Roy Moore's Lawyer Is Just As Nutty As Roy Moore - By Ed Kilgore

November 15, 2017
12:33 pm

We all know the drill. Somebody’s done somebody wrong or is threatening to do so — maybe a landlord refusing to make a repair, maybe a creditor unleashing bill collectors for an imaginary or unjust debt, maybe a neighbor defying neighborhood covenant — and a brushback pitch seems appropriate. So you go to that friend or relative who has a law degree and ask her or him to send a letter full of legalese threatening unspecified litigation if the malefactor doesn’t come around. It’s amazing how often this gambit works.

It is not, however, the sort of thing you expect to see someone try to pull under the bright lights of an incredibly high-profile case, like the Washington Post’s (and at least one subsequent accuser’s) allegations of predatory behavior by Alabama Supreme Court chief justice and GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore. But there it is, in a letter from one Trenton R. Garmon JD MA (it’s unclear why he left off the BA for his undergraduate degree) from the firm Garmon and Lidden (“Attorneys for the People”) to attorneys for the Alabama Media Group, the company that owns three Alabama newspapers and the digital site al.com, that is the go-to source for most non-Alabama folk about Alabama politics and other items of interest from the state. The first paragraph tells you all you need to know about the threat letter and the care with which it was prepared:

The letter goes on, with incomplete sentences and other assaults on grammar and usage, to describe al.com’s straight reporting of the allegations raised by the Post and the “fifth woman” who accused Moore of a sexual assault against her when she was 16 as “false reports and/or careless reporting.” Garmon (JD, MA) also claims his target “carelessly [a really unfortunate adjective for him to use so frequently in this letter —Ed.] and perhaps allowed general libel and scandal” by quoting locals from Gadsden who said Moore had a creepy reputation back in the day.

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/moores-lawyer-sends-hilarious-letter-threatening-lawsuits.html