A woman who accused leading Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden of inappropriately touching her has added a new allegation to her account of working for the then-senator from Delaware.
Last year, after several women accused Biden of sexual harassment, Alexandra Tara Reade added her name to the list of #MeToo accusers.
But now Reade says her encounters with Biden went beyond unwanted touching. The former vice president, she alleges, sexually assaulted her in 1993.
The Allegation
Reade surfaced in April 2019 after other women charged Biden with touching and fetishistic hair sniffing. She told the Union of Nevada City, California, that “he used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck. I would just kind of freeze and wait for him to stop doing that.”
Reade said Biden’s people gave her the boot because she refused to be treated like a cocktail waitress, the newspaper reported:
According to Reade, Biden wanted her to serve because he liked her legs. Reade didn’t hear Biden make that suggestion, instead learning of it through his staff’s argument. Reade opted against serving drinks, a move she believes sidelined her career.
But that, apparently, was the least of Biden’s behavior if you believe the story Reade told Katie Halper, a hard-left writer who backs Biden’s remaining opponent, socialist Bernie Sanders.
Federal Election Commission records show that a Katie Halper, “podcast host and writer,” donated to Sanders through the ActBlue political action committee.
In the interview posted to SoundCloud, Reade said Biden pinned her against a wall and did a lot more than rub the back of her neck or give her hair a good sniff.
The former Biden staffer said a superior in Biden’s office told her to deliver a gym bag to the senator “down towards the Capitol” and that he wanted it in a hurry.
“We were in like this … side area, and he just said ‘hey, come here Tara,’” her harrowing account begins. Reade did not say where the “side area” was.
Reade handed him the bag, and then, she alleges, Biden assaulted her. “And then, we were alone, and it was the strangest thing,” she said. “There was no like, exchange, really. He just had me up against the wall.”
Reade was wearing a skirt with no stockings because it was hot. She also wore heels, she said, and her legs hurt, she said, from walking the hard marble floors of the U.S. Capitol.
He just had me up against the wall, and the wall was cold….
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 was “shattered” because she admired Biden. “I looked up to him,” she continued. “He was like my father’s age. He was this champion of women’s rights in my eyes. I couldn’t believe it was happening. It seemed surreal…. I just felt sick.”
Reade said she “must have looked shocked,” and that Biden grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “you’re OK, you’re fine, you’re OK, you’re fine. And then he walked away, and he went on with this day.”
“You’re Nothing”
Even worse, after that, Biden said something that remains with her to this day. Reade told Halper that she didn’t wish to divulge what Biden said because it hurt her so badly.
But the Nation writer cajoled Reade to divulge it:
I didn’t want to say it because it’s the thing that stays in my head…. that kinda stayed with me over the years.
[After Biden said] “I heard you liked me.”…
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.”
I just heard the word nothing. And I must have reacted because that’s when he took by the shoulders and he said, you know, you’re OK, you’re fine, you’re OK.
But then afterwards, like, it kept replaying in my head.
When other women accused Biden of harassment, she said, “I got really, really sad about it. The thing that I remember most, almost more than the assault itself, was just being told I was nothing. And he was right…. I have no platform. I am no one. And to him, I’m nothing.”
Image: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
