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The assault allegation against Joe Biden—"I still have nightmares sometimes, even now"
wandering
Russia state-affiliated mediaRegistered User regular
Russia state-affiliated mediaRegistered User regular
Approved by @ElJeffe. If your post doesn't talk about the allegation against Joe Biden it isn't on-topic. Socialism isn't on topic. Single payer healthcare isn't on topic. Trump's coronavirus response isn't on topic. Etc. This isn't an all-purpose primary or politics thread. Before posting, please consider whether you're being on-topic, and also whether you're being thoughtful and compassionate.
In 1993, Joe Biden allegedly pinned a young staff assistant named Tara Reade to the wall and sexually assaulted her.
You can read the New York Times story about it, which ran on the the front page of the paper today, here: Examining Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden.
And you can hear Tara Reade describe the alleged incident in her own words in this interview: Biden accuser Tara Reade: "I wanted to be a senator; I didn't want to sleep with one". (If you don't have an hour to listen to the full interview, here is an excerpt.) The interview is harrowing. It is one thing to intellectually know that an accusation has occurred, and another to listen to a survivor directly talking about their experience. Reade gets especially emotional when she describes Biden allegedly belittling her after the assault: "You're nothing to me. Nothing".
In addition to the alleged assault, Reade talks about lower grade sexual harassment and objectification she says she received from Biden, the retaliation she says she experienced in the wake of the harassment and assault, and the doxxing and death threats she has received for coming forward with her story.
Reade's story is corroborated in multiple ways. The NYTimes has confirmed that Reade worked for Biden. A friend of Reade's, and Reade's brother, have both said that Reade spoke to them about the alleged sexual assault at the time. The NYTimes says that two interns remember that Reade "abruptly stopped supervising them" around the time of the alleged harassment and alleged assault. In addition, multiple women have come forward to say that Biden violated their personal space in a way that made them uncomfortable (you can read about that here: All the Women Who Have Spoken Out Against Joe Biden).
A social worker wrote a good article that argues that Tara Reade's accusation is credible, comparing it to the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford: The Inconvenient Truth of Rape. I agree and I'll add:
I believe Christine Blasey Ford.
I believe Tara Reade.
In 1993, Joe Biden allegedly pinned a young staff assistant named Tara Reade to the wall and sexually assaulted her.
You can read the New York Times story about it, which ran on the the front page of the paper today, here: Examining Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden.
And you can hear Tara Reade describe the alleged incident in her own words in this interview: Biden accuser Tara Reade: "I wanted to be a senator; I didn't want to sleep with one". (If you don't have an hour to listen to the full interview, here is an excerpt.) The interview is harrowing. It is one thing to intellectually know that an accusation has occurred, and another to listen to a survivor directly talking about their experience. Reade gets especially emotional when she describes Biden allegedly belittling her after the assault: "You're nothing to me. Nothing".
In addition to the alleged assault, Reade talks about lower grade sexual harassment and objectification she says she received from Biden, the retaliation she says she experienced in the wake of the harassment and assault, and the doxxing and death threats she has received for coming forward with her story.
Reade's story is corroborated in multiple ways. The NYTimes has confirmed that Reade worked for Biden. A friend of Reade's, and Reade's brother, have both said that Reade spoke to them about the alleged sexual assault at the time. The NYTimes says that two interns remember that Reade "abruptly stopped supervising them" around the time of the alleged harassment and alleged assault. In addition, multiple women have come forward to say that Biden violated their personal space in a way that made them uncomfortable (you can read about that here: All the Women Who Have Spoken Out Against Joe Biden).
A social worker wrote a good article that argues that Tara Reade's accusation is credible, comparing it to the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford: The Inconvenient Truth of Rape. I agree and I'll add:
I believe Christine Blasey Ford.
I believe Tara Reade.
wandering on
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That's the AP story:
https://apnews.com/d922da60baa91121f4529fe51a0fd55a
NYT story is paywalled unfortunately:
https://medium.com/@eddiekrassenstein/evidence-casts-doubt-on-tara-reades-sexual-assault-allegations-of-joe-biden-e4cb3ee38460
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Isn't that also what you say when you didn't do it?
I'm not defending him by any means, but honestly what is the 'correct' response here, if you were innocent?
I think believing anyone at face value, especially for something this high value, is problematic.
Christine Blasey Ford had contemporaneous and corroborating evidence, including multiple fact witnesses who spoke to the character of Brett at and his circle of friends at the time, her presence at events in question, etc. There were also other people with similar experiences from that time who came forward to speak, with witnesses to their experiences. This was met with a bullshit investigation that buried a bunch of shit, and he ended up on the Supreme Court anyways.
If Biden’s accusation gets the full weight of our intelligence and law enforcement thrown at it, and with far less evidence the profile of this is elevated - if hearings are called in the senate... is that a victory for women having being heard, or a move to use the machinery of the government to defeat and disable an adversary of the president? Are Trump and Barr the allies women need right now?
So, much like Ford and Kavanaugh should have gone - let investigative journalism and evidence come to the table - do not block her ability to speak and do not diminish it, but make a solid effort to corroborate it. Everything beyond that at this stage is tainted by the bias of the person signaling Biden’s guilt or her lies or whatever.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
How terrific.
Agreed.
Conversely, Katie Halper, the podcast host where Reade is talking, also hosts a podcast with Matt Taibbi. Taibbi has spent quite a lot of time the past few years saying the Russia investigation is bullshit. That is not direct evidence that Katie Halper is somehow fucking up here, but it does make me deeply suspicious of her judgement.
I think it's gonna be important here to identify (and perhaps look into) the authors of reporting and essays being posted.
The tweets and articles written by Reade don't requiring trusting anyone, unless I'm missing something. Does the NYT address Reade's praise of Biden from a few years ago? Is that just not weird for a reason I'm failing to see?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200412090835/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/joe-biden-tara-reade-sexual-assault-complaint.html
The old article has been editted and is currently behind a paywall, the paragraph they editted out is:
"No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable."
I can't tell if the old article was an author's attempt at being tongue in cheek towards an editorial stance.
Does being paid to shill for Putin mean it couldn't have happened? No.
If she were a Russian asset, would that mean it couldn't have happened? No, and I think you'd also have to allow that having dirt on Biden could be why she would have been developed as such in the first place.
True or false, it neither affirms or contradicts her allegation.
She says she talked to a few people in the Senate offices about it, some of them must still be alive. Let her put some names in the record, hear out the witnesses, see where it leads, and circle back on whether this is another arm of the Yovanovich/Burisma rat-fuck at another juncture.
While I did mention her praise of Russia in an earlier comment, this one was focused entirely on her praise of Biden. Which strikes me as weird, to tell everyone to listen to her former boss if she semi-secretly believed him to be an enormous hypocrite.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tara-reade-files-criminal-complaint-against-joe-biden-2020-4
It quotes both Reade's friend and Reade's brother:
The victim trying to carry on as normal in public isn't exactly uncommon in sexual assault cases where the perpetrator has a large advantage in authority or power.
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also the democrats should have an internal culture where hair-sniffing creeps can't rise to positions of power in the first place
however, it benefits nobody in power to take sexual assault seriously, so nothing will happen
No. Trauma and its interaction with social hierarchy is complicated at best, it's not really compelling to look at a claimed victim praising their abuser and use that as evidence of... anything, really.
Sorry, thought you were including the Russia stuff in "her tweets and posts,"
As to her Biden praise, I mean, they're saying she retweeted and liked Biden adjacent things, and occasionally name dropped the most famous person she knew.
Does that mean it didn't happen? Maybe she found some catharsis in finding the strength to acknowledge that they agree on policy, or it made him less scary, or maybe it was a concious act of denial. People process shit weird.
Why change her story from 9 months ago? Because he's closer to the presidency, and her sense of urgency is increasing?
Why not between 2008-2015? Because she didn't want to undermine Obama?
It's all kind of neither here nor there. It doesn't matter. The only information of any real bearing is whether there are corroborating accounts or whether victims of similar assaults over the last 30ish years come forward.
Dude can't keep his hands to himself on camera, this can't be the first and only woman with whom he's crossed the sexual assault line.
I believed Ford, and I now believe Reade.
While I'm not willing to cast a cynical gaze towards the entire US media establishment, the reluctantly tentative prodding of Reade's claims by central MeToo, political and media figures has read as disappointingly partisan. It smacks of the same treatment given to Bill Clinton's various scandals and victims during his nomination/election/reelection campaigns, where organisations and resources that should have been turned towards them where instead turned and used against them.
I was somewhat willing to give it a short term pass, given the pandemic would make it trickier for journalists to do research/reporting and it was drowned out to some degree by coverage. But the complete and utter silence felt unusual at the time and the Medium article felt like it made some huge leaps in logic along with a scolding tone towards Reade and Halper. It felt like they started from the position that Reade was lying, rather than a neutral position.
With regards to Reade not coming out with the full story earlier, in addition to her understandable reluctance to be exposed to the exact treatment she is being subjected to now she did say last year that there was more details, but she was attacked by ex-Biden staffers at the time, doxed and then accused of being a Russian agent. It's not surprising that that scared her off and I can totally understand why she would be reluctant to come forward with the rest of the story.
Joe Biden has likely been investigated any number of times for security clearance purposes and these allegations have not turned up.
I also believe that this woman should be taken seriously. But I do not believe Biden assaulted her. Her description of events has changed and so far no reputable outlet has been willing to run with her story after looking into it.
But this is evidence in Reade's favor – this is not nothing:
Christine Blasey Ford, by contrast, actually didn't have any contemporaneous witnesses like that. That is, there is no one that Blasey Ford told her story to at the time.
Former interns also corroborated a portion of Reade's story. Reade says that in addition to the outright assault, she experienced various instances of sexual harassment. She says she filed formal complaints about Biden's sexual harassment, which she found easier to talk about than the assault. She says, in response to the complaints, she was retaliated against:
To corroborate this, the Times spoke to interns that worked under her. Was she really demoted, in response to harassment claims against Joe Biden, like she said she was? Yep:
Yeah uh, about the article being edited...
(Ryan Grim is the DC editor for The Intercept.)
They're straight up admitting they changed the article because Biden's people asked them to.
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That's consistent with her claims, but it isn't corroboration. The former interns don't provide any reason for her removal (which is the matter in question).
Common Dreams is a rag that hosts anti-vax screeds by noted shitheels like RFK Jr. This has been brought up before, but people keep linking to te site.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/06/12/vaccines-and-liberal-mind
It pretty much does. Why should I care about an article purporting to be looking at the evidence from a rag whose editors can't or won't assess the evidence for vaccines properly?
This isn't to make any point about the accusations, but linking bad sites (that includes the Medium article above that dismisses the allegations) does nothing but muddy the waters.
Good luck getting someone to corroborate that the presumptive Democratic nominee had his staff retaliate against an employee because they filed a sexual harassment complaint against him.
I think we’ve learned emphatically that security clearance investigations mean jack shit to politicians and their staff, and only really mean anything for the civil service and contractors that support them
No, we know they mean jack shit to the Trump administration. I do not believe that Obama would have cleared Biden if something like this came up in his past.
I suspect we will hear more about this from the media closer to the election when the media has more brain space for political scandal.
Security clearance investigations can only find what people will talk about though, ultimately. They might've turned up about as much of this as the media has.
They do actually. The security clearance investigations check your background and even go so far as to ask if you smoke weed, how often, and how recently. Obviously if Biden did this, he wouldn’t just volunteer the information. But I also think that with someone who had been around DC as long as Biden has, a story like this would have gotten around.
This is the kind of thing I was trying to point out though.
eg - You says she says she filed a complaint. The Times does say that she says she filed a formal complaint on the issue but also says: And the AP with similar:
They were generally unable to find corroboration of the story with any evidence.