Tara Reade: ‘I didn’t use sexual harassment’ in Biden complaint

WASHINGTON — Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, says she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.

“I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,” Ms. Reade said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.”

Ms. Reade said she described her issues with Mr. Biden but “the main word I used — and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment — I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation.’ ”

Ms. Reade described the report after the Associated Press discovered additional transcripts and notes from its interviews with Ms. Reade last year in which she says she “chickened out” after going to the Senate personnel office.

The AP interviewed Ms. Reade in 2019 after she accused Mr. Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching. She did not raise allegations of sexual assault against Mr. Biden until this year, around the time he became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Mr. Biden, which he has flatly denied. Ms. Reade says she doesn’t have a copy of the report, and Mr. Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Ms. Reade.

But Ms. Reade is suggesting that even if the report surfaces, it would not corroborate her assault allegations because she chose not to detail them at the time.

On Saturday, Ms. Reade told the AP there may have been a box to check on the form noting a sexual harassment complaint, but she couldn’t remember and wouldn’t know for sure until she saw the form. Ms. Reade also said she canceled a planned television interview with “Fox News Sunday” because of security concerns.