The Associated Press interviewed the woman who has accused Joe Biden of sexually harassing and sexually assaulting her last year, but didn’t run with it because the news outlet couldn’t corroborate her story.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was accused of sexually harassing and sexually assaulting Tara Reade, a woman who worked in his Senate office in the early 1990s. Reade, 52, accused the former vice president of inappropriately touching her and penetrating her with his fingers while forcibly kissing her without her consent, which he has denied.
The AP published a new report from an interview with Reade on Saturday, in which the reporters noted they had previously interviewed her on several occasions in 2019. They interviewed her after she had accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching, as a number of women came forward with similar stories. She did not mention the alleged assault at that time.
They declined to publish the 2019 interviews because “reporters were unable to corroborate her allegations, and aspects of her story contradicted other reporting,” they wrote.
One of the biggest points of contention in Reade’s allegation, and the subsequent denial from Biden, is that she claims to have filed a complaint about Biden’s behavior, but does not have a copy of it, nor has one been found. There is also disagreement over where such a complaint from nearly three decades ago would be now.
While Reade has recently said that the complaint would not mention the sexual assault claim, she also told the AP that it wouldn’t mention harassment, either. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault,” she said. “The main word I used — and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment — I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation.’”
Reade had addressed the fact that she didn’t report the details of the situation during her interview with the outlet last year.
She explained, “They have this counseling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then, I chickened out.”
In one of the interviews from last year, Reade alleged that the former vice president rubbed her shoulders and neck and played with her hair and added, “I wasn’t scared of him, that he was going to take me in a room or anything. It wasn’t that kind of vibe.”
In the time since Reade came forward, her brother, an unnamed friend, a former neighbor, and a former colleague have corroborated her story, saying they learned about the incidents at the time. Her mother also called into Larry King’s show on CNN titled Washington: The Cruelest City on Earth? and referenced an incident without providing details.
The AP tracked down two additional anonymous people who claim Reade confided in them years ago.
