Embattled GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore's attorney implies his signature in a girl's high school yearbook was a forgery

AP Photo/Hal Yeager

Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore speaks at the Vestavia Hills Public library, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017,

• The attorney of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore sought to discredit one of the women accusing Moore of sexual assault, implying she had manipulated circumstantial evidence.
• The accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, showed reporters a yearbook that she said Moore had signed in 1977 when he was visiting the restaurant she worked at.
• Moore's attorney demanded that Nelson and her attorney turn over the yearbook so a "handwriting expert" can analyze the message.
• He further implied that Nelson had lifted a signature from court documents and planted it onto the yearbook.

The attorney of Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican running for Senate amid allegations that he sexually harassed and assaulted teenage girls decades ago, sought on Wednesday to discredit the account of one of Moore's accusers, demanding an expert investigate one of the claims she made.

Philip Jauregui, the attorney, cast doubt on a yearbook brought forward as circumstantial evidence by Beverly Young Nelson, a woman who said she was assaulted by Moore when she was a 16-year-old waitress and he was 30.

In a press conference with attorney Gloria Allred earlier this week, Nelson showed reporters a copy of the yearbook she said Moore had signed during an earlier visit to the restaurant she worked at.

"To a sweeter more beautiful girl I could not say, 'Merry Christmas.' Love, Roy Moore DA, 12-22-77, Olde Hickory House," the message said.

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Jauregui on Wednesday said that he is sending a letter to Allred demanding that she and Nelson turn over the yearbook itself and subject the message to an analysis by a handwriting expert.

"Is it genuine? Or a fraud?" Jauregui said, urging the public to compare the yearbook against Moore's handwriting themselves. "Judge Moore says there's no way in the world that that's his handwriting … I'm asking you all to take a look and make a judgment."

Jauregui also said that despite Nelson's statements that she had never had contact with Moore since the alleged incident, she actually had made contact with him - when she filed a divorce action against her husband.

The judge who signed the document was Moore, Jauregui said, adding that the "D.A." initials displayed in the yearbook after Moore's signature did not signify "district attorney," as many had assumed.

"Judge Moore looked at that D.A. after that signature," Jauregui said. "No, he wasn't, he was the assistant district attorney." He added that Moore's assistant when he was presiding over Nelson's divorce proceedings was named Delver Adams, who typically stamped his initials on court filings.

Yet some reporters immediately cast doubt on Jaregui's argument, noting that Moore's signature on the court document in question did not look similar enough to the signature in the yearbook to have been lifted directly from the document.