Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

The agonizing story of Tara Reade

"University of Delaware says it still has no plans to release Biden's Senate papers, as pressure mounts
"55 Things You Need to Know About Joe Biden" "

I started reporting on Tara Reade’s story a year ago. Here’s what I found, and where I’m stuck.

By Laura McGann [e-mail] May 7, 2020, 1:55pm EDT

In April 2019, a woman named Tara Reade reached out to me with a clear, consistent story to tell about her experience as a staffer in Joe Biden’s Senate office in 1993. I spent hours on the phone with her, and many more tracking down possible witnesses and documents, trying to confirm her account.

Reade told me that a senior aide told her Biden liked her legs and that he wanted her to serve cocktails at a fundraiser for him, a request she found demeaning and declined. When she later complained to others in the office that Biden would put his hands on her shoulder, neck, and hair during meetings in ways that made her uncomfortable, she says she was blamed and told to dress more conservatively. Within a few months, she said, her responsibilities had been stripped and she felt she was being pushed out of the job. She went back home to California deflated.

Reade told me that she wanted me to think of this story as being about abuse of power, “but not sexual misconduct.” Her emphasis was on how she was treated in Biden’s office by Senate aides, who she said retaliated against her for complaining about how Biden touched her in meetings. “I don’t know if [Biden] knew why I left,” she said. “He barely knew us by name.”

She sent me an email that evening with an essay she’d written. Her local paper in California, the Union, published a similar version a few weeks later with a line she’d sent to me, too: “This is not a story about sexual misconduct; it is a story about abuse of power. It is a story about when a member of Congress allows staff to threaten or belittle or bully on their behalf unchecked to maintain power rather than modify the behavior.”

Last year, Reade encouraged me to speak with a friend of hers who counseled her through her time in Biden’s office in 1992 and 1993. The friend was clear about what had happened, and what hadn’t.

“On the scale of other things we heard, and I feel ashamed, but it wasn’t that bad. [Biden] never tried to kiss her directly. He never went for one of those touches. It was one of those, ‘sorry you took it that way.’ I know that is very hard to explain,” the friend told me. She went on: “What was creepy was that it was always in front of people.”

I wanted to break this story. Badly. About half a dozen women had stepped forward around the time I spoke with Reade to say they were bothered by how Biden had touched them at events. I wrote a column praising them for staring down the political media that had given him a pass for all those years. Reade’s story took these complaints further — showing how even lower-grade inappropriate conduct can have real consequences for a woman’s career, an important subject that we still don’t talk about nearly enough.

I knew I wasn’t the only reporter Reade was talking to. The New York Times had three reporters on the story, she told me. On April 3, the day after we first spoke, she texted me four times. She wanted to know when I planned to publish, and she warned me that other outlets were getting ready to do so.

That day, the Union published an article with her story. This happens sometimes. It’s happened to me, many times. You fight for a story that would be explosive if you could prove it, but you can’t. I continued reporting on her story for a few more weeks after the story broke, but I didn’t get enough. Vox did not publish anything about Reade in 2019. Neither did the major outlets that I know were pursuing the story, including the Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press.

In March 2020, Reade resurfaced with a new allegation, which she told on The Katie Halper Show. In addition to her account of her experience with office staff, Reade said that in 1993, Biden forced an unwanted sexual encounter on her. She said Biden pushed her against a wall on the Capitol grounds, kissed her, and then digitally penetrated her — all against her will.

[... to the end ...]

Where this leaves us

All of this leaves me where no reporter wants to be: mired in the miasma of uncertainty. I wanted to believe Reade when she first came to me, and I worked hard to find the evidence to make certain others would believe her, too. I couldn’t find it. None of that means Reade is lying, but it leaves us in the limbo of Me Too: a story that may be true but that we can’t prove.

There’s another issue at play, which Biden supporters and critics of Reade have pointed to in response to her allegation. A year ago, Reade went to mainstream, national outlets including the Times, the Post, and the Associated Press. It was in the middle of a competitive Democratic primary. She had no obvious connection to any candidate. And if voters or the party pushed Biden out, it was unclear who would benefit.

This year, Reade has emerged as an ardent Bernie Sanders supporter, with a much more damaging story to tell about Biden, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. She went public with the rape accusation on a podcast sympathetic to Sanders and followed up with Ryan Grim of the Intercept, an outlet that has been consistently critical of Biden.

A few weeks before Reade spoke to Halper, she replied to a tweet from Grim seeming to tease that a story was coming. Reade declined to elaborate on what she meant in the tweet, directing me to a spokesperson. Grim said he hadn’t noticed the reply when she sent it, and he didn’t speak with her for the first time until March 8, almost a week later.

Ryan Grim
@ryangrim
· Mar 4, 2020

A head-to-head Biden v Sanders contest will force voters to take a
close look at Biden again. That went very badly for him last time.

taratweets ( Alexandra Tara Reade) @ReadeAlexandra

Yup. Timing... wait for it....tic toc
62
1:33 PM - Mar 4, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy

222 people are talking about this

Reade’s supporters on the left see the Democratic establishment’s response to her accusation as hypocritical, particularly when compared to how party leaders rallied around Christine Blasey Ford when she testified in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. In Ford’s case, there was near-universal support for her. Critics on the left say that Democrats should stand up for Reade, and that the “believe women” rallying cry should apply even when it’s not politically convenient.

But Democrats have largely lined up behind Biden. Top Barack Obama alumni have said that they vetted Biden fully in 2008 and found no evidence of the kind of behavior Reade describes. Rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams recently said, “I believe Joe Biden.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren penned an op-ed with Biden. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, seen as a Me Too leader for her push to oust Sen. Al Franken after he was accused of sexual misconduct, headlined an event for Biden this week.

Many liberals have said now and during the Franken saga that the Democratic Party has held itself to a ridiculous standard. Donald Trump has admitted on tape to what Reade accuses Biden of doing and still denies the accounts of more than 20 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. And given that the goal of beating Trump is paramount this fall, some see dwelling on an accusation that has yet to be definitively proven as a damaging distraction.

To Reade, though, none of this is that complicated.

“My story never changed. I just didn’t come forward with all the details. It’s really simple,” she said to me. “I held back this story because I was afraid of a powerful man.”

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/7/21248713/tara-reade-joe-biden-sexual-assault-accusation