The University of Delaware is facing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over access to former Vice President Joe Biden’s Senate records.
Conservative activist group Judicial Watch announced on Wednesday that it has filed the suit on behalf of itself and the Daily Caller News Foundation, both of which filed previous records requests to the university earlier this year for Biden’s records.
“The University of Delaware should stop protecting Joe Biden and provide the public access to his public records, as Delaware law requires,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Neil Patel, co-founder and president of the Daily Caller, said the university has a legal obligation to turn over Biden’s public records.
“Partisan gamesmanship by a public university is unseemly and unlawful. If they don’t want to do the right thing, we will force them in court,” Patel said.
The files, which have been kept secret since being donated in 2012, could have been released on Dec. 3, but no action was taken to make the collection available to the public. The university has said it won’t release the records until two years after Biden retires from public life, which would be after the 2020 election in which Biden is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The records came to interest after a sexual assault claim by former Biden Senate staffer Tara Reade came to light earlier this year. Reade alleged that Biden pushed her against a wall, kissed her, and penetrated her with his fingers in the summer of 1993 when he was a senator representing Delaware.
While no witnesses to the alleged assault have come forward, several people have confirmed Reade told them about the assault around that time. Reade has also claimed she was subjected to sexual harassment while working in his office. Biden’s campaign has vigorously denied the claim.
The former vice president has also said there are no personnel records in the Delaware files and that revealing the documents would expose “confidential conversations” he had with former President Barack Obama and other heads of state. He also insisted that any complaints filed by Reade would exist in the National Archives and that he asked the secretary of the Senate to request that the National Archives “identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document.”
