Joe Biden’s silence on Tara Reade’s allegations of sexual misconduct as new information corroborates portions of her story is prompting a wave of calls for him to address her claims directly.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign has issued a blanket denial of Reade’s allegations that he digitally penetrated her and sexually harassed her while she was a staff assistant in his office in 1993, saying that it “did not happen.” The Biden campaign circulates talking points that falsely suggest a New York Times report discredited her allegations.
The candidate himself, however, has been silent on the matter.
Reade wants Biden, a former two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, to address her allegations himself, not through his campaign.
“A reporter needs to ask Joe Biden about the sexual harassment and sexual assault,” Reade told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
A growing chorus agrees with her.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post editorial board said that the former vice president should directly address her allegations.
“The way to signal he takes Ms. Reade’s case seriously, and the cases of women like her seriously, is to go before the media and the public ready to listen and to reply,” the editorial said.
The paper also called on Biden to make his sealed Senate archives at the University of Delaware available for journalists to search for corroboration of Reade’s claims. The university announced last year that Biden’s records, which include 1,875 boxes and 415 gigabytes of electronic content, will be sealed from the public until two years after Biden “retires from public life” or two years after Dec. 31, 2019, whichever is later.
Women’s rights groups, many of which have also been silent on her allegations, also reportedly hope Biden speaks up.
According to the New York Times, several women’s groups drafted a public letter that praised Biden’s work on passing the Violence Against Women Act but called on him to address Reade’s allegations directly.
“Vice President Biden has the opportunity, right now, to model how to take serious allegations seriously,” the draft letter said. “The weight of our expectations matches the magnitude of the office he seeks.”
The groups put the letter on hold after Biden’s campaign found out about the effort.
Some activists have spoken up, however.
“It’s difficult for survivors to see that a woman who has more corroborating sources than most survivors have in similar situations is being tossed aside and actively being weaponized by cynical political actors,” said Shaunna Thomas, a founder of women’s advocacy group UltraViolet. “It would be an incredible moment of leadership for Joe Biden to show up.”
Many far-left activists, including some who were part of former Biden primary rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s campaign, also think Biden should say something — partly because of principle, and also due to the political implications of staying quiet.
“It can’t appear that she is being ignored,” said Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who was a Sanders campaign co-chair. “If we want to keep our credibility as a party, then we will have to agree that this allegation and any allegation should be vetted in the public.”
CNN editor Chris Cillizza wrote that Biden should speak to Reade’s allegations personally.
“Given both his pledge to do better than Trump ± in every aspect of being president — and accusations of improper touching that have surfaced in the past, the allegations by Reade are not the sort of thing Biden can or should be allowed to deny via a senior female campaign staffer. Reade’s allegation needs to be directly addressed by the candidate himself,” Cillizza wrote Monday. “And Biden needs to answer several questions including: a) Does he remember Reade at all? b) Did they ever interact? c) Had he ever heard of this allegation from her prior to a few weeks ago?”
He also noted that “Reade’s claim appears to have jumped to a new level” based on some new pieces of evidence.
On Monday, Reade’s former neighbor and a former colleague revealed that Reade told them in the ’90s that she was assaulted or harassed, potentially corroborating her story. On Friday, Reade identified her now-deceased mother’s voice in uncovered 1993 Larry King Live show footage, in which a woman caller told King about her daughter’s difficulty voicing “problems” with a “prominent senator.”
Columnist and CNN host S. E. Cupp echoed Cillizza in a New York Daily News opinion piece on Wednesday.
“Biden wants to defeat President Trump by drawing strong contrasts on competence and character. Before that fight, though, Biden will have to contend with another pressing matter that has been bubbling up for months. Her name is Tara Reade,” Cupp wrote. “We’ll see how long Biden can avoid this topic. But one thing is certain: Doing so benefits almost no one, least of all Biden himself.”
