Joe Biden’s campaign released a statement Thursday highlighting inconsistencies in Tara Reade‘s allegations that he sexually harassed and assaulted her when she worked in his Senate office in 1993.
“An inescapable fact in the case of these false allegations is that more and more inconsistencies keep emerging,” deputy Biden campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement on Thursday.
She pointed to an Associated Press interview with Reade from 2019 that the news service published Friday, in which Reade talked about allegations that Biden made her uncomfortable: “I wasn’t scared of him, that he was going to take me in a room or anything. It wasn’t that kind of vibe.”
“This is the complete opposite of the current allegation, first made in March of this year,” Bedingfield said.
In 2019, Reade, 56, publicly accused Biden of inappropriately touching her hair and neck, in addition to mistreatment from senior staff in his office. She did not, however, accuse him of sexual assault, which she describes as Biden forcibly kissing her and penetrating her with his fingers, until March of this year. Reade has said that she did not reveal the assault allegation in part because she was afraid and in part because of how reporters at the time talked to her.
Bedingfield also pointed to a Vox article about Reade’s allegations.
“The same anonymous friend who now backs Reade’s current allegation told a Vox reporter a very different story last year about Reade’s experience,” Bedingfield said.
In 2019, the unnamed friend said that Biden “never tried to kiss her directly. He never went for one of those touches. It was one of those, ‘Sorry you took it that way.’ I know that is very hard to explain.”
The unnamed friend explained the change in her recollection by saying, “It just organically rolled out that way. … [Reade] and I had many conversations a year ago about what her degree of comfort was. She wanted to leave a layer there, and I did not want to betray that. It just wasn’t my place.”
“Every day, more and more inconsistencies arise,” Bedingfield said. “Women must receive the benefit of the doubt. They must be able to come forward and share their stories without fear of retribution or harm — and we all have a responsibility to ensure that. At the same time, we can never sacrifice the truth. And the truth is that these allegations are false and that the material that has been presented to back them up, under scrutiny, keeps proving their falsity.”
Several other people have said that Reade told them in the 1990s about sexual harassment or sexual assault from Biden or while working in his office with varying degrees of detail. A 1996 court document from Reade’s ex-husband revealed Thursday shows that he said Reade told him about sexual harassment, but not assault, when she worked in Biden’s office, though it did not specify that Biden was the one who harassed her.
Just before appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to deny Reade’s allegations personally on May 1, Biden said in a written statement that Reade had a “record of inconsistencies in her story” but opted not to emphasize that during the on-camera interview.
Reade obtained legal representation from Wigdor LLP, which represents several accusers of movie executive Harvey Weinstein, the firm announced on Thursday.
Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield has released a new statement about Tara Reade, and what she says are “more and more inconsistencies” that come up every day.
Full statement: pic.twitter.com/DSi1R6XrzT
— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) May 7, 2020
