Joe Biden certainly appeared sincere when he challenged the secretary of the U.S. Senate to open the personnel records of his former office to prove that former employee Tara Reade did not file a harassment complaint against him.
Problem is, the secretary can’t and won’t open those files because the law forbids it.
So voters will never know whether Reade, who says the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee sexually assaulted her in 1993, filed such a complaint.
Biden’s papers stored at the University of Delaware are closed, too.
And so it’s her word — and that of the six people who have corroborated her claims of harassment or sex assault — against his.
Biden: Unseal the Files
Biden suggested opening his files in last week’s official denial of Reade’s sex-assault allegation.
After almost a month of dithering, Biden finally published a statement at Medium.com, most of which told readers that he — like diamonds — is a girl’s best friend.
After writing that Reade’s claims “aren’t true” and that the assault “never happened,” Biden offered this idea:
There is a clear, critical part of this story that can be verified. The former staffer has said she filed a complaint back in 1993. But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint. The papers from my Senate years that I donated to the University of Delaware do not contain personnel files. It is the practice of Senators to establish a library of personal papers that document their public record: speeches, policy proposals, positions taken, and the writing of bills.
There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be — the National Archives. The National Archives is where the records are kept at what was then called the Office of Fair Employment Practices. I am requesting that the Secretary of the Senate ask the Archives to identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document. If there was ever any such complaint, the record will be there.
Biden said likewise when he sat for an interview with Mika Brzezinski on Friday.
But Biden was wrong, the National Archives told ABC News: “Any records of Senate personnel complaints from 1993 would have remained under the control of the Senate. Accordingly, inquiries related to these records should be directed to the Senate.”
That sent Biden to Julie Adams, secretary of the Senate, to request “assistance in determining whether 27 years ago a staff member in my United States Senate office filed a complaint alleging sexual harassment.”
Not gonna happen.
Yesterday, Adams explained why: The “Secretary has no discretion to disclose any such information” because the law forbids it.
The Secretary’s Office was advised by Senate Legal Counsel that disclosing the existence of such specific records would amount to a prohibited disclosure under the Government Employee Rights Act of 1991. Furthermore, we are not aware of any exceptions in law authorizing our office to disclose any such records that do exist, if any, even to original participants in a matter.
Believing that Biden, a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was ignorant of the law on those two points is tough.
That aside, given that he and the University of Delaware have said records stored there are closed for the foreseeable future, voters can’t find out before Election Day whom to believe.
Corroborating Witnesses
Whether that hurts or helps Reade, it certainly doesn’t help and might well hurt the former vice president.
A fruitless search of Biden’s records would belie Reade’s claim that she filed a complaint and undermine her key accusation: that Biden assaulted her in 1993 when she hand-delivered a gym bag. If she lied about filing a complaint, she certainly might have manufactured the sex-crime accusation.
Worse for Biden, six people have corroborated Reade’s claims of either harassment or sex assault: her brother; her mother, who discussed Reade’s problems with Biden on national television with CNN talker Larry King in 1993; and four others, two of whom spoke on the record and of one whom is a Biden voter.
Those witnesses say Reade told them about the assault and harassment at the time or afterward. And she must have said something to her mother that provoked the call to King.
We might never know whether the candidate or his accuser is telling the truth. But at least until Tara Reade surfaced, Joe Biden said “women should be believed.”
Image: nirat/iStock/Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
