Biden to address sex assault allegation.
WASHINGTON » Joe Biden will publicly address an allegation of sexual assault for the first time in an appearance on morning television today, after weeks of silence on the issue that had prompted frustration from Democrats and attacks from Republicans seeking to weaken him for a general election contest against President Donald Trump.
Biden will discuss the allegation on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, according to a Twitter post from the network. The decision followed intensive discussions in the Biden campaign about how to more force fully confront the allegation.
The planned appear - ance came as scrutiny of the allegation intensified along partisan lines on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Nancy Pe lo si, the House speaker and the Democratic Party’s highest-ranking officeholder, expressed support for Biden’s presidential bid while Republicans weaponized the accusation to attack congressional Democrats as hypocritical.
The allegation Biden will address was made by a former aide in his Senate office, Tara Reade, who has said Biden assaulted her in a Senate building in 1993. Biden’s campaign has said the accusation is not true, but the former vice president himself had not addressed the issue publicly. His silence has raised questions among some Democrats about the agility of his campaign operation and its ability to navigate what is widely expected to be a heated and deeply divisive presidential campaign this fall.
As the clamor around the allegation rose Thursday, Pelosi sought to calm anxious Democrats during her weekly news conference, calling Biden a person of “great integrity” and saying that there were no records or additional witnesses corroborating the account.
Her comments came as Republicans expanded their attacks against Biden, the party’s presumptive nominee, calling the party hypocritical on issues of sexual violence, harassment and gender inequality. They also compared the way Democrats have responded to Reade’s allegation with their response to accusations of sexual assault in 2018 against Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Already, the Trump campaign has signaled that it plans to make the allegation against Biden a central part of its campaign narrative, accusing him in a memo Wednesday of “misrepresenting news reports and his own past positions.”