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A former aide to then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden wants House Republicans to open an investigation into claims made prior to the 2020 election.
Tara Reade, who claimed that then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden 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 when they first emerged, but Reade persisted and refused to back down from her initial claims.
Both [Marjorie Taylor Greene] and [Matt Gaetz] know that I was a former Dem. I will never, ever vote Dem again. They know I am now independent. They don’t care about my political beliefs. They still want an investigation & justice into what POTUS did to me as a staffer in 1993. Whatever the outcome, I am grateful to them. Silence from [Me Too Movement] peeps,” she tweeted.
Both @RepMTG & @mattgaetz know that I was a former Dem. I will never, ever vote Dem again. They know I am now independent. They don’t care about my political beliefs. They still want an investigation & justice into what POTUS did to me as a staffer in 1993. Whatever the outcome,…
— Tara Reade 🐎 (@ReadeAlexandra) April 16, 2023
Now that Republicans control the U.S. House, Reade wants the party to open a formal probe.
“It would be a very different thing if I could testify under oath,” Reade said during an interview with the Daily Caller late last year, 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.
Biden adamantly denied the claim, Slate reported.
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.
In 2020, Slate reported:
Last year, Reade was one of seven women who accused Biden of touching them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. Specifically, Reade told a local newspaper that while she worked in Biden’s Senate office in 1993, “he used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck.”
Then last month, beginning in a podcast interview with Katie Halper, Reade went public with a claim that Biden had cornered her in a “semiprivate area like an alcove” somewhere between the Senate office building and the Capitol, pushed her against a wall, forcibly kissed her neck, and then penetrated her with his fingers.
Reade also said she was forced out of her job due to the harassment she experienced in Biden’s office, and that she had filed a formal complaint at the time.
Shortly after she made her allegations ahead of the 2020 election, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries — who succeed 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 that Biden sexually harassed and assaulted me when I worked as his staffer in 1993. No one should be above the law,” she added.
