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Justin Fairfax, Virginia lieutenant governor, denies sexual assault allegation
“I have lived my life in a way that I’m proud of,” Fairfax told reporters in the rotunda of Virginia’s state Capitol.
Fairfax’s office later said the unsubstantiated allegation he assaulted a woman when he was young Democratic staffer in 2004 was “false” and threatened legal action against “people who continue to spread these false allegations.”
On Sunday night, Big League Politics — a right-wing political site that first published the photo from Northam’s yearbook, in which one man is wearing blackface and another is dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan — reported that a woman who is currently a fellow at Stanford University said a man sexually assaulted her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
In an early morning statement, Fairfax’s office denied the allegation and claimed The Washington Post had found “significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegations” when it investigated the matter last year. The Post did confirm the woman contacted the newspaper after Fairfax’s election to claim he had sexually assaulted her in 2004, but the paper refuted Fairfax’s characterization of why it declined to publish a story about the accusation.
“The Post did not find ‘significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegations,’ as the Fairfax statement incorrectly said,” according to The Post’s report Monday. Instead, The Post said it did not run the story because it “found no similar complaints of sexual misconduct against him” after talking with people from Fairfax’s college, law school and political circles, and could not corroborate the woman’s account. Fairfax told The Post the encounter had been consensual and had taken place before he was married.
When he spoke with reporters on Monday, Fairfax confirmed meeting the woman and having sexual activity with her that was “100 percent consensual,” but he repeatedly and vehemently denied sexually assaulting her. The 39-year-old Democrat said it was suspicious that the allegation surfaced amid a time when he could possibly assume the governorship if Northam steps down.
