A former employee’s sexual assault accusation against presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden worsened on Friday.
In 1993, accuser Tara Reade’s mother called CNN talker Larry King to discuss Reade’s difficulties with Biden. The Intercept disclosed the video yesterday afternoon.
It’s bad news for Biden because the call might well show that something happened to Reade during her employ with the former senator from Delaware. She worked for Biden from December 1992 until August 1993.
What happened Reade’s mother did not make clear. But something did.
New Evidence
In a podcast with leftist Katie Halper, Reade, one of several women who accused Biden of sexual harassment last year, said he pinned her against a wall and digitally penetrated her against her will. She told multiple people about it, she told Halper, including her mother and brother.
Biden denied the allegation, and then Reade filed a report with cops in Washington, D.C.
It appeared the accusation, like so many against top Democrats thanks to the leftist media, would simply fade. But on Friday, The Intercept’s Ryan Grim reported that “a new piece of evidence has emerged buttressing the credibility of Tara Reade’s claim that she told her mother about” the assault.
That evidence is her mother’s chat with King.
During an interview with Grim, Reade “mentioned that her mother had made a phone call to Larry King Live on CNN, during which she made reference to her daughter’s experience on Capitol Hill.”
Reade told Grim that her mother, Jeanette Altimus, called anonymously and asked where her daughter could go for help. During an interview with Halper, Grim mentioned the call, which one of Halper’s listeners quickly found online and sent to The Intercept writer.
King: San Luis Obispo, California, hello.
Caller: Yes, hello. I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there, after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him.
King: In other words, she had a story to tell but, out of respect for the person she worked for, she didn’t tell it?
Caller: That’s true.
Reade confirmed that the caller was her mother.
On the one hand, the caller does not specifically mention “sexual harassment” or retaliation, as Reade had recalled. On the other hand, the reference to being unable to “get through with her problems” aligns with Reade’s claim that she complained to superiors in Biden’s office and got nowhere, and the reference to going to the press makes clear that the caller is talking about more than just generic problems at the office. The problems, she makes clear, would damage the senator if exposed.
Reade’s inability to remember the exact date of the alleged assault, or its precise location, or the precise location of the office where she picked up the form needed to file a complaint, has been used by skeptics to suggest the allegation is fabricated. What the emergence of the call shows is that even if Reade’s memory is off on timing or details, the substance of her claims — in this case, that her mother called Larry King and discussed her situation — can still be true.
More importantly though, Grim wrote, Biden’s denials look awfully thin given that Reade said she filed complaints about Biden’s harassment in the office. If those allegations and her claim that she reported them are false, as candidate’s spear carriers claim, Grim noted, then she lied to everyone she told about it, including her mother.
That said, Biden’s denials suggest he was a tad insincere when he said he assumes women always tell the truth when they accuse men of sex assault. He has also said he understands why they wait so long to report the crime.
Original Charges
As The New American reported weeks ago, Reade’s newer accusation goes much farther than the stroking, touching, kissing, and fetishistic sniffing that is Biden’s forte.
A superior, Reade claimed, ordered her to deliver a gym bag to Biden. When she arrived, Biden cornered her.
It happened all at once, the gym bag, I don’t know where it went, I handed it to him, it was gone, and then his hands were on me and underneath my clothes…. He went down my skirt but then up inside it, and he penetrated me with his fingers…. He was kissing me at the same time….
He said several things that I can’t remember everything he said. I remember a couple of things…. Do you want to go somewhere else?… When I pulled away, he got finished doing what he was doing, and I … pulled back, and he said, “come on, man, I heard you liked me.”
Reade told Halper that after she rejected him, Biden grew angry. “He just like pointed at me and he said, ‘you’re nothing to me.’ He just looked at me and he goes, ‘you’re nothing, nothing.’”
And, Reade claimed, Biden added this as he walked away: “you’re OK, you’re fine, you’re OK.”
Photo of Joe Biden: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a longtime contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
