CNN: Roy Moore Met His Wife When She Was ’15 or 16′

CNN reported Tuesday that Judge Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Alabama’s upcoming special election, met his wife, Kayla, when she was “15 or 16 years old.”

CNN’s Daniella Diaz cited an earlier video interview in July when Moore said that he had first noticed his wife, then Kayla Kisor, approximately eight years before they married. She was 24 on their wedding day.

On that occasion, Moore said:

We met — well, actually, when I was deputy district attorney, many years before we got married. I saw her [Kayla] at a dance recital and I was standing, oh, at the back of the auditorium and I saw her up front. And I remembered her name. It was Kayla Kisor. KK. But I remembered that, and I didn’t meet her there. I left, and it was, oh gosh, eight years later or something, I met her. And when she told me her name, I remembered, “KK.”

CNN has repeatedly presented the fact that Moore married a younger woman — he was 38 when they wed — as if it were evidence to corroborate accusations of sexual misconduct with younger women.

On November 10, the day after the allegations against Moor emerged, CNN’s Brian Stelter, host of Reliable Sources, commented: “I mean, for goodness’ sakes — he married a much younger woman! There’s a lot in this story. It is a very detailed story.”

In its original story, the Washington Post reported an accusation that Moore had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl nearly 40 years ago. It also included claims that he had dated young women who were at least 16 years old, i.e. past the legal age of consent.

At the time, it was unclear why the Post did that, if not to suggest a broader pattern of behavior with underage girls that the newspaper lacked evidence to prove. On Monday, the original accuser, Leigh Corfman, told NBC’s Today show that she had insisted the Post include other accusers as a condition of her coming forward. None of those accusers alleged any kind of illegal or even sexual contact, beyond kissing.

Moore has vigorously denied Corfman’s accusations, and has also pushed back against allegations last Monday by Beverly Nelson Moore that he had sexually assaulted her 40 years ago, when she was 16. His attorneys have also vigorously disputed the allegations on his behalf, including at a press conference on Tuesday. And they rejected unsubstantiated claims that he had been banned from a local shopping mall for approaching young women.

Diaz says: “There’s no evidence Moore had any contact with Kisor as a teenager.” But the fact that he first saw his wife as a teenager is presented, alongside the fact that his wife is fourteen years younger than him, as evidence of the allegation implicit in the Post‘s original report that he had behaved inappropriately towards younger women.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.