NY lawyer, Trump donor representing Biden accuser

WASHINGTON — Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who alleged Joe Biden sexually assaulted her

27 years ago, is being represented by a prominent lawyer and political donor to President Donald Trump’s 2016 Republican campaign.

New York attorney Douglas Wigdor said he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was a political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the November election.

Reade has said for weeks that she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her. She’s accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she worked on his Senate staff. He has denied her allegation.

On Thursday, Reade said she wanted Biden to be “held accountable” and called on him to drop out of the presidential race. Her comments came in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox News and NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.

Pressed by a Florida television station about Reade’s comment, Biden reiterated his denial of the allegation.

“The truth is what matters,” he told Bay News 9.

Wigdor is well-known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual harassment and assault. He represented six women who accused Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct. He has also represented a number of Fox News employees in cases alleging gender and racial discrimination at the network, including Juliette Huddy, one of the women who accused Bill O’Reilly of pursuing a sexual relationship with her and retaliating when she refused. In 2018, he spoke out in the media defending Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Wigdor has been a supporter of Trump and provided about $55,000 in campaign contributions in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also given tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York. He has not donated to either Trump’s or Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Wigdor suggested Reade’s earlier struggles to find a lawyer to represent her were the result of “politics.”

“I think highly of a lot of these people,” he said. “These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade.”