After the woman who accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her when she worked for him in 1993 filed a criminal complaint with Washington, D.C., police, a flood of legacy news organizations published stories about her allegations — following weeks of silence after her allegations first became public.
The police report, filed on Thursday, opened the way for a swath of stories that added new information to allegations made by the woman in interviews. That includes those published first by the New York Times on Sunday, followed by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and NBC News, which came after articles and interviews weeks ago by left-wing outlets: the Katie Halper Podcast, the Hill, Democracy Now, and the Intercept.
The former vice president’s presidential campaign has vigorously denied the allegations. “Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims. We encourage them to do so because these accusations are false,” Biden spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said.
Through three fully public interviews and other reports from those who interviewed the woman, Tara Reade, her description of harassment in Biden’s office and sexual assault by Biden is substantively consistent. Her brother and two unnamed friends say they remember hearing about either the assault or harassment at the time. Two interns confirm that she was abruptly removed from supervising them.
However, those in Biden’s office who Reade says she complained to about harassment, not the assault, say that they have no memory of that. A complaint Reade says she filed with a Senate personnel office could not be located, but she alleges a record might be in Biden’s sealed file at the University of Delaware. And Reade has changing descriptions of why she left Washington and has changed her tone toward Biden.
Here is a more complete view of the allegations based on information from the many reports.
About the accuser, Tara Reade
Alexandra Tara Reade, 56, was born in California and currently lives there. Early in life, she was a model and actress. She worked for Biden’s Senate office as a staff assistant from December 1992 to August 1993, when she was 29 years old and Biden was 50. Biden, first elected to the Senate in 1972, was at the apex of his power in Congress, chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee.
After leaving Washington, she became a mother and left an abusive marriage. She has changed her name multiple times due in part to leaving the marriage. She has a law degree from Seattle University School of Law but has never practiced law. She has worked as a victim’s rights advocate and testified as an expert witness in court. Most recently, Reade worked part-time with families who have special-needs children.
Sexual assault allegation
On a hot day in spring 1993 — she was not sure of the exact date or time — Biden’s scheduler told Reade to bring a gym bag to the then-senator. In a “semiprivate” location somewhere in the basement of a Capitol office building, she handed Biden the athletic bag.
Suddenly, he was kissing her against a cold wall and put his hand under her shirt and up her skirt. She was not wearing tights, and he penetrated her with his fingers.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” she said he asked. When she pulled away, he said: “Come on, man, I heard you liked me.” Biden then grew angry. “You’re nothing to me. Nothing,” she said he told her.
Reade said that she told her mother, her brother, and a close friend who also worked in the Senate about the assault shortly after it happened.
She did not, however, say that she complained to those in the office about an assault, and a Senate personnel complaint she said she filed at the time was about harassment, not the assault.
Harassment and retaliation allegations
Reade said in numerous interviews that Biden touched her neck and shoulders in ways that made her feel uncomfortable.
But the incident that set off a wave of retaliation against her, she said, did not directly involve Biden. She was called into a meeting in which the staff had been arguing, she said, and learned that Biden thought she was pretty, had nice legs, and that Biden thought Reade should serve cocktails at a fundraising function. Reade said nothing during the argument. A female legislative staffer discouraged her, saying that she did not have to serve the drinks, while her supervisor encouraged her to do so.
Reade complained to supervisors, she said, and they brushed off her concerns by telling her not to look “sexy” and to wear more modest clothing. She was retaliated against by being moved to an office with no windows, had responsibilities such as overseeing interns taken away from her, and then was told to find another job, she said. In one of the most striking allegations of retaliation, Reade told Democracy Now that she “was told to call one of my upper-level supervisors even if I went to the restroom.”
These allegations were first published on April 3, 2019, in the Union, a local news outlet, and then by Reade in an April 2019 Medium post.
It was not until 2020 that Reade publicly accused Biden of sexual assault and elaborated on her allegations, including naming those who she said she complained to.
Brother and friends say she told them about the assault or harassment
Reade said that she told her mother, her brother, and a close friend who also worked in the Senate about the assault shortly after it happened.
Nearly every outlet — the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Intercept, the Associated Press, and NBC News — reported that an unnamed friend confirmed that Reade relayed the sexual assault incident soon after it happened. NBC News added that this person also remembered that Reade spoke with superiors about harassment, but not the assault. She remembered Reade had said she filed a written complaint with a Senate office at the time.
Reade’s brother, Collin Moulton, told the Washington Post that he recalled Reade in 1993 telling him about Biden inappropriately touching her neck and shoulders and added that he felt “ashamed now for not being a better advocate” for his sister. A few days later, he sent a text message to the Washington Post, adding that he recalled Reade also telling him that Biden put his hand under her clothes. “I heard that there was a gym bag incident … and that he was inappropriate,” Moulton told the Washington Post. “I remember her telling me he said she was nothing to him.”
Moulton expressed a similar sentiment to the Intercept, confirming that he heard about the assault from Reade at the time and lamenting that “I wasn’t one of her better advocates. I said, ‘Let it go, move on, guys are idiots.’” He did not respond to inquiries from the Associated Press or the New York Times.
Their mother died in 2016, but Moulton said both he and their mother urged Reade to call the police, which she did not do.
Several outlets — the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times, and NBC News — also reported a second unnamed friend confirmed that around 2007 or 2008, Reade disclosed that Biden had been inappropriate with touching Reade, but the person did not say he or she was told about an assault.
Reade also told the Washington Post that she talked to a therapist about the alleged assault earlier this year. The Washington Post asked for notes from that conversation, but Reade did not provide them.
Former Biden staff members deny hearing complaints
Reade told multiple outlets that she complained to three key senior staff members about harassment from Biden but not the alleged assault: Marianne Baker, a former executive assistant in Biden’s Senate office; Dennis Toner, Biden’s then-deputy chief of staff; and Ted Kaufman, Biden’s then-chief of staff.
The Biden campaign provided a statement from Baker, who did not respond to requests for comment from other outlets.
“In all my years working for Sen. Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone,” Baker said. “I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional and as a manager. These clearly false allegations are in complete contradiction to both the inner workings of our Senate office and to the man I know and worked so closely with for almost two decades.”
Toner, who is now a consultant based in Delaware, told multiple outlets that he does not remember Reade: “I don’t remember her. I don’t remember this conversation. And I would remember this conversation,” he told the New York Times.
Kaufman, who remains a confidant of Biden but has no role in his presidential campaign, also told multiple outlets he had no memory of a conversation with Reade. “I did not know her. She did not come to me. If she had, I would have remembered her,” he told the New York Times.
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press reported that they spoke to many former staff members from that time, and they did not recall instances of Biden inappropriately touching Reade or a request that she serve drinks.
Melissa Lefko, who worked as a staff assistant at the same time as Reade but does not remember her, spoke to several outlets. She told the Associated Press: “When you work on the Hill, you know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and who you should avoid, and Biden was a good guy, he was never, ever on that list of the bad guys.”
Interns confirm Reade abruptly stopped overseeing them
The Washington Post and the New York Times each reported that two unnamed former interns said that they remembered she abruptly stopped supervising them in April 1993, potentially corroborating Reade’s claim that she was stripped of key responsibilities.
But interns did not know the reason why, and they said that they never saw Biden interact with Reade inappropriately. That makes them unable to verify an allegation mentioned only in the Union that Biden put a finger on her neck while she was in front of a group of interns.
Alleged complaint filed with a congressional office
After the alleged assault, Reade said she filed a complaint on a clipboard in a Senate personnel office — she could not remember the name — about the alleged harassment, not the assault. She never heard back about it. No record of the report has been located.
The office that fielded harassment complaints at that time was called the Senate Office of Fair Employment Practices. It was replaced in 1995 with the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights. In 1993, the law said that harassment allegations would be heard by an independent board.
Reade suspects that Biden’s Senate office might have gotten alerted to a complaint and that it might be in Biden’s official Senate paper archive at the University of Delaware. Those records are sealed from the public “for two years after Biden retires from public life.”
The Biden campaign told the New York Times that it did not have a record of a complaint.
Incident report about the assault
On Thursday, April 9, Reade filed a public incident report with the Washington, D.C., police. The public portion of the report is one page and reads: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.”
Reade said that she was Subject-1 and Biden was Subject-2.
Because filing a false report is a crime punishable by up to 30 days in jail, the move could represent an escalation of her allegation and a demonstration that she is putting claims to the test.
Reade said she filed the report “for safety reasons only,” to “give herself an additional degree of safety from potential threats.” Her assault allegation is past the statute of limitations.
Differing tones from Reade
The Associated Press spoke with Reade about harassment allegations in April 2019, but it declined to run a story about her allegations last year “because reporters were unable to corroborate her allegations, and aspects of her story contradicted other reporting.” However, the report did not explain what the contradictions were.
The Washington Post also reported that it interviewed Reade on April 4, 2019, during which she blamed staff for “bullying” her rather than Biden for harassment.
“This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” Reade told the Washington Post. “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me. … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”
She has offered differing explanations for why she left Washington. In a 2019 blog post, she said she was unable to find another job due to retaliation from complaining about harassment. In 2018, she wrote that she left because her interests revolved around the arts and disliked “xenophobia” toward Russia. In 2009, she wrote that she moved to be with her future husband.
Also in the 2009 blog post, Reade lauded Biden’s work in passing the Violence Against Women Act. She praised him in a 2017 tweet, saying: “My old boss speaks truth. Listen.”
Reade told the Washington Post that despite the assault, Biden “stands for all I believe in.”
Skepticism of Reade’s politics and motivations
Skeptics of Reade’s allegations point to her history of praising Russian President Vladimir Putin in social media posts and essays as evidence that she is not a reliable accuser. In November 2018, Reade wrote an essay on Medium titled “Why a Liberal Democrat Supports Vladimir Putin.” Weeks later, in mid-December, Reade wrote another essay praising Putin.
She told various outlets that she was researching Russia for a novel, is not working for Russia, and said that her then-praise for Putin was “misguided.”
Reade voted for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 and 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. In this cycle’s Democratic presidential primaries, she gave $5 to Marianne Williamson in August 2019 and also looked at Andrew Yang and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren before settling on supporting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
She faced criticism for revealing her allegations in leftist outlets supportive of Sanders. But Reade says that she decided to come forward in part because of wanting to make a better world for her daughter and told the Washington Post that she does not “have an agenda other than I just wanted my story told.”
