UPDATE: The Biden campaign and the former vice-president of the Gridiron Dinner responded this weekend with compelling evidence showing the former vice president did not attend the 2008 event where his accuser claims they met. Click here to read more.
Joe Biden may need to call his crisis managers back for a second round of emergency meetings.
Another woman is accusing the presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee of sexual misconduct, claiming the former vice president made an off-color remark about her breasts when she was just 14 years old.
The woman’s allegation, which she first spoke about publicly on April 8, gained attention Friday afternoon mere hours after Biden addressed for the first time a separate accusation of sexual misconduct lodged by one of his former Senate aides.
Law&Crime has the story:
The woman, Eva Murry, told Law&Crime that Biden complimented her on the size of her breasts at the First State Gridiron Dinner & Show in 2008, a long-running roast of and party for politicians, journalists and prominent business figures held each year in Delaware. Murry says she remembers the event occurring sometime around May of that year.
One friend and her sister said that Murry told her details of the alleged incident more or less immediately after it happened. Four other friends of Murry’s said they were told about the incident, with the same details, between two and three years after it originally occurred.
Though Murry’s charge is far less severe than what former Senate aide Tara Reade alleges, it is nevertheless … creepy. It may also contribute to a bigger political problem for Biden, whose alleged decency is supposed to be one of his chief selling points going into the 2020 presidential election.
“When it was Biden and my aunt’s turn to say hello, he quickly turned to me and asked how old I was. I replied with my age, and he replied with the comment ‘Fourteen? You’re very well endowed for 14!’ I was confused, but it was definitely weird,” Murry told Law&Crime of her alleged run-in with Biden, “he looked me up and down and hovered his eyes on my chest, so I had some clue [about] the notion of his comment but didn’t fully understand at the time. We quickly separated from his area after the encounter.”
“I feel his comments were verbal sexual harassment,” she added. “I think I was too naive to realize exactly what it meant at the time, but I vividly remember the uncomfortable feeling I had in the pit of my stomach during the whole encounter. It wasn’t Biden’s words alone that made me so uncomfortable, it was the look, the tone, the whole general vibe was off.”
In vetting her allegation, Law&Crime interviewed Murry’s family members and friends. One friend said he heard about the reported incident the year it happened, two said they heard about it later in 2010, and all three of them spoke on the record.
“She told me he looked at her chest and said she was well endowed,” said the friend who claims he learned of Murry’s meeting with Biden the year it happened. “She looked very uncomfortable. I asked how old he was. She said like an older man. I said, ‘like old like a teacher or elderly,’ and she said, ‘old like a teacher.’”
Murry’s sister, Jenna, said she was told of the incident “within a week or so” of when it happened in 2008.
“I remember my mom mentioning at some point soon after that that Eva had met Biden, and he’d made a weird comment,” the sister said.
Though Murry’s allegation seems like it has the potential to be a headache for Biden, it also seems like it may disappear before Monday. After all, as noted in the Law&Crime report, Murry’s aunt is former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. So, the chances that members of the press and politicos write off this specific allegation as a dirty GOP smear tactic seem quite high.
Then again, if women keep coming forward with at least somewhat credible allegations against Biden, claiming creepy or even outright abusive behavior, it will create a trend line that only the most craven partisan can ignore.
