You remember the Roy Moore debacle, I’m sure. Moore is the sleazy former judge and former Senate candidate who lost a Republican seat in Alabama. We don’t have to back over all that I hope.
Well there’s a new wrinkle in the news this week. Turns out Eddie Sexton, a lawyer for chief Roy Moore accuser Leigh Corfman, was offered ten grand to dump her as a client and say he didn’t believe her. And the payola was connected to Breitbart. That’s what he’s claiming anyway.
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The story comes from the Washington Post, a virulently anti-Trump paper that has in the past been wrong, but which was pretty much dead-on during the Moore scandal, even successfully not falling for a sting operation organized by Project Veritas.
Here’s what the Post says:
Days after a woman accused U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual impropriety, two Moore supporters approached her attorney with an unusual request.
They asked lawyer Eddie Sexton to drop the woman as a client and say publicly that he did not believe her. The damaging statement would be given to Breitbart News, then run by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon.
In exchange, Sexton said in recent interviews, the men offered to pay him $10,000 and promised to introduce him to Bannon and others in the nation’s capital. Parts of Sexton’s account are supported by recorded phone conversations, text messages and people in whom he confided at the time.
As Allahpundit notes at Hot Air, it’s a long article but worth reading. Here’s more.
Sexton said he arrived at the Pelham office and joined Lantrip and Davi in a conference room. He said Lantrip told him that they had the money for him. Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington bureau chief, soon joined them, he said. Minutes later, Aaron Klein, Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief walked in, Sexton said…
On the table was a notebook, he said, opened to a page that contained the handwritten statement he was expected to sign. There was little small talk, Sexton said. He said they began discussing the possibility of issuing a statement about Corfman’s credibility…
“I don’t know how y’all, or how anybody, would ever believe me,” Sexton said he told them. “And Matt and Aaron kind of tell me, ‘Well, that’s not really the point of whether or not anybody believes you. It’s just, you know, getting other information out there.’”…
Sexton said he ripped the page with the handwritten statement from the notebook as he left the meeting. He says he does not know who wrote it.
WaPo has a photo of the handwritten page. Sexton was understandably nervous after the meeting about possible criminal jeopardy and told a lawyer friend what had happened. They agreed that he should go to the feds and report the bribe, but he was told by the local U.S. Attorney’s office that there’s no federal statute that criminalizes offering a bribe to someone to lie about a person to whom they owe a fiduciary duty. There is in Alabama, though! (Did Lantrip and Davi violate it, though? WaPo notes that Sexton quietly dropped Corfman as a client early on, as his law firm was wary of the political furor around her. It may be that he owed no duty to her beyond confidentiality by the time he was asked to sign the statement saying he disbelieved her.)
You have to remember how desperately Bannon needed a win, here. He was inextricably tied to Moore, hell or high water. He was on the stage for him over and over, and he made the race a referendum on Trumpism. He made it – and Trumpists were on board with this – so that either you were on Roy Moore’s side, or you were basically voting for Hillary retroactively.
His future depended on the race. If you don’t believe that, ask yourself how influential he is now.
Yup.
It’s really something, and reading it all the way through is fascinating.
Innocent until proven guilty is fine. But circumstantial evidence does add up. In any case, it doesn’t look good, and it’s one more mark against Bannon and the rapidly falling fortunes of Breitbart news.