Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump and Alabama's Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore have put Moore's veracity and character on the line. Last year, so did a special Alabama court that removed him from office.

Trump, as he explained his support of Moore in the face of numerous sexual abuse complaints, emphasized that Moore said "it didn't happen."

"He denies it. Look, he denies it. .... He totally denies it."

At the heart of its decision to oust Moore was the court's unanimous view that he had not been "credible" when he denied ordering state probate judges to withhold licenses for same-sex marriages. The court focused on Moore's "misleading" statements and "intentional omission." It said Moore's 2016 assertion "that his actions and words mean something other than what they clearly express is not a new strategy." The unanimous nine-member court referred to Moore's arguments in 2003 -- and an earlier ouster from the bench -- related to a huge granite monument of the Ten Commandments he installed at the state courthouse.

On the national scene, this month's news of sexual abuse claims against Moore, including one by a then-14-year-old girl, have eclipsed earlier charges of a lack of integrity that cost Moore the chief justiceship.

Several women have accused Moore, now 70 and running for the US Senate, of pursuing romantic relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. The Washington Post published the first set of accounts on November 9. Since then, other women have come forward with claims of sexual abuse. Moore has denied the allegations and said on Twitter after the initial Post account that he would "NEVER GIVE UP the fight."

Trump broke his silence on Moore last week as he stressed that Moore denies the sexual assault claims. Trump tweeted further support for Moore over Democratic opponent Doug Jones on Sunday. Moore, set to speak to fellow Republicans in Alabama Monday night, recently issued an ad with women vouching for him as a "man of character."

Moore and Trump have engaged in separate but similar counterattacks in the Senate race that could have great consequences for the chamber's partisan makeup and Republicans' ability to pass tax-overhaul legislation and other initiatives. Republicans currently hold just a two-vote majority in the 100-member Senate.

Many Republicans in Washington, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have withdrawn their support for Moore's candidacy. If Moore wins on December 12, the chamber could become embroiled in expulsion efforts. That process would require a Senate Ethics Committee investigation and, to succeed, a two-thirds vote of senators.

Trump faced claims of sexual harassment during the 2016 presidential election campaign. He has denied those accusations and called the women who accused him of sexual harassment "liars."

Moore's current combativeness has overshadowed his unyielding defense in the two episodes that led to his removal from the Alabama Supreme Court.

He first served as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court January 2001 until November 2003, when he was kicked off the bench for his "willful refusal" to obey federal and state court orders to remove a 5,280-pound stone monument of the Ten Commandments. He then was re-elected chief justice in November 2012 and took office in January 2013.

Moore's truthfulness was especially an issue in the more recent episode, when he told probate judges not to perform same-sex marriages but then argued he had not. For his actions and statements in that dispute, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary found Moore guilty of six charges covering failure to uphold the independence and integrity of the judiciary and other breaches of impartiality and propriety.

Moore declared at the time that the complaint against him was "a politically motivated effort by radical homosexual and transgender groups to remove me as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because of outspoken opposition to their immoral agenda."

The Alabama Court of the Judiciary, however, focused on Moore's explanation for a January 2016 order telling probate judges not to issues same-sex marriage licenses, even though the US Supreme Court in June 2015 had said same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry.

Moore told the probate judges that the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges did not bind any people who were not a party to the case, and he declared, "Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license."

Moore later said he was providing a "status update" of the case. The Alabama Court of the Judiciary did not find that credible. "It is clear to this court that Chief Justice Moore in fact took a legal position in the January 6, 2016 order" the unanimous court said, "despite his claim that he was not taking any such position." It also found Moore's use of case law in the order to probate judges "incomplete, misleading, and manipulative."

The Alabama Court on the Judiciary highlighted an assertion by the commission that investigated Moore deeming his 2016 actions "worse" than the defiance that led to his 2003 ouster, "because the order in this case, if complied with, would have put 68 probate judges in direct defiance of federal law."

In the earlier episode, a federal court said his installment of the Ten Commandments monument violated the US Constitution's prohibition against entanglement of church and state. Federal and Alabama courts ordered it removed. When Moore refused, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary cited him for defying court orders.

Throughout that incident, Moore expressed no remorse and said repeatedly he would "do it again."