Biden denies allegations from former employee
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden yesterday emphatically denied allegations from a former Senate staffer that he sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s, declaring flatly “this never happened”.
Biden’s first public remarks on the accusation by former employee Tara Reade come at a critical time for the presumptive Democratic nominee as he tries to relieve mounting pressure after weeks of leaving denials to his campaign.
“I am saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,” said Biden in an interview on the MSNBC show Morning Joe.
Biden said he will ask the National Archives to determine whether there is any record of a complaint being filed, as Reade has claimed, but he said repeatedly that he doesn’t believe such a record exists.
Reade did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
The National Archives also did not reply to an AP inquiry.
“The former staffer has said she filed a complaint back in 1993,” Biden said. “But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint.
“The papers from my Senate years that I donated to the University of Delaware do not contain personnel files.”
Biden said: “There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be — the National Archives.”
The former vice-president of the United States said “there are so many inconsistencies” in Reade’s various accounts.
But Biden said he does not “question her motive”.
Republicans worried about President Donald Trump’s increasingly precarious political standing are seizing on Reade’s allegation to portray Democrats as hypocrites who only defend women who allege wrongdoing against conservatives. —AP