Daily US Times: Former US Vice President and Democratic candidate for 2020 presidential election flatly denied sexually assaulting a former staff assistant Tara Reade nearly 30 years ago.
“I’m saying unequivocally: it never, never happened,” he said about Tara Reade’s allegations during a TV interview on Friday.
He also asked for a search of the Senate archives for any record of a complaint she allegedly filed at that time.
Ms Reade made a criminal complaint to the police last month.
Without naming Mr Biden, she said she was a victim of sexual assault. she said the complaint was filed “for safety reasons only” as the statute of limitations for her claim had expired.
Mr Biden is running against Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by some 25 women.
Biden put out his statement before speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
What are the accusations of Ms Reade?
Ms Reade was working as a staff assistant to Mr Biden from 1992-93, when he was a senator for the US state of Delaware.
Now 56-year old woman says that in 1993 he forced her up against a wall in the halls of Congress, and put his hands under her shirt and skirt, penetrating her with a finger.
She told podcast host Katie Halper in March: “I remember him saying, first, as he was doing it ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ and then him saying to me, when I pulled away… he said ‘Come on man, I heard you liked me.'”
“That phrase stayed with me.”
Reade says records of Mr Biden’s 36-year career as a US senator will contain evidence that she complained to her superiors about him.
The records are being held at the University of Delaware. The university authority has said it will not release any papers until two years after Mr Biden leaves public life.
It appears there were no witnesses to the alleged assault but three people have backed Ms Reade’s stand.
A former colleague, a former neighbor and her brother have all said that they heard her give it shortly after the alleged incident.
“This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it,” former neighbor Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider.
she said: “I remember the skirt. I remember the fingers. I remember she was devastated.”
Ms Reade is one of more than half a dozen women who have forward over the last year to accuse him of inappropriate hugging, kissing or touching, though none described his actions as sexual assault at the time.
What did Biden say?
The former Vice President denied any sexual misconduct against Tara Reade outright while speaking to MSNBC’s Mika Brezezinski on Friday.
He said: “It did not happen. Period.”
Brezezinski pressed Mr Biden on his former statements suggesting that women should be believed when coming forward with their stories of sexual violence.
Brezezinski asked Mr Biden, “Are women to be believed unless it pertains to you?”
Biden said: “Women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt. Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts.”
“The truth matters.”
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