Biden offering first direct response to sexual assault allegation

His campaign has repeatedly denied the allegation from Tara Reade of an assault 27 years ago.

• By Scott Detrow and Asma Khalid/NPR

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions of an alleged sexual assault.

(Washington) — More than a month after being publicly accused of sexual assault by a former Senate staffer, former Vice President Joe Biden will personally respond to the allegation for the first time on Friday morning in a live television interview on MSNBC.

Biden’s campaign has repeatedly denied the allegation from Tara Reade of an assault 27 years ago, saying the incident she describes “absolutely did not happen.” But so far the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has not addressed the claim himself. He has not acknowledged the issue in any of his online campaign events, and he has not been asked about it in numerous local TV and cable news interviews.

That silence has frustrated many of Biden’s allies, and Republicans, still stung by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, have accused the Democrats of applying a double standard regarding which women are to be believed when they accuse prominent men of sexual assault.

Reade claims that Biden assaulted her in the spring of 1993, when she worked as a staff assistant in his Senate office. Reade could not remember the exact location or date of the alleged assault, but said it happened when a supervisor asked her to deliver a duffel bag to Biden on Capitol Hill.

When she met up with the then-senator in a hallway, Reade told NPR, he pinned her up against a wall and penetrated her vagina with his fingers. “His hands went underneath my clothing and he was touching me in my private areas and without my consent,” Reade said.

Reade first made the accusation on a podcast in March, and it has since been reported by several other news outlets, including NPR.

At the time, Reade says she told her brother, her late mother and a friend. Reade’s friend told NPR that she heard the same specific details of the alleged assault at the time, but declined to be identified. Her brother, Collin Moulton, told NPR that Reade had said Biden put his hands “under her clothes.”

Earlier this week, a former neighbor of Reade named Lynda LaCasse told NPR that Reade told her about the alleged assault approximately 25 years ago. “I do remember her telling me that Joe Biden had put her up against a wall and had put his hands up her skirt and had put his fingers inside her,” LaCasse told NPR, recalling a conversation she says took place two to three years after the alleged incident.

Reade says she never told anyone in Biden’s office about the assault, though she says she did complain about harassment. Multiple people who worked in Biden’s office at the time told NPR they did not remember those complaints and denied Reade’s recollections about a hostile office environment.

Reade claims she also filed a formal written complaint about harassment to a Senate personnel office but did not receive any follow-up. She did not have a copy of the complaint and said she could not recall the name of the office where she had filed paperwork.

Reade’s story has also evolved from last year, when she came forward to accuse Biden of inappropriate touching, joining other women coming forward with such complaints as Biden prepared to launch his campaign. Several of them, though, said the behavior was not sexual in nature. Reade’s allegation is the first public allegation of sexual assault made against Biden.

While the Biden campaign has unequivocally denied Reade’s allegation through a statement from deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield, Biden himself has not addressed it until now.

Several prominent Democrats have had to walk a fine line of defending Biden, while also addressing the rallying cry of the #MeToo Movement to “believe women” who come forward with serious allegations against prominent men.

“Here’s the thing: I have complete respect for the whole #MeToo Movement. I have four daughters, one son, and there is a lot of excitement around the idea that women will be heard and be listened to,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday when asked about the allegation. “There is also due process. And the fact that Joe Biden is Joe Biden – there have been statements from his campaign, or not his campaign but his former employees who ran his offices and the rest, that there was never any record of this. There was never any record and that nobody ever came forward, or that nobody ever came forward to say something about it apart from the principal involved.”

President Trump, who has been accused by numerous women of various instances of sexual assault and harassment, weighed in on the allegation for the first time on Thursday. “I think he should respond. It could be false accusations. I know all about false accusations, I’ve been falsely charged numerous times,” Trump told reporters at the White House.