CLAIM: During his appearance last week on Morning Joe, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden said of Tara Reade’s credible sexual assault allegation, “I don’t know why after 27 years all of a sudden this gets raised.”
VERDICT: False.
Tara Reade has accused Biden of sexually harassing and sexually assaulting her while she worked in his Senate office in 1993. According to Reade, Biden pinned her up against a wall, shoved his hands up her skirt and his fingers into her vagina. Reade also says she was fired in retaliation for filing a complaint about the harassment.
After the fake news media could no longer cover up for Biden any longer, the former vice president appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe — a left-wing, anti-Trump program — to deny any wrongdoing. One of the ways in which he sought to discredit Reade — his eighth accuser — was to question her motives with the repeated suggestion that she is only bringing up this allegation now to hurt his presidential bid.
On numerous occasions, Biden repeated the talking point, suggesting he’s being sucker-punched after 27 years:
I’m not going to question her motive. I’m not going to get into that at all. I don’t know why she’s saying this. I don’t know 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. I’m not going to attack her.
…
No one ever brought it to the attention of me 27 years ago.
…
It’s 27 years ago. This never happened, and when she first made the claim, we made it clear that it never happened, and that’s — it’s as simple as that.
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I am absolutely positive that no one that I’m aware of ever has been made aware of any complaint, a formal complaint, made by — or a complaint by Tara Reade against me at the time this allegedly happened 27 years ago, or until I announced for pres— well, I guess it was in April or May of this year. I know of no one who’s aware that any complaint was made.
I’ve rated this claim as false for a number of reasons, primarily because Joe Biden is engaging in a cover-up.
Reade has so far been an open book with the media, going so far as to challenge investigative reporters to dig into her story, which they have done, and not once has she been caught in a lie. If anything, investigative reporters, such as Business Insider’s Rich McHugh, have been able to strengthen Reade’s allegation by finding people Reade told about Biden’s sexual misconduct at or near the time it allegedly occurred. So far, five contemporaneous witnesses verify that Reade told them about Biden.
We also have video of Reade’s now-deceased mother calling into a 1993 edition of CNN’s Larry King Live looking for advice about her daughter’s problems with a “prominent senator.”
Most importantly, Reade claims she filed a complaint about Biden at the time — and filing an official complaint is the ultimate act of raising the issue. So if she did file a complaint, Biden’s claim that Reade waited 27 years to “raise” the issue is false.
Reade is asking for the media to dig into Joe Biden’s senate archives. She says the 1993 complaint exists. She is unafraid to be scrutinized.
Joe Biden, however, is blocking access to his Senate papers, which are currently locked down at the University of Delaware.
What’s more, Joe Biden is sending the media on a snipe hunt; he’s telling them to look at the National Archives for her sexual harassment complaint when he almost certainly knows the National Archives does not archive personnel records.
So as Joe Biden is saying out of one side of his mouth that Reade’s allegation should be investigated while insinuating Reade is only raising the issue now to damage his presidential bid, out of the other side of his mouth, Biden is refusing access to his archives that would 1) allow this issue to be fully investigated and 2) go a long way towards answering the question of whether or not this issue was “raised” in 1993 by way of Reade’s formal complaint.
Biden simply cannot justify accusing Reade of only raising this issue after 27 years while he is the only one standing in the way of verifying whether his own charge is true or not.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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