Gardner’s NRSC parts ways with Moore

The Daily Beast reported late Friday morning that the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which is chaired by Colorado GOP Sen. Cory Gardner of Yuma, is no longer affiliated with the U.S. Senate campaign of embattled Alabama Republican Roy Moore.
The NRSC’s name was omitted from a document filed Friday morning with the Federal Elections Commission by the Alabama 2017 Senate Victory committee, a joint fundraising committee that includes Moore’s campaign, the Alabama Republican Party and the Republican National Committee. The NRSC had been previously listed as a beneficiary of the joint committee, according to an FEC filing.
Thursday, the Washington Post reported that Moore had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with four teenage girls, including a 14-year old who was under the legal age of consent. Now 53, Leigh Corfman told the Post that Moore struck up a conversation with her in 1979 while she was waiting with her mother at a local courthouse for a custody hearing. Moore was an assistant district attorney at the time. Corfman said that on a date, Moore “took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.” She asked Moore to take her home after that encounter and reported it to friends at the time.
In a statement, Moore denied the allegations, calling them “completely false” and “a desperate political attack by the National Democrat (sic) Party and the Washington Post on this campaign.” Moore’s campaign also claimed that if the allegations were true, they would have surfaced during previous campaigns.
Senate Republicans have been quick to distance themselves from Moore since the story broke. Gardner was among more than a dozen Republican senators who called on Moore to drop out of the race if the allegations were true, as has President Trump. “The allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore are deeply troubling,” Gardner said in a statement Thursday. “If these allegations are found to be true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election.”
A call for comment to the NRSC was not immediately returned.
