GLORIA ALLRED PRESS CONFERENCE WITH NEW HERMAN CAIN ACCUSER UPDATE: VIDEO, HEADLINES ADDED UPDATE II: CAIN CAMPAIGN: ‘ALL ALLEGATIONS … COMPLETELY FALSE’

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UPDATE 3:18 p.m. ET: Video via Nice Deb:

A quick sample of headlines:

Woman: Herman Cain put hand up my skirt
— USA Today

Herman Cain and Sharon Bialek: How it came about
— Washington Post

Cain accuser says candidate groped her in 1997
— CNN

UPDATE 3:35 p.m. ET: The Anchoress speaks:

The MSM will do its “penance” for ignoring Juanita Brodderick by conferring absolute moral authority upon Sharon Bialek, who (again, if its all true, and we really will never know) has had the good luck of experiencing such a sickening encounter at the hands of a Republican candidate for president, and not a Democrat. She will be believed, at least, and she will not be trashed. And for her sake and her son’s I’m glad of that.

Will conservatives passively accept the power of the media (and Gloria Allred) to choose the GOP’s presidential candidate? Will there be no pushback from conservatives against this?

This presumption would seem to ignore the possibility that Cain’s supporters might react by saying, “To hell with this! We don’t give a damn what happened in 1997! We’re tired of these kinds of sleazy games and we’re sticking with Herman Cain!”

UPDATE 3:53 p.m. ET: Press release from Cain campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon:

Just as the country finally begins to refocus on our crippling $15 trillion national debt and the unacceptably high unemployment rate, now activist celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred is bringing forth more false accusations against the character of Republican front-runner Herman Cain.
All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are completely false. Mr. Cain has never harassed anyone. Fortunately the American people will not allow Mr. Cain’s bold “9-9-9 Plan”, clear foreign policy vision and plans for energy independence to be overshadowed by these bogus attacks.

UPDATE 4:10 p.m. ET: Michelle Malkin seems skeptical of the accuser:

She didn’t report the incident because she was “embarrassed.”
Bialek saw Cain at a Tea Party event last month and asked “Do you remember me?”
“I really didn’t want to be here today.”
At end of her statement, she giggled. She talked about her new hairdo.
Allred confirms that Bialek did not notify NRA about the incident. Bialek smiled. Won’t comment when asked about the “emotional trauma” of the incident.
So Bialek is single with a teenage child, with no discernible means of income, and employing a top Democrat hit woman celebrity attorney and her employment law partner.

Over the weekend at the AFP conference, several people told me that they had reason to believe this story was coming from Chicago. IYKWIMAITYD. And while this kind of suspicion has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the accusation, it is certainly interesting. While I have always suspected Team Perry of pushing the story, the idea that Team Obama might be responsible cannot be ruled out.

UPDATE 4:30 p.m. ET: Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson:

Summary of press conference: Woman alleges that in 1997 after her employment terminated with a National Restaurant Association affiliate, Cain made a single sexual advance at her which she rebuffed and which he stopped after she said no. So the allegation is not one of workplace “sexual harassment” but of an alleged attempt at infidelity.
A variety of people on Twitter are characterizing this as a “serious sexual assualt,” but that is farfetched. Assuming what she says is true, he stopped when she said to stop and she did not allege any actual sexual touching, only an attempt. She says she mentioned to two people at the time that Cain was sexually inappropriate, but did not mention to details to them.

Allahpundit points out that the lawyer for another accuser has claimed Bialek’s account as corroboration:

In an interview after Ms. Bialek’s news conference, Joel P. Bennett, a lawyer for one of Mr. Cain’s anonymous accusers, said that Ms. Bialek’s claims were “very similar” in nature to the incident that occurred between his client and Mr. Cain…
“It corroborates the claim,” Mr. Bennett said of Ms. Bialek’s allegation. Asked whether that meant that Mr. Cain had physically touched his client inappropriately, Mr. Bennett said “I can’t get more specific” but added that “I can say it is corroborating.”

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

UPDATE 2:38 p.m. ET: The press conference is over and so we now must think about what we’ve just heard.

Did Sharon Bialek’s account of events seem plausible? Yes.

If you had 14 years to develop a narrative of an event that happened in 1997, would your account of that event be plausible? Also, yes.

We have here the basic “he-said, she-said” problem involved in such cases. What Bialek says happened would be very bad if it actually happened as she describes it. But there were no witnesses, there is no evidence, and the affidavits of two people to whom Bialek told her story in 1997 are inadmissable as hearsay. You could not convict Herman Cain in court based on such evidence, and yet the behavior described, if it is not criminal, certainly does fit within the category of “sexual harassment.” However . . .

There is no need to minimize the seriousness of sexual harassment in order to understand the difficulties that arise from trying to reach the hurdle of “beyond a reasonable doubt” involving private behavior where witnesses and evidence are lacking, and where the rights of the accused are derided as irrelevant. Liberals who hold candlelight vigils for condemned cop-killers will, without any sense of irony, insist that whenever a man is accused of sexual misconduct by a woman, the man must automatically be presumed guilty.

Well, it is not for me to decide how people react to this accusation, and so I will cease to offer my own reaction, except to say: Why wait 14 years? Oh. That’s right: The accused is leading the GOP field for president.

So if you make a pass at a woman, and are rejected, you can kiss good-bye whatever plans you had for becoming president — as a Republican.

I’ll be back to aggregate the headlines and blog reaction.

UPDATE 2:08 p.m. ET: Cain allegedly fondled her leg and tried to kiss her while they were alone in a car, Bialek says. When she said stop, he did. And so your headline is:

DISGRUNTLED FORMER EMPLOYEE SAYS
HERMAN CAIN MADE A PASS AT HER

UPDATE 2:01 p.m. ET: Bialek “reached out” to Cain after being terminated from her job. He met her at the Capitol Hilton in July 1997, where he had arranged for her to have the presidential suite. Bialek and Cain met at the lobby bar, then went to dinner at an Italian restaurant.

UPDATE 1:57 p.m. ET: The accuser is Sharon Bialek.

UPDATE 1:40 p.m. ET: Either the press conference is late in beginning or else the cable news networks aren’t carrying it live. Will update as soon as facts are available.

* * * PREVIOUSLY 1:15 p.m. ET * * *

Gloria Allred will hold a 1:30 p.m. press conference at the Friars Club in New York. I’ll blog updates live. Greta Van Susteren has the press release:

Herman Cain and Sexual Harassment
New Woman Who Alleges Sexual Harassment By Cain
To Hold News Conference With Her Attorney Gloria Allred.

A woman who alleges that she was sexually harassed by Presidential hopeful, Herman Cain, when she sought his help with an employment issue when he was President of the National Restaurant Association will hold a news conference with her Attorney, Gloria Allred on Monday, November 7th, at 1:30 p.m. (e.s.t.) at the Friars Club, 57 East 55th Street New York, NY 10022.
The woman is not one of the three women who have previously been reported to have alleged sexual harassment by Cain.
Ms. Allred’s client will be the first to give her name and to speak out about details of what she alleges occurred between her and Cain.
Note: Credentialed Press Only – Cameras may begin to set up at 12:30 p.m. at the Friars Club.
Note: There will be no interviews or questions answered before the news conference.

My personal feeling is that this is the best thing that can happen to Herman Cain in this situation. He cannot refute vague accusations, and the credibility of his accusers cannot be assessed so long as the accusers remain anonymous. So for a woman to come forward, under her own name, and make her accusations under the glare of the Klieg lights — this is good news if Cain is innocent, as he has insisted. More headlines:

New Cain accuser to discuss sexual harassment claims
— The Hill

Herman Cain sexual harassment accuser will
break silence at Gloria Allred press conference
— NY Daily News

Lawyer: 4th Cain accuser will speak publicly Monday
— Washington Post

Because I was out running “honey-do” errands this morning, I missed the initial announcement. Smitty posted the first alert and then called to tell me about it. Smitty’s “zombie/brains” metaphor is clever.

Perhaps at some future flesh-time meeting, Smitty and I can have a discussion about the factors involved in deciding whether a breaking news development should be headlined with clever metaphors, puns, allusions, etc. At any rate — spilled milk, water under the bridge, hindsight 20/20 — our cleverness quota having already been amply fulfilled on this story, I decided to go with the Joe Friday just-the-facts-ma’am headline on this follow-up, which will be the live-blog report.


140 comments

  6. Reliapundit, got pictures of Cain harassing anyone?  Specific details of what constituted harassment?  Yeah.  I didn’t think so.  Weiner posted his Weiner on the internet for all to see.  Not exactly the same thing as vague accusations of non-sexual offensive gestures.

  8. See, now, @rsmccain if Insty had liked my snark and then linked it, then it would have been OK. As it is, I insulted honest zombies by comparison.

  11. Checked around, it’s not on C-SPAN, or MSDNC. 

    When we have actual concrete accusations from a named person whose credibility can be weighed by the primary voters, THEN we can discuss all this. 

  12. “When she said stop, he did.”

    According to her, when she said stop, he said “you want a job, don’t you?”

    That doesn’t make it a crime, that does make it a little more than “he made a pass at her.”

    If, of course, it happened that way.  I’m sure that her past, her associations, and her possible motivations will get a thorough looking over.

  14. Hahahaha I don’t give a CRAP about this shit. The new 800 pound gorilla in the room is this is a white woman so this is supposed to outrage all of us because Herman’s a black man. Remember, Democrats have convinced themselves the Republicans are even more racist than they are. That’s the point of all this, otherwise, where’s the sexual harassment and abuse?

  15. Hmmm: a Republican/Conservative statistically challenges a Democrat.

    Cue: Gloria Allred with salacious accusations.

    Should the nominee have been Romney, would Allred suddenly unearth a compound of multiple wives?

    MM notes Allred was searching for someone to accuse Cain 6 days ago. Given the logistics of getting to NYC, hiring the Friar’s Club as a venue, and notifying the press: sounds like Allred barely made it in time. The power of Craigslist folks on display today!

  19. Looks like a setup, Gloria the All-Red destroyer finds a disgruntled ex-employee, who somehow miraculously gets a boyfriend and other male friend from the period to swear affidavits (not released to the press) that Herman fondled her leg and stopped when asked, and that these two remember accurately what she told them 14 years ago.
    Allred’s intro speech was a long winded character statement for her “victim”, and the “victim’s” speech was way too heavy on “the country needs is in too much trouble already – it needs Mr Cain to ‘do the right thing’. Both were overtly political in nature, and far more concerned with disqualifying Herman Cain than with addressing any real Grievance.

    And by the way, Friars Club???????
    Does this bitch know how to stick it to her victims or what?!
    This is the same Gloria All-Red who sued the all male Friars Club for sex discrimination a few years ago, and now wants to gloat!

  20. TPT, OK, let’s set aside the “harassment” element for just a moment and look at it from that angle

    Herman Cain is a black man. A  married man and a Baptist minister, running for President of the United States as an alleged conservative.

    Remove the “as an alleged conservative” and tell me that Republicans wouldn’t be all over the Karin Stanford affair if Jesse Jackson was the Democratic frontrunner right now.

  21. When the shit has been removed from the ears, every sound is the voice of happiness. 

    And even when the shit stays stuck in the ears, the voice of happiness still resounds.

  22. “You could not convict Herman Cain in court based on such evidence…”

    Well sexual harassment lawsuits are almost always civil actions where the standard is more probable than not (not criminal cases).  But beyond being old and stale, this seems exceedingly weak as a civil case. 

  24. I don’t buy that he’s a conservative, never did. A fiscal conservative maybe and that’s debatable, but he’s sure not a solid social conservative, and his national defense credentials are too undefined to say he’s a national defense conservative. The only solid conservatives in this race are Bachmann and Perry. Santorum and Newt are big government politicos and the others are cafeteria conservatives.

    But this is pure nuts. A guy comes onto a woman, she rebuffs him, and he stops. Even assuming she’s telling the truth, where’s the abuse? Admittedly, one can point out that he might have been taking advantage of her need for a job, but how do we know she’s telling the truth about that, and how do we know she wasn’t sending out all kinds of signals, like some women will do to entice men into hiring them? The only thing I see is evidence of maybe some bad judgement, but not enough to where he’s disqualified to be president.

    Oh, and she’s from Chicago, so her motives are automatically suspect just on that count alone.

  26. I thought that this chick was supposed to be “famous”.  What a crock and a loser.  Herman Cain could crush her like a bug.    By the way, I still don’t believe Anita Hill.  LOL  Good one Stacy.  Good seeing you in Washington the other day!

    Katy

  27. So let me see what we seem to have here: 

    1.  She “reached out to Herman Cain on an employment matter.”  Questions: is this sort of matter one normally dealt with by the CEO of the National Restaurant Association?  What basis did she have for believing Cain would involve himself in this matter?   Did they have any sort of previous association?  What kind?  None of this was addressed, am I correct?

    2.  Whose name was the suite in? Who paid for it?  Are there any records?

    3.  Gloria Alred has been searching for a week for other “victims” of Herman Cain, according to Michelle Malkin.  By an astonishing coincidence, she finds ANOTHER previously undocumented victim from the same organization and the same time frame as the three previous alleged “victims”, and NOT from any of the periods in which Cain’t female associates praise and defend him, who comes up with another story that can ‘t even be checked, let alone verified.

    4.  The client of Gloria Alred, an attorney who makes her living off sexual harassment and abuse cases, just happens to describe an offense that EXACTLY fits the criteria for legal sexual abuse.  (Way to go, coach!)

    Oh, hell, who am I kidding?  There’s no point even trying to oppose this rock-solid evidence.  Why, it’s the proverbial perfect storm…

    …of dust.

  30. Why should he defend any of them?  I certainly wouldn’t defend a lot of them, Republicans or ‘Crats.  But Herman is different.  Just because you challenge Stacy, should he answer you?

  31. The fact that Ms. Bialek is being represented by man-hating hag and Obama supporter, Gloria Allred, as well as the timing of the release of her account, automatically casts suspicion on the truthfulness of it and the motive behind it, in my opinion. 

    The only thing I’m left to wonder about is how much currency they had to drag through the trailer park to find her.

  32. “Oh, and she’s from Chicago, so her motives are automatically suspect just on that count alone”

    Herman cain is black but he is not a ‘zombie dem voter’, no? Similarly Bialek might be from Chicago but she is also a Tea Party republican. See that, numbnut?

    Making that more difficult is the statement from Bialek and Allred that
    the purported victim is a Tea Party Republican, which might indicate
    less of a credibility issue than otherwise.

  35. Herman Cain will survive this false attack (and any others…and I’m sure there are….that are to come) and win the GOP nomination.

    However, the thing that stuff like this does, it makes it difficult for people who have legitimate claims of sexual assault/harassment/abuse.

    The public will never be able to believe anybody.

  39. Where is the proof Bialek is a Tea Party Republican. There’re no boxes to check to designate, nor membership rolls. So the characterization of Bialek being a Tea Party Republican is a bald attempt at defusing Allred’s personal politics, and personal history in politics as a hitman.

    Perhaps Bialek is mad she didn’t her salary as a severance package.

    Squeeking of Allred, is she going to be representing all the women raped at Occupy Wall Street, or has she been paid to take a pass on this? 

  42. Here’s one woman who claims didn’t tell her boyfriend upon returning from that particular “date”.

    And here we are talking about this instead of last Saturday’s debate.

  44. My personal problem with all of this:

    Legitimate sexual harassment/assault victims will refuse to go to the proper authorities to address the evil because Allred’s stunts cheapen and demean true victims and their suffering. When lawyers like Allred and Nifong want to score political points, and cash, there is no depth to which they will sink NOT to score those points and collect that payday.

    Meanwhile, women in Zuccotti Park are being raped and have to have a ‘women only’ tent guarded by women, and go about in numbers in order to prevent real sex-crimes from occurring.

  45. I am reminded of the sage wisdom of the ancients:

    “There is no situation so dire and hopeless that it cannot be made worse by the introduction of Gloria Allred to the mix.”

    I’m pretty sure it was some dead white guy who said it, possibly Socrates*, so you might be a racist just for having read it.

    *Socrates Pournopolis, a bum who used to trade these pearls for change for cheap Ouzo.

  46. Don’t bury TPT’s first point, that ‘they’ think ‘we’ are so racist that we are going to baulk at the ‘miscegenation’!

    They really do think we are that backward and stupid. That’s why they hate us, or their fantasy boogeyman images of us as Deliverance hillbillies.

    This point cannot be overemphasised – their total underestimation of us is their achille’s heal. 

  47. Scarymatt,

    Hey, I’m not the one who keeps bringing up the racial angle.

    In the old days, the sexual peccadilloes of actual and would-be presidents of both parties were politely ignored in the media. Apparently the Kennedy brothers screwed everything that moved. Eisenhower allegedly had a fling in England during WWII. And so on, and so forth.

    Clinton changed that, and conservatives have generally both used that to their advantage and policed themselves — not perfectly, but not too badly.

    I don’t really care whether or not Cain is a womanizer (of the harassing variety or otherwise). But I do find it odd that Republicans don’t seem to really care, either.

  48. Bialek appears to be lying as she reads from her script – as conveyed by her body language, eye movement, gestures.

    In poker terms, she’s been made up to conceal her “tells” – big hair with long bangs over her eyes, bold eye glasses, bright lipstick and heavy makeup. She glistens on camera like an actress auditioning for the part of a vamp, yet uses the singsong voice of a writer who is presenting her recently released history book on CSPAN.   

    Her temperament is all wrong for this kind of public exposure. Even if she’d done nothing wrong, a respectable woman would have betrayed an innner sense of shame in revealing such a secret.

    My guess is that if you dig into Bialek’s past you’ll discover that she’s either a con artist, a kinder gentler version of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, or some combination thereof.  

  49. I read in a story once about some folks planning a protest.  They wanted barrels to burn stuff in, for effect.  They wanted signs.  One guy in the back says, “I have a friend who’s a dwarf!!”  The leader says, “Good! Nothing turns an event into a real show like having a dwarf.”

    Gloria Allred just seems so apropos.

    (Mark Levin has been saying, “I’ll bet she’s on the phone to Gloria Allred right now!”)

  50. I know you didn’t.  Just like Joe Wilson didn’t.  I just wanted to make that joke somewhere, and your comment was the most conducive. 🙂

    I wouldn’t say that no Republicans care about whether a particular candidate is a womanizer.  Personally, I would care, since it goes toward character.  It’s not necessarily a make or break issue.

    But you also have to take into account the human decision making process, whereby we rationalize any decision made.  Certainly around this blog, there is a lot of support for Cain, and so it’s not surprising that many would try to excuse potential marks against Cain.

    Of course, in this case, all we have are allegations, without (yet?) any credible evidence.  And one thing Republicans really loathe are Democrats making baseless accusations (e.g., raaaaacism).  If there’s more to this, I think you’ll see a much different reaction from the base of Republicans.

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