Post by Admin on May 3, 2020 22:53:38 GMT
Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, has said she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.
“I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,” Reade said. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.”
Reade said she described her issues with Biden, then a senator from Delaware, but “the main word I used – and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment – I used ‘uncomfortable’. And I remember ‘retaliation’.”
Reade described the report after the AP discovered transcripts and notes from interviews with Reade last year in which she said she “chickened out” after going to the Senate personnel office.
The AP interviewed Reade in 2019 after she accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching. She did not raise allegations of sexual assault against Biden until this year, around the time he became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Biden, which he has flatly denied. Reade says she doesn’t have a copy of the report, and Biden said on Friday he was not aware any complaint against him existed. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to locate a complaint from Reade.
Reade is suggesting that even if the report surfaces, it would not corroborate her assault allegations because she chose not to detail them at the time.
According to a transcript of her 2019 interview, Reade said: “They have this counseling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then I chickened out.”
She made a similar statement in a second interview the same day, according to written notes.