More than a month has passed since Tara Reade, a former staffer for Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, accused him of sexully assaulting her in 1993.
Last week, hard evidence surfaced that Reade did, as she has said, tell people about the assault. It was video of Reade’s mother speaking by phone with CNN talker Larry King in 1993 about the young woman’s problems in Biden’s office.
Yesterday, the presumptive nominee’s problems worsened. Two women said Reade told them about the attack after she left Biden’s employ.
The Latest
Business Insider published the account of the two women, one of whom is a former neighbor.
“Lynda LaCasse, a Biden supporter, tells Insider that Reade told her about the alleged assault in detail in 1995 or 1996,” the webzine reported. Reade told LaCasse the story when they were next-door neighbors.
One evening, Lacasse told Insider, “we were talking about violent stories because I had a violent situation. We just started talking about things and she just told me about the senator that she had worked for and he put his hand up her skirt.”
“This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it,” she told the webzine.
I remember her saying, here was this person that she was working for and she idolized him…. And he kind of put her up against a wall. And he put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her. She felt like she was assaulted, and she really didn’t feel there was anything she could do.
Reade was upset and crying when she divulged the assault to LaCasse:
LaCasse said that she remembers Reade getting emotional as she told the story. “She was crying,” she said. “She was upset. And the more she talked about it, the more she started crying. I remember saying that she needed to file a police report.”…
“I don’t remember all the details,” LaCasse said. “I remember the skirt. I remember the fingers. I remember she was devastated.”
Reade did not ask LaCasse to back her account, LaCasse said. She came forward voluntarily because “I have to support her just because that’s what happened. We need to stand up and tell the truth.”
“I would want somebody to stand up for me,” LaCasse told Insider.
But LaCasse will cast her ballot for Biden.
“I personally am a Democrat, a very strong Democrat,” she told Insider. “And I’m for Biden, regardless.”
Source 2
After Reade left Washington, D.C., she joined Lorraine Sanchez, Insider’s second corroborating source, to work for California state Senator Jack O’Connell.
Reade told Sanchez that Biden’s office terminated her after she complained about the sexual harassment:
Sanchez said she does not recall if Reade offered details about the sort of harassment she allegedly suffered, or if she named Biden. “What I do remember,” Sanchez said, “is reassuring her that nothing like that would ever happen to her here in our office, that she was in a safe place, free from any sexual harassment.” Reade said she never experienced harassment from any other employer she had during her time in Washington, and that the employer Sanchez recalls her complaining about was Biden.
Sanchez did not, apparently, divulge to Insider whether she’ll vote for Biden.
What Happened
Reade was one of several women who accused Biden of sexual harassment: unwanted touching, kissing, and fetishistic hair sniffing.
But in late March, she told leftist podcaster Katie Halper that Biden assaulted her.
The Washington Post and the New York Times investigated Reade’s accusations for two weeks and claimed to have found little to corroborate her story.
But Reade’s late mother, Jeanette Altimus, inadvertently left corroborating evidence behind. In 1993, she called CNN talker Larry King’s program to ask what her daughter should about a “prominent senator’s” sex harassment.
Said Altimus:
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.
During an interview with The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, Reade mentioned the call. Grim, in turn, discussed it on Halper’s program, after which a listener found the video online and sent it to Grim.
Biden’s office insists that Reade is lying.
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
