Posted on January 9, 2012

Donor Tied to Extremists: Out-Of-State Lawyer Major Contributor to Roy Moore

Brian Lynman, Montgomery Advertiser, January 9, 2012

Nearly two-thirds of Roy Moore’s funding in his race for chief justice has come from a Maryland-based attorney who has affiliations with extremist groups, including a Killen-based organization that advocates secession from the union and has been called “explicitly racist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Michael Peroutka has contributed $50,000 to the Moore campaign over the past two months, making up the vast majority of the $78,000 that the former chief justice received through Dec. 31.

Moore said during a Thursday interview that the money came from Peroutka and his brother. The former chief justice also said he was not aware of Peroutka’s affiliation with the League of the South, a group advocating secession, or of his appearance on The Political Cesspool, a Memphis, Tenn.-based radio program that advocates white nationalism.

Moore said his campaign does not have secessionist ideas and that he believes “all people are created in the image of God.”

“I don’t know anything about it to be concerned or not concerned, but I have no idea what was said or what they stood for,” Moore said in his campaign office in Montgomery. “It would be unfair to comment on hearsay.”

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The attorney [Peroutka] was the 2004 presidential nominee of the Constitution Party, a third party that, among other issues, opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, the federal income tax and the direct election of U.S. senators.

Peroutka’s campaign received the endorsement of the League, which calls secession “a right of a truly free people” and seeks to protect what it calls “Anglo-Celtic” culture, “the dominate culture and civilization of the South.”

The group’s 2004 endorsement called Peroutka a member of the League who “believes in states’ rights and the right of secession.”

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The group’s website says it “disavows a spirit of malice” toward blacks, but the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the League “explicitly racist,” citing comments from League president Michael Hill calling slavery “God-ordained.”

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The Political Cesspool, where Peroutka has been a guest, is hosted by James Edwards, who the Anti-Defamation League calls a white supremacist and who has called “forced integration” a “march toward totalitarianism.”

Moore said he did not share the beliefs of Edwards or the League of the South, and that neither he nor anyone in his campaign had “secession ideas.”

“A lot of the donors to the Southern Poverty Law Center have some weird ideas, but that doesn’t necessarily make their organization unlawful,” he said.

Moore also criticized the SPLC for filing suit to remove a Ten Commandments monument he installed in the Alabama Judicial building in 2001, while serving as chief justice.

Moore’s refusal to remove the monument despite a federal court order led to his removal as chief justice in 2003.

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Among The Political Cesspool’s statement of principles is the revival of the “White birthrate above replacement level fertility” in order to “grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.”

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[Editor’s Note: See Mr. Edwards’ response to this article here.]