BELIEVE ALL WOMEN*
*except this one
Joe Biden categorically denied the sexual assault allegations of Tara Reade (below) yesterday, saying that there were no “facts” to support it. But failed to explain why he had pushed the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh without evidence.
Joe Biden on Friday publicly denied sexually assaulting a Senate staffer nearly 30 years ago — but he refused to release “private” archives that could shed light on the matter.
In an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said Tara Reade’s claims that he pinned her to a wall, reached into her skirt and assaulted her when she was a staff assistant in his Senate office in 1993 were false.
“It is not true. I’m saying it unequivocally: It never happened. It didn’t. It never happened,” Biden, 77, told co-host
Mika Brzezinski. “This is an open book. There’s nothing for me to hide. Nothing at all.”
The former vice president and his campaign had dodged the claims for weeks but responded on Friday amid mounting pressure from growing media coverage and fresh evidence bolstering Reade’s charges.
In a lengthy statement released just before he went on air, Biden touted his legislative record on women’s rights and said no one in his office at the time of the alleged assault had been able to corroborate Reade’s claim.
“She has said she raised some of these issues with her supervisor and senior staffers from my office at the time. They — both men and a woman — have said, unequivocally, that she never came to them and complained or raised issues,” he wrote.
“News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one — not one — who corroborated her allegations in any way.”
Biden was not asked about the people who have come forward to corroborate Reade’s claims, but Brzezinski pressed him on whether he would release his Senate records or other documents. He refused.
Reade (inset, in a photo from the early 1990s), 56, has said she believes her original complaint is among a trove of Senate papers Biden donated to the University of Delaware in 2012. The school’s board has close financial and personal ties to the Biden family, Fox News revealed this week.
“Let’s get this straight, there are no personnel documents. You can’t do that,” Biden said after Brzezinski asked if he would OK a simple search of Reade’s name.
“They’re private documents. They don’t get put out in the public. They’re not part of the public record,” he added.
Biden also claimed that he couldn’t release the papers because his speeches could be “taken out of context” and that any records regarding Reade, if they existed, would be at the National Archives anyway.
A National Archives spokeswoman told Business Insider on Friday that they had no records from his office.
Speaking to “Morning Joe,” Biden claimed “there are so many inconsistencies” in Reade’s accounts but said he does not “question her motive.”
He said that over his five decades in public life, none of his employees have been asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Many Democrats, including the female politicians who are lobbying to be Biden’s running mate, have struggled with Reade’s allegation after backing Christine Blasey Ford in her sexual-assault claim against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Biden himself stumbled when asked to reconcile his denials with remarks he made during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
At the time, Biden said that if a woman comes forward with charges of sexual harassment, no matter how long ago, people should start with the presumption that “the essence of what she is talking about is real.”
“I’m not going to question her motive,” Biden said. “I’m not going to get into that at all. I don’t
It is not true. I’m saying it unequivocally: It never happened. It didn’t. It never happened.
— Joe Biden, denying former Senate staffer Tara Reade’s accusation of sexual assault
know why she’s saying this — I don’t know why after 27 years, all of a sudden, this gets raised. I don’t understand it,” he said.
Kavanaugh’s accuser had come forward 36 years after the alleged 1982 attack.
Republicans and President Trump’s campaign seized on the question over Biden’s records.
“Americans [deserve] to know the truth about what happened between Tara Reade and Joe Biden. But they also deserve to know what else Joe Biden is hiding!” said Trump campaign adviser Kimberley Guilfoyle, who is Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend.
Trump himself called Reade’s story “compelling” while advising Biden to fight the accusation.
“It’s his problem, but I like to get in front of it, and I just deny it. If it’s not true, you deny it,” Trump told conservative radio host Dan Bongino, referring to allegations of sexual misconduct against him, which he has denied.
“I would just say to Joe Biden: Just go out and fight it,” the president said.
“She’s far more convincing than Blasey Ford,” Trump said of Reade after calling the claims against Kavanaugh a “disgrace.”
Biden later communicated to the Senate secretary that he was asking for the public release of any complaint against him by Reade as well as any documents that relate to her allegation.
Reade will air her claims on Fox News Sunday in her first televised interview.
Let’s get this straight, there are no personnel documents. You can’t do that . . . They’re private documents.
— Biden, refusing to open up his Senate files at the University of Delaware Denies staffer’s claim but keeps papers ‘private’