TN Speaker, Who Refused to Remove Republican Accused of Child Sexual Abuse, Moves to Expel Three Dems Over Gun Violence Protest

Speaker Sexton’s tenure has become a focus on social media, with references to his refusal to expel a Republican state representative, David Byrd, who, beginning in 2018, had been accused of child sexual assault years earlier, when he was a high school basketball coach in the 1980s.

One AP reporter responding to a Politico reporter Monday night observed on Twitter, 

Byrd, amid the allegations that surfaced in 2018, won re-election that year. Despite telling his colleagues and the GOP governor in 2019 he would not seek re-election again, he did so, and won in 2020. He did not run for re-election in 2022.

Two of his accusers spoke with Mother Jones, describing what they say were Byrd’s actions, which included these passages:

“Honestly, I don’t remember the very first time he touched me,” one accuser, now an adult, told Mother Jones. “It was more that he talked about it: He wanted to see me naked, he told me he spent more hours with me in a day than he did his wife, that when he had sex with her he was thinking about me.”

ARTICLE HERE