Report: NC House speaker says relationship with separated woman was appropriate

Speaker of the House Tim Moore acknowledged to a Charlotte television station Tuesday that he had a relationship with a married woman whose husband sued him over the weekend, accusing him of breaking up their marriage, among other things.

“The allegation that I had a relationship with Mrs. Lassiter, I’ve admitted that that’s true, but I thought it was appropriate because she was separated and I was divorced,” Moore said in an interview with WBTV. “All the salacious stuff that other people are talking about is absolutely 100% false.”

Moore’s spokeswoman said he wasn’t available Tuesday evening to speak with WRAL News but that he would speak to reporters at the General Assembly Wednesday.

The WBTV interview is Moore’s first known public confirmation of the affair. He previously described the lawsuit as “baseless.”

Moore, R-Cleveland, also spoke behind closed doors Tuesday with other Republican House members as part of a previously scheduled caucus session to go over plans for the waning weeks of this legislative session.

Scott Lassiter, a Wake County assistant principal and former Apex Town Council member, sued Moore Sunday under North Carolina’s alienation of affection law, which allows spouses to sue for damages over an affair. He accused Moore and his wife, Jamie Lassiter, of an affair that goes back to 2019, and of convincing her to “engage in degrading sexual acts with him, including group sexual activity with others over whom he had power or influence.”

Jamie Lassiter told WRAL News in a statement Sunday that the accusations were “not only false but impossible” because she and her husband had been separated for years. She said Scott Lassiter has “serious mental health and substance abuse issues, which I can only assume led him to file this outrageous and defamatory suit” as their divorce nears finalization.

Scott Lassiter’s attorney, Alicia Jurney, told WRAL News Tuesday that the Lassiters separated Jan. 11 and that any contention otherwise “is false and will be easily disproven.” She said Scott Lassiter stands by the allegations in his complaint.

Moore told WBTV that allegations he used his position to maintain a sexual relationship were “utterly false.” He also promised a counter suit against Scott Lassiter.

Jamie Lassiter is a state employee as executive director of the North Carolina Conference of Clerks of Superior Court. The lawsuit says she feared reprisals against the conference if she broke off her relationship with Moore. Jamie Lassiter told WRAL News that the only person who “ever abused me or threatened my career was my soon-to-be ex-husband.”

Through his lawyer, Scott Lassiter denied that.

“He did not abuse Mrs. Lassiter,” Jurney told WRAL News in an email. “He has never abused any woman.”

Jurney sent Moore a request for discovery Tuesday consisting of 215 requests, according to paperwork in the case.

The Conference of Clerks executive committee plans to meet this week to discuss the lawsuit and will comment after that, according to its president, J. Yancey Washington, Granville County’s clerk of superior court.

Moore's fellow top GOP lawmaker, Senate leader Phil Berger, told reporters Tuesday that he hadn't spoken with Moore about the allegations.

"I know what I've read," said Berger, R-Rockingham. "And that's all I know. He says that he will fight it vigorously and he'll be vindicated. We have a legal process that will need to work its way."

When the lawsuit was filed Sunday, Moore said in a statement that it was “a baseless lawsuit from a troubled individual.” The suit made several accusations beyond a sexual relationship, including that Jamie Lassiter told her husband that she feared that ending the relationship with Moore would result in her losing her job.

The suit also says Moore met with Scott Lassiter at Biscuitville on Western Boulevard the day after Christmas, shortly after Scott Lassiter discovered the affair, admitted the relationship and asked Scott Lassiter if there was anything he could do for him, “implying that he could use the power he held as speaker in some way.”

The suit also accused Moore of conspiring with an unidentified person to plant a surveillance camera in Scott Lassiter’s yard. Scott Lassiter says he discovered the camera and replaced it with his own, capturing photographs of a man named in the lawsuit only as John Doe.

“Did not hire anyone,” Moore told WBTV. “Don’t know who the man is.”

The lawsuit against Moore is based on two laws that only still exist in a tiny number of states – alienation of affection and criminal conversation, a euphemism for adultery. Both date back centuries, to when women were considered property that could be stolen like anything else. In a modern change recognizing the equality of the sexes, people can now be sued for stealing the affection of either men or women.

Asked Tuesday if he'd support getting rid of those laws, Berger said he was against that idea when it came up a few years ago and remains opposed. The laws are there to protect the sanctity of marriage, he said, which he supports.

"I just think that there is some respect for marriage in the common law torts, and it's something I don't see an argument to eliminate," Berger said.

WRAL reporters Will Doran and Amanda Lamb contributed to this report.