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A former aide to then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden wants the new Republican House majority to open an investigation into claims made prior to the 2020 election. Tara Reade, who claimed that the then-Delaware senator sexually assaulted her when she worked for him in 1993, also said she would be willing to testify, under oath, about the matter.
The allegations were denied by Biden and several members of his staff, but Reade persisted and refused to back down from her initial claims, though she eventually dialed back her public efforts to hold him accountable under withering criticism regarding her credibility. But now that Republicans will take control of the House in January for the first time since she made her claims, she wants the party to open a formal probe.
“It would be a very different thing if I could testify under oath,” Reade said during a recent interview with the Daily Caller, adding she is willing to “provide whatever information [Congress] needed and [Congress] could ask me whatever questions they wanted.”
“I think we need to have the conversation, instead of me being erased, and other women that were erased that tried to come forward,” Reade added.
When she initially told her story, Reade accused Biden of penetrating her with his fingers after pinning her against a wall. And while Biden staffers from the time did not recall any such incident being reported, Reade claims now that a formal inquiry will reveal they were telling a different story.
She said if they “had to go under oath, I think they would have to admit something very different.”
Reade also said that she dropped efforts to follow up on the initial assault claim she made at the time because of intimidation.
“I was 28 years old, it was scary to hear at the time. It was at the beginning of my political career, and it kind of shut me up,” Reade told the outlet.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) tweeted on Friday that she would support a former inquiry by Congress into the matter.
“Tara Reade has asked the new GOP House to investigate her claims of sexual assault against Joe Biden. I’m for it!” she tweeted.
Reade replied: “Thank you @laurenboebert. Sexual harassment and assault is not a partisan issue.”
Thank you @laurenboebert.
Sexual harassment and assault is not a partisan issue.— Tara Reade 🐎 (@ReadeAlexandra) December 2, 2022
Shortly after she made her allegations ahead of the 2020 election, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who has just been elected to succeed Speaker Nancy Pelosi as House Democratic leader, said Reade was a “serious person” making “serious allegations” that needed to be properly investigated, Fox News reported at the time.
“Multiple people have corroborated parts of Reade’s story since she first spoke out on March 25, 2020, but Biden and his campaign vehemently denied the claims,” the network reported.
Jeffries told WNYC at the time: “It’s got to be taken seriously because this is a serious allegation raised by a serious individual and needs to be investigated seriously. We’ve probably got to hear from him [Biden] at some point directly.”
“I’m not really in a position to say what is the appropriate mechanism, although this needs to be taken seriously,” he said then.
In a statement to Newsweek, Reade said that she “would be willing to go under oath and testify to what happened in 1993,” going on to describe herself as “politically homeless at this point and very concerned with the level of corruption.”
“The suppressing of my history with Biden is a serious hypocrisy by the Democratic power structure that is supposed to be about women’s rights,” Reade noted, according to The Western Journal.
“All of this exposes the dark belly of corruption at the highest office of the land. It must be brought into the light including the fact the Biden sexually harassed and assaulted me when I worked as his staffer in 1993. No one should be above the law,” she added.
In May, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos became the latest woman to accuse Biden of inappropriate sexual behavior.
DeVos, who served all four years of then-President Donald Trump’s administration, detailed what she described as a creepy, “gross” encounter she once had with then-former Vice President Joe Biden in a new book due out next month.
The former administration official writes that Biden, who has a well-established practice of close encounters with women many describe as creepy, allegedly attempted to “intimidate” DeVos when she was stuck in a wheelchair following a bicycle accident in late 2018, the Washington Examiner notes.
In her new book, DeVos said that Biden bent over, put his hands on her shoulders, pressed his forehead to hers, and “lingered” as she attempted to roll back.
“It was gross, and it was also a feeble attempt to intimidate me,” she wrote
