WASHINGTON — The former Senate staffer accusing Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her 27 years ago is calling on him to “step forward and be held accountable,” in her first on-camera interview since the former vice president “unequivocally” denied her allegation.
“You and I were there, Joe Biden,” Tara Reade told Megyn Kelly in a clip of the interview posted to Twitter Thursday. “You should not be running on character for the President of the United States.” When asked if Biden should drop out of race, Reade said, “I wish he would.”
In an interview with a Florida television station Thursday, Biden was asked about her comments, responding, “well look, nothing ever happened with Reade.”
Reade also said she would “absolutely” go under oath and be cross-examined over her claim, but stopped short of saying she’d agree unilaterally to taking a polygraph. “I’m not a criminal. Joe Biden should take the polygraph,” Reade said, raising concern about the precedent it would set for sexual assault survivors. “I will take one if Joe Biden takes one. But I am not a criminal.”
In late March, Reade alleged that when she worked as a staff assistant for then-Sen. Biden in 1993, he penetrated her with his fingers under her skirt when she brought him a gym bag in a corridor in the Capitol complex. A year earlier, Reade claimed only that she felt harassed and made uncomfortable during the months she worked for Biden as a staff assistant, including Biden rubbing her neck.
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Appearing on MSNBC last week, Biden said that he would not question her motivations but insisted what she alleged “never happened.”
“I don’t know why she’s saying this, why, after 27 years, all of a sudden this gets raised. I don’t understand it. But I’m not going to go in and question her motive, not going to attack her,” he said. “She has a right to say whatever she wants to say, but I have a right to say, look at the facts, check it out.”
As Reade’s account of the alleged incident, her conversations about it with others, and what if any steps she took to lodge a formal complaint at the time have all been intensely scrutinized over the past week, a prominent law firm announced that they are now representing her.
In a statement, attorney Douglas Wigdor said that “every survivor has the right to competent counsel,” and that he would “represent Ms. Reade zealously, just as we would any other victim of sexual violence.
Beyond his denials, Biden has called for the Secretary of the Senate to locate and release any potential records that might support Reade’s account that she made a formal complaint with the body at the time. That office said Monday that it did not have the “discretion” to release such records or even confirm whether they existed, citing confidentiality requirements under law.
The office did provide a 16-page document detailing procedures at the time for the Senate Office of Fair Employment Practices to handle complaints about discrimination or “reprisal” from Senate employees.
Reade told the Associated Press last year that she “chickened out” from moving forward after taking an initial step to request counseling from the office. Biden’s office, according to procedures at the time, would not have been notified of any pending allegation at that stage.
In the new interview, Reade said that she has faced hostility on social media and even death threats since coming forward with her allegation. She claimed her social media accounts have been hacked and personal information “dragged through,” attributing some maltreatment to “blue check marks” supporting Biden.
“His campaign is taking this position that they want all women to be able to speak safely. I have not experienced that,” she said.
“Every person that maybe has a gripe against me — an ex boyfriend or an ex-landlord, whatever it is has been able to have a platform rather than me, talking about things that have nothing to do with 1993,” she said. Reade said some have called her a “Russian agent,” leading to a death threat.
In a posting on Medium from 2018 that has since been deleted, Reade called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a compassionate, caring, visionary leader” and said she hoped “America will come to see Russia as I do, with eyes of love.” Reade has explained to NBC News that at the time she was working on a novel and said the writings don’t represent her current feelings toward Russia or Putin.
