Seven More Women Have Come Forawrd With Acusations Agains Bide
In 1993, Joe Biden, the current presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was serving as a U.Southward. senator from Delaware. John Duricka/AP hibernate caption
toggle caption
John Duricka/AP
In 1993, Joe Biden, the current presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was serving as a U.South. senator from Delaware.
John Duricka/AP
Editor's note: This story contains a graphic clarification of an alleged sexual assault.
Tara Reade, a former junior staffer in Joe Biden'south Senate office, has defendant the presumptive Autonomous presidential nominee of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she was working as a staff banana. The Biden campaign denies the accusation and says the declared incident "absolutely did not happen."
Reade detailed her business relationship in multiple conversations with NPR, and it was corroborated by a friend of hers who declined to be identified. Reade's blood brother as well corroborated some parts of her story. No contemporaneous notes or documentation of the alleged incident accept been found, and Reade's account has been denied past longtime Biden staffers whom she worked for at the fourth dimension.
In interviews with NPR, Reade, at present 56 and living in California, said the declared assault happened when she was asked by her then-supervisor to deliver a duffel bag to Biden as he was heading to the Capitol.
When Reade met upwardly with the senator, she said, he pinned her upward confronting a wall and penetrated her vagina with his fingers.
"His hands went underneath my clothing and he was touching me in my private areas and without my consent," Reade told NPR. She said Biden asked her whether she wanted to go somewhere else.
Reade said that she pulled away and that Biden pointed his finger at her and said, "You're nothing to me, nothing."
Reade thinks she must have responded emotionally, because, she said, Biden then took her by the shoulders and said, "Yous're OK. You're fine. You're OK," earlier grabbing his bag and walking away.
Reade could not remember the exact location or date of the alleged incident but said information technology was probable in the basement of a Senate function building in the spring of 1993.
Tara Reade's congressional identification bill of fare from the early on 1990s. Records show she worked in Joe Biden's Senate office for almost ix months. Courtesy of Tara Reade hide caption
toggle caption
Courtesy of Tara Reade
Tara Reade's congressional identification bill of fare from the early on 1990s. Records show she worked in Joe Biden'southward Senate office for about nine months.
Courtesy of Tara Reade
Reade says she filed a police written report simply over a week ago with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Constabulary Section because she was worried about her safety after receiving "online harassment."
The law investigation is currently open up, though the statute of limitations for prosecuting the alleged assault has expired.
NPR obtained confirmation of the law report from a law enforcement source. A record of the study names Biden. NPR has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the full report.
Some details of Reade's account have been inconsistent, and her story has changed over time. In spring 2019, she came frontward with an account of Biden touching her shoulder and neck in a way that made her experience uncomfortable, merely she never mentioned sexual assault. Then in late March of this year, she went on a left-leaning podcast, The Katie Halper Testify, and gave a graphic account of sexual assault like to what she has told NPR. The story took off on left-fly and right-wing corners of the Internet.
Some supporters of the sometime vice president, propose Reade has a political motive. They have tried to ignominy her by pointing to her irresolute story, as well as her outspoken support for Bernie Sanders, who was Biden'south final presidential main challenger. Reade also had demonstrated support for candidates Elizabeth Warren and Marianne Williamson, both of whom had before dropped out of the race.
Other critics have pointed to her effusive online posts praising the Russian leader Vladimir Putin; Reade says she was enamored with Russia while writing a novel and has publicly walked back those statements. And yet others have questioned why, as recently equally 2017, she had taken to the Internet to praise Biden.
Reade wonders why any of that information is relevant in assessing a sexual assault allegation.
"This isn't a partisan outcome. This is about ability and the abuse of power, and the people around that person that enabled that behavior," she told NPR.
Reade described herself as a third-generation Democrat and said she supports the work Biden did to advocate for the the Violence Against Women Act. She'southward a domestic abuse survivor and said that legislation personally helped her.
"Many things can exist true at once. Someone can do something really awesome, then they tin also commit a crime," Reade said, describing her conflicting feelings about Biden.
Reade said she voted for the Obama-Biden ticket twice but does not intend to cast a vote for president this November.
"I personally do not want Trump to become president over again. I will not vote for a Republican," she said. "However, I am not going to vote for the person who assaulted me this time ... So where it leaves me is politically homeless, essentially."
Reade's allegation emerged as Biden was securing his position equally the presumptive Autonomous nominee to take on President Trump in November. More than a dozen women have publicly defendant Trump of various incidents of sexual assail. Reade is the merely woman to have publicly accused Biden of sexual attack.
Last spring, before Biden jumped into the presidential race, a former Nevada state legislator named Lucy Flores said Biden once grabbed her shoulders, sniffed her hair and gave her an unwanted kiss on her head. "His behavior wasn't violent or sexual, it was demeaning and disrespectful," Flores wrote in March 2019, noting a key distinction. Other complaints of Biden invading women'south personal space followed.
Reade was one of the women who came forwards with a like account then, but did not raise an accusation of sexual assail publicly until March of this yr.
Reade said she told i of her friends nigh the alleged 1993 assail around the time she said it happened. That friend, who asked to remain bearding in office to protect her business interests, spoke with NPR and corroborated Reade's description of the assault and its backwash.
That friend said she discouraged Reade from going to the police at the fourth dimension, believing in that era that it would not have resulted in any action and could have hurt Reade professionally.
Reade said she also told her female parent, who has since passed abroad, and her blood brother, Collin Moulton.
Moulton did non respond to NPR'southward initial requests for annotate, merely in a text message on Saturday nighttime said he recalled Reade telling him about an incident in the early 1990s that happened when she was asked to bring Biden a gym bag.
"They were alone in a private surface area or room. He more or less cornered her against the wall. He put his easily 'under her apparel.' My mom wanted her to get to the police," Moulton wrote.
Moulton as well backed up Reade'southward recollection that she was fired. NPR could not otherwise ostend the circumstances of Reade's departure from the office.
Reade said she never told anyone in Biden's part about the assault, though she said she did mutter about harassment, saying she felt uncomfortable on multiple occasions because of Biden and his staff. Reade said Biden would run his hands through her pilus at meetings and said she was asked to serve drinks at a fundraiser considering the senator plainly liked her legs. Moulton said in his text message that Reade told him about such incidents.
NPR spoke with multiple former Biden staffers from the time, and none of them could confirm Reade's recollections.
Melissa Lefko had the same job as Reade in the early 1990s, both serving as staff assistants in roughly the same time menses. Lefko told NPR that the position did not involve the kind of regular interactions with Biden that Reade has at times described and that she was never asked to take the senator personal items or nourish fundraisers. Lefko said the job entailed answering phone calls and performing constituent services.
Lefko added that she does not personally remember Reade and that Reade'due south clarification of the role environment doesn't align with her experience.
"The culture of the function was very professional in every way, with women in senior positions at a time when that was non the norm," said Lefko. "When you work on the Hill, you know who the proficient guys are and who the bad guys are. And Biden was a good guy, and I hateful that wholeheartedly."
Although Reade said she never spoke about the assault to anyone on Biden's staff, she said she filed a formal written complaint about harassment to a Senate personnel office but did not receive any follow-up. She did non have a copy of the complaint and said she could not recall the proper name of the office where she had filed paperwork.
Reade likewise said she reported her concerns about harassment to three people in the function: Biden'south longtime aide, Dennis Toner; his then-chief of staff, Ted Kaufman; and his executive assistant, Marianne Baker. Reade recalls having multiple conversations and meetings with them most the alleged harassment.
Both Toner and Kaufman told NPR they had no recollection of Reade. Congressional files confirm she worked in the office for about nine months from December 1992 to Baronial 1993.
"She did not come to me," Kaufman said. "I would have remembered if she had."
Kaufman stepped in to fill Biden's Senate seat when he became vice president in 2009 and remains a close confidant.
Toner, who worked for Biden for 34 years, told NPR the same. "I would call up any conversation with any staff fellow member with Senator Biden that was forth the lines of sexual harassment," he said.
"It's something that would exist and so out of character with how you would describe Joe Biden," Toner added, reiterating that he has never heard any other such complaints from other staff.
Baker worked for Biden for 18 years and, in a statement sent from the Biden campaign, said she took her duties related to homo resource very seriously: "In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never in one case witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate comport, period — not from Ms. Reade, non from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or retentiveness of Ms. Reade's accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me equally a woman professional, and as a manager. These clearly faux allegations are in consummate contradiction to both the inner workings of our Senate office and to the homo I know and worked so closely with for near two decades."
Biden'south deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield too put out a argument disputing the allegation: "Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to irresolute the culture and the laws around violence against women. He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent printing. What is clear almost this claim: information technology is untrue. This admittedly did non happen."
Biden himself has not responded to the allegation, a point of item frustration for Reade.
In the weeks before he launched his candidacy terminal year, when Biden faced accusations of contact that was said to be unwanted but non sexual in nature, his response to those complaints appeared uneven. The sometime vice president said he recognized that social norms had changed, and he released a video proverb that he would be "more mindful about respecting personal space in the hereafter." Simply he also joked about having permission to hug people at a union event days afterward.
Biden's campaign and his surrogates have been conscientious in denying this new allegation, trying not to personally discredit Reade. Ever since the #MeToo motility erupted, Democrats including Biden have been insisting that club should believe women, but they are grappling with what that ways.
When asked about Reade's allegation, some allies have pointed to Biden'south legislative tape on these issues. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also a sometime presidential candidate, told NPR last week, "All women in these cases have the correct to exist heard and have their claims thoroughly reviewed."
Cheryl W. Thompson contributed reporting. Elena Moore contributed inquiry. Edited past Arnie Seipel.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/19/837966525/on-the-record-a-former-biden-staffers-sexual-assault-allegation