White House counselor Kellyanne Conway dismissed former Vice President Joe Biden’s denial of a decades-old sexual assault allegation.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on President Trump in the November general election, unequivocally denied on Friday a claim made by his former Senate staffer Tara Reade accusing him of assaulting her when he was serving in the Senate in the early 1990s.
Reade alleges Biden pushed her against a wall, kissed her, and penetrated her with his fingers in the summer of 1993. While no witnesses to the alleged assault have come forward, several people have confirmed Reade told them about the assault at the time. Reade also said her mother called into Larry King’s CNN show at the time to say her daughter had been assaulted by a “prominent senator.”
In response to the denial of the assault by some Biden supporters, Conway highlighted the notion of “believe all women” heavily promoted by the Left as sexual assault allegations were made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation process.
“Believe all women means all women,” Conway told Fox News. “Not just based on who they are, what their station in life is, whether they have a college degree, [if they’re] Democrat, Republican, independent, or not registered to vote. It doesn’t matter. When you said believe all women, I saw no footnotes, no asterisks.”
Biden’s campaign is strongly denying the allegation made by Reade, telling the Washington Examiner and other media outlets that “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.”
In 1993, Biden was serving as a senator representing Delaware and had already been in office for 20 years. The Washington Post reports Reade joined the office as a 28-year-old in an entry-level staff position in late 1992. Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.
In an interview, on Friday, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Biden himself spoke out against the allegation for the first time, saying he does not remember any type of complaint Reade may have made at the time. When asked why the assault is real for one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and not for his own, Biden said there needs to be investigations made into claims like these.
“I’m not suggesting she had no right to come forward,” Biden told host Mika Brzezinski. “[Women] should come forward. They should be heard and then it should be investigated. If there’s anything that is consistent with what’s being said and she makes the case, or the case is made, then she should be believed.”
Reade has said she filed a written complaint at the time which has not been located. Most of the records from Biden’s Senate office remain under seal at the University of Delaware.
Biden said there are no personnel records in the Delaware files and that revealing the documents would expose “confidential conversations” with former President Barack Obama and other heads of state. He also insisted that any complaints filed by Reade, should they exist, would exist in the National Archives and asked for the secretary of the Senate to ask the National Archives to “identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document.”
Conway said his presidential run is more than enough reason on its own to unseal what could be found in the records.
“Unseal the records, let us go through them,” Conway said. “You should unseal them anyway if you want to run for president.”
Conway said the culture has largely changed for the better in allowing women to come forward with sexual assault and harassment allegations. The #MeToo movement that began in 2018 led to a domino effect of women coming forward about sexual misconduct, which led to the downfall of several powerful male figures in the media, entertainment, and the political realm. Conway revealed in 2018 that she too is a victim of sexual assault.
“If you are squelching the confidence of women coming forward and telling their story of sexual assault allegations, then you’re silencing thousands if not millions of more women, so it’s very difficult, as the feminists said at the time, very difficult for women to come forward. So if it’s open and shut now because Joe Biden says it’s not true, you are silencing so many more women,” Conway said.
Reade is expected to appear on Fox News Sunday this weekend to discuss her allegation.
“Being great for all women means you let them have their say,” Conway said. “I want to hear from this woman.”
