Joe Biden for the first time personally addressed Tara Reade’s allegations that he sexually assaulted and harassed her, issuing a firm denial.
“I recognize my responsibility to be a voice, an advocate, and a leader for the change in culture that has begun but is nowhere near finished. So I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago,” Biden said in a statement released Friday morning. “They aren’t true. This never happened.”
The former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee also appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to deny the allegations.
“I don’t remember any type of complaint she may have made. It was 27 years ago. … I don’t remember, nor does anyone else that I’m aware of.”
Biden also said that there is no information that could be hidden in a nondisclosure agreement.
“There is no NDA signed. I’ve never asked anyone to sign an NDA, period, in my case. None,” Biden said.
“I’m not going to question her motive. I’m not going to get into that at all. I don’t know why she’s saying this,” Biden said. “I’m not going to attack her.”
When asked about his previous statement that women accused of sexual assault should be believed, Biden answered carefully.
“Look, women are to be believed given the benefit of the doubt. If they come forward and say something that they said happened to them, they should start off with the presumption that they are telling the truth. Then, you have to look at the circumstances and the facts,” Biden said. “The facts in this case do not exist.”
Biden’s campaign had previously addressed Reade’s allegations with a blanket denial, but Biden had faced growing pressure to address Reade himself after more than a month of revelations and increasing media coverage about her allegation.
Reade, 56, worked in Biden’s Senate office as a staff assistant in 1993, during which time she alleges that Biden sexually harassed her by inappropriately touching her hair and neck and sexually assaulted her by forcibly kissing her and penetrating her with his fingers in a semiprivate area of the Senate office building complex.
Biden in his statement said that Reade’s story has “inconsistencies” and has “changed repeatedly in both small and big ways.”
Reade revealed harassment allegations in spring 2019 but did not accuse Biden of assault until the end of March.
Biden also brought up the fact that Reade says she complained to top staff members in Biden’s office about harassment and their subsequent denials in news reports.
“She has said she raised some of these issues with her supervisor and senior staffers from my office at the time,” Biden’s statement read. “They — both men and a woman — have said, unequivocally, that she never came to them and complained or raised issues. News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one — not one — who corroborated her allegations in any way. Indeed, many of them spoke to the culture of an office that would not have tolerated harassment in any way — as indeed I would not have.”
Friends and family members of Reade have corroborated her story by saying she told them about the assault or harassment in Biden’s office in the ’90s.
Reade says that she filed a complaint with an outside Senate personnel office about the alleged harassment but does not have a record of the complaint. She has called on Biden to open his sealed archive of Senate files in order to search for her own personnel file or other information that could corroborate her story.
According to Biden, there is nothing in those files.
“The former staffer has said she filed a complaint back in 1993. But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint. The papers from my Senate years that I donated to the University of Delaware do not contain personnel files. It is the practice of senators to establish a library of personal papers that document their public record: speeches, policy proposals, positions taken, and the writing of bills,” Biden’s statement said.
Biden suggested that her complaint may be somewhere else and that those records should be opened up.
“There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be — the National Archives. The National Archives is where the records are kept at what was then called the Office of Fair Employment Practices. I am requesting that the Secretary of the Senate ask the Archives to identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document. If there was ever any such complaint, the record will be there,” Biden said.
