Tara Reade’s newly hired lawyer is urging former Vice President Joe Biden to make his Senate documents open for a thorough search of any records relating to his client’s sexual assault allegation.
Doug Wigdor, Reade’s attorney, sent a letter to the Biden campaign on Monday requesting the trove of documents be opened so his client can receive the “due process she deserves.”
“We hereby request that you immediately open up your archives … and authorize a search to determine whether they contain any records related to Ms. Reade, including, but not limited to, Ms. Reade’s Request for Counseling and [or] documents related thereto,” the letter reads, according to the Washington Examiner.
Reade, who served as a staffer in Biden’s Senate office between 1992 and 1993, came forward last month to reveal there was more to the allegations of unwanted touching than she first brought against the former vice president in April 2019. According to Reade, she was not only sexually harassed while working for Biden, but she was also allegedly the victim of sexual assault. Reade claims that then-Senator Joe Biden pushed her up against a wall, forcibly kissed her, and digitally penetrated her sometime in 1993.
As Breitbart News reported earlier this month, Biden’s Senate papers may hold the key to the newfound allegation. Reade claims that while employed by Biden’s office she raised concerns about being sexually harassed with her superiors, although she did not mention the supposed assault. She also claims that she filed a written report with the Senate personnel office laying out the misconduct.
To date, Reade has not been able to obtain a copy of the personnel report. She claims her inability stems from the fact that Biden’s Senate papers were donated to the University of Delaware in 2011.
Neither are the papers likely to become public any time soon. The documents, which fill 1,875 boxes and include 415 gigabytes of electronic records, were to be made public on Dec. 31, 2019, according to an agreement the former vice president entered into with the University of Delaware upon donating his papers.
Those parameters, though, were changed on April 24, 2019—the day before Biden declared his 2020 campaign—when the university announced the trove of documents would now be made public on Dec. 31 or “two years” after the former vice president “retires from public life.” At the time, the university provided no definition for what it considered “public life,” leaving open the final date for release.
Among the documents are “committee reports, drafts of legislation,” and official correspondence. It is uncertain if documents pertaining to personnel issues or employment complaints would be among the papers, but internal correspondence regarding Reade or her allegations by Biden’s Senate staff are likely to be included.
The latter is all the more likely given Reade’s claims of having discussed her accusations with superiors and the hasty nature in which she left her position after the alleged assault took place.
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