As of right now, Tara Reade has objectively far more evidence backing her sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden than Christine Blasey Ford has ever had against Brett Kavanaugh. Full stop. This shouldn’t have to be explained, but evidently, it does.
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argued that Democrats shouldn’t compare the allegations against the de facto Democratic nominee and the Supreme Court justice in large part due to the evidence, approvingly noting that Ford “had four sworn affidavits from people whom she’d told that she’d been assaulted, as well as therapist’s notes and the results from a polygraph.”
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait took it a step further, declaring that Reade “presents both less corroboration than Christine Blasey Ford (whose documentation included notes from her therapist) and more grounds for credible doubt, especially Reade’s coordinating her statements with Bernie Sanders supporters to maximize their political impact.”
Goldberg and Chait’s articles both present valid points about Reade’s story, but the notion that she has less evidence is patently absurd. Here’s why.
Reade alleges that Biden assaulted her in the summer of 1993. A clip from Larry King Live from August 1993, the last month Reade worked for Biden’s Senate office, features a mother expressing concern about her daughter’s insurmountable “problems” working for a prominent senator’s office. Reade had mentioned that she told her mother and that her mother had called the show anonymously before the clip resurfaced. Whereas the clip strongly suggests that Reade’s complaints, be they about harassment or outright assault, did go back to the time she alleged, the on-the-record corroboration from Reade’s former neighbor Lynda LaCasse provides her actual assault allegation with credibility. Why? Because LaCasse claims that Reade detailed the assault to her just two or three years after it happened, and to Chait’s point, LaCasse, an avowed Biden supporter, provides less “grounds for credible doubt.” That’s not to mention the three other less important corroborating witnesses, including an anonymous claim that Reade alleged an assault at the time.
Compare this with Ford, who didn’t even know what year she had been allegedly assaulted, but in all likelihood had indicated the summer of 1982. Ford’s earliest corroboration comes from about 30 years later when Ford’s husband and therapist’s notes indicate she first disclosed her allegation. Although the therapist’s notes reviewed by the Washington Post did not specifically name Kavanaugh, Ford’s husband claims that she did at the time. The other three witnesses said that Ford told them about the allegation in 2013, 2016, and 2017. She also had the successful results of a polygraph test, a lie-detecting method that’s inadmissible in court.
To their credit, Ford’s three witnesses all signed sworn affidavits, and few actually contest their veracity. But corroboration from 30 years after an alleged assault is not remotely contemporaneous. Not only is there not a shred of evidence that Ford told anyone about the allegation any time before 2012, but every single witness at the supposed party where the assault occurred also said they had no recollection of such a party even happening. There’s not even evidence that Kavanaugh and Ford ever met.
In the case of Reade, absolutely no one contests that she worked for and knew Biden, and the evidence does render it more likely than not that she did indeed complain about working for Biden at the time. What’s contested is whether her complaint was about assault, not general boorishness or workplace harassment.
It’s all fine and fair to acknowledge that Reade’s wacky sympathetic writing about Putin, Bernie backing, and eleventh-hour timing made her allegation questionable from the evidence, but let’s not defy the evidence. It’s simply stronger than Ford’s ever was.
