Members of Herman Cain's campaign staff took to Twitter on Monday to poke fun at high-profile celebrity attorney Gloria Allred after reports surfaced that she would be representing a fourth woman alleging that Cain had sexually harassed her during his tenure as head of the National Restaurant Association.
The Hill reports that the @CainStaff "Twitter handle is not verified by the social networking site, although has been repeatedly retweeted by Cain's official Twitter."
At a press conference Monday, Allred introduced the accuser as Sharon Bialek, a Chicago-area woman who claimed that Cain had touched her leg and reached for her genitals during a meeting in 1997.
Allred has been a feature in other famous political scandals of late. She represented Nicandra Diaz-Santillan, the undocumented maid of Republican California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman; Ginger Lee, one of former Rep. Anthony Weiner's sexting partners; and Gigi Jeffers, a woman who claimed to have had an affair with former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In a statement released after the Monday press conference, the Cain campaign again sought to make an issue out of Allred's newfound presence in the debacle:
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.
Over the weekend, Cain weighed in on the controversy that has dominated the coverage of his candidacy of late, saying that he wasn't going to let the story throw off the message of his campaign.
"I did not think that it would be like this, this soon, in terms of, of how some people wanted to come after me and my campaign," Cain said on "Fox News Sunday."
"That part surprised me. But it didn't surprise me that it was gonna happen, we just didn't know how, when, what, or whatever the case may be. And yes, it was a very challenging week. But what I'm proudest of is that first, we didn't cancel one engagement. I didn't cancel not one speech and not one interview. Because I refused to get thrown off message and I refuse to overreact to something that we knew or we know that eventually's gonna be shown that is really not factually driven."