Tara Reade accused Hillary Clinton of “enabling a sexual predator” by endorsing Joe Biden, who Reade alleges sexually harassed and assaulted her in 1993.
“I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted for her in the primary. I’m a lifelong Democrat. But yet, what I see now is someone enabling a sexual predator, and it was my former boss, Joe Biden, who raped me,” Reade told Fox News on Tuesday. “Hillary Clinton has a history of enabling powerful men to cover up their sexual predatory behaviors and their inappropriate sexual misconduct. We don’t need that for this country. We don’t need that for our new generation coming up that wants institutional rape culture to change.”
Clinton endorsed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in a livestream focused on women’s issues on Tuesday.
“I’ve not only been a colleague of Joe Biden’s, I’ve been a friend, and I can tell you that I wish he were president right now, but I can’t wait until he is if all of us do our part,” Clinton said.
Neither Clinton nor Biden addressed Reade’s claims during the event. Biden’s campaign has issued a blanket denial of the allegations, but Reade wants Biden to address them directly.
“A reporter needs to ask Joe Biden about the sexual harassment and sexual assault,” Reade told the Washington Examiner in an interview on Monday.
Reade says she will no longer support either party in national elections because of how her allegations have been handled by the “corporate press” and Biden’s campaign.
“I do not support Donald Trump, nor will I vote for him ever,” Reade told the Washington Examiner. “However, that said, I am no longer a Democrat.”
While she plans to vote in local elections, Reade is “completely exiting” from national politics.
In spring 1993, when Reade was a staff assistant in Biden’s Senate office, she says that Biden forcibly kissed her, penetrated her with his fingers, and touched her hair and neck without her permission. She says she complained to several top staffers about the harassment, not the assault, and was retaliated against in part by losing supervision over office interns and being told to find a new job.
The three top staffers vehemently deny hearing about her allegations. Biden’s campaign has also denied all allegations. Reade’s brother, two unnamed friends, and one named former neighbor say they remember hearing about either the assault or harassment at the time. Two interns confirmed that she was abruptly removed from supervising them.
