In a Friday press conference, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred joined her client Beverly Young Nelson to beat back cries from Roy Moore’s camp that the now-famous yearbook inscription is a forgery. The presser follows a Friday morning ABC interview in which Nelson said that she added the date and location to the bottom of Moore’s signature.
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In the press conference held in Atlanta, Allred said that she enlisted forensic document expert, Arthur Anthony, to check out the signature and that Anthony confirmed that the signature belongs to Moore. The superstar attorney provided reporters with the expert’s report that included samples of Moore’s signature from the same time period when he was a district attorney in Alabama.
https://twitter.com/renzullicbs46/status/939211877284024325
Unfortunately, we don’t have a readout of Allred’s remarks and Anthony hardly seems to be an untouchable authority on handwriting analysis — searches bring up on scattered references to the forensic expert including his membership in the “Southeastern Association of Forensic Document Examiners.” However, there is no phone number listed for Anthony in that file.
RARE POV: Roy Moore is exactly the kind of candidate Steve Bannon can get behind
Supporters of Moore saw Young’s admission that she added the date as proof that the signature was a forgery. Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out a link to a story on the fringe-right blog “The Gateway Pundit” with the caption “I wonder if Gloria Allred told her to do that?” Roy Moore tweeted a list of people who claim that Young was lying with a link to a since-deleted tweet to Fox’s story on Young’s notations in the yearbook.
https://twitter.com/MooreSenate/status/939191085733175296
The special election is slated for Tuesday and the stakes could not be higher — another Trump-loyalist (like Moore) in the senate would give the populist wing of the party more strength. As Daniel DePetris wrote for Rare, a victory for Moore would also show that Steve Bannon’s grand plan for the Republican party is attainable as Bannon backed Moore from the beginning. Though they initially distanced themselves from him, the GOP has quietly put their money behind Moore in the fight against Democrat Doug Jones and President Trump will hold a rally in Florida, only a few miles from the Alabama border on Friday night. But for the next few days, the only voices that really matter are those of the Alabama electorate.