calling for Moore to step down immediately. Other Republican Senate leaders, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have called on Moore to step down on the condition that the reports prove to be true.
In an interview with conservative radio host Sean Hannity, Moore did not wholly rule out dating teenage girls when he was in his early 30s.
Asked if that would have been usual for him, Moore said, "Not generally, no."
He added, "I don't remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother." As for the encounter with 14-year-old Leigh Corfman, as described by Corfman in a Thursday Washington Post article, he said, "It never happened."
In the Post story, Corfman said Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her in 1979, when he was 32.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Friday to end its agreement -- set up in October -- with Moore.
Democrats familiar with the campaign being run by their nominee, Doug Jones, said no new ad buys or investments were planned to take advantage of the story.
Moore has said he plans to continue his campaign, and there has been no signal from the state Republican Party that it is seriously considering seeking to disqualify him from the Dec. 12 general election ballot. By Friday morning, Moore's allies were defending him and throwing doubt on his accusers, framing the story as a typical clash between conservatives and an untrustworthy media.
"What these women are doing is such a shame," said Alabama Republican state Rep. Ed Henry in a Friday interview with Huntsville station WVNN-AM. "As a father of two daughters, they discredit when women actually are abused and taken advantage of. They're not using their supposed experience to find justice. They're just using it as a weapon, a political weapon."
In a Friday interview with the Religion News Service, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. predicted that Moore will be vindicated.
"The same thing happened to President Trump a few weeks before his election last year except it was several women making allegations," Falwell said. "And I believe the judge is telling the truth."
Alabama's state auditor, Jim Ziegler, told The Washington Examiner that the women's claims were "much ado about nothing" and said Moore had done nothing "immoral or illegal." Alabama law, both in 1979 and now, finds that someone who is 19 or older and has sexual contact with someone between the ages of 12 and 16 is guilty of second-degree sex abuse.
Ziegler suggested that biblical stories offered a justification for the acts Moore is accused of committing. He compared Moore to the biblical Joseph, saying, "Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus."
In its report published Thursday, the Post detailed the allegations against Moore by the then-14-year-old and three other girls who were between the ages of 16 and 18 when they said the incidents occurred.
None of the women sought out the Post. While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore's Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls.
Over the ensuing three weeks, two Post reporters contacted and interviewed the four women. All were initially reluctant to speak publicly but chose to do so after multiple interviews, saying they thought it was important for people to know about their interactions with Moore. The women say they don't know one another.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael Scherer and David Weigel of The Washington Post; by Steve Peoples, Kimberly Chandler, Alan Fram, Thomas Beaumont and Brynn Anderson of The Associated Press; and by Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times.
A Section on 11/11/2017