Biden under pressure to handle sexual assault allegation
30 April, 2020
Pressure is mounting on Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden to personally react to a sexual assault allegation created by a former Senate aide - despite a solid denial issued by his campaign.
Tara Reade, 56, claims that the assault occurred in 1993, when she was a 29-year-old staff assistant at work of Biden, then a US senator from Delaware.
Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager and communications director, has issued a statement dismissing the allegation but there has been no comment up to now from the 77-year-old former vice president himself.
"Vice President Biden possesses focused his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women," Bedingfield explained in the April 13 statement.
"What is clear relating to this claim: it really is untrue," she said. "This absolutely did not happen."
The denial has however performed little to calm media coverage of the claims, that have drowned out other news about Biden, such as for example his visit a running mate, who he has pledged is a woman.
President Donald Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale features flooded his Twitter feed with mocking references to Reade's allegation, ignoring the string of accusations created by women against his own candidate.
Greater than a dozen women have accused the real estate mogul of sexual misconduct before he became president, including a writer who claims he raped her in a Manhattan department store.
Biden has not been asked directly about Reade's allegation in the interviews he has given from his Delaware home, where he has been confined due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The question in addition has not come up at the various online events he has held, including one on Wednesday, where he addressed Israel, the coronavirus crisis and young voters at a virtual fundraising event.
Regarding to Reade, the assault occurred in August 1993 in a hallway about Capitol Hill.
"We had been alone, and it was the strangest thing," Reade explained in a late March interview on the Katie Halper Show podcast. "There is no, like, exchange, really, he just experienced me up against the wall.
"His hands were on me and underneath my clothes and, yeah, he went, he transpired my skirt but then up inside it and he penetrated me along with his fingers," she said.
"He was kissing me at the same time," she said.
Reade said she pulled away and Biden allegedly said: "Come on man, I heard you liked me."
"For me personally everything shattered at that time," Reade said.
Reade has since recounted her story to many other media outlets, and she filed a great incident report with the Washington police found in early April - seen by AFP - where she didn't name Biden.
"That is an inactive case," a good police spokesman told AFP when asked about the status of the problem, without offering any more details.
Reade told the right-leaning Washington Examiner that she had filed the are accountable to show she was first serious - and also to set up a paper trail.
Other women have accused Biden of touching or embracing them inappropriately during the past, and Reade's initial statements were similar - less serious than her latest allegations.
The New York Times reported that it had interviewed Reade on multiple occasions, along with her friends and other people who worked for Biden in the first 1990s.
According to the Times, no previous Biden staffers corroborated her accounts, and a pattern of misconduct was not uncovered.
A friend said Reade had told her about the alleged assault at that time. A second friend said Reade informed her in 2008 of a traumatic experience while employed in Biden's office.
Reade said she had likewise related the incident to her brother.
The allegations have led some supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, who dropped out from the race for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Biden, to ask the former vice president to get rid of his White House bid.
"This is the time to cope with the effects of Tara Reade's accusations, not this fall," said Claire Sandberg, the previous national organizing director of the Sanders campaign.
"There is simply no moral justification for Biden to keep as the presumptive nominee," Sandberg said.
"Out of respect for survivors and for the nice of the united states, he should withdraw from the race."--AFP
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