Accuser calls for Joe Biden to drop out of presidential race
A former staffer who has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault called on the presidential candidate to drop out of the race, in excerpts of an on-camera interview shared on Thursday.
Tara Reade worked in Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s, and first alleged inappropriate touching by Biden, along with seven other women, in April 2019.
In March of this year she said Biden had pinned her up against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers in a 1993 incident.
Reade said she originally did not accuse Biden of sexual assault because she feared retribution.
“I want to say, you and I were there Joe Biden, please step forward and be held accountable,” Reade said in an interview with journalist Megyn Kelly, which Kelly partially published on Twitter.
“He should not be running on character for the President of the United States,” Reade said.
On the same day, a California newspaper published a document from Reade’s 1996 court proceedings with her ex-husband, in which he said she had spoken with him about “a problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment in US Senator Joe Biden’s office.”
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The court filing does not specify that Biden himself was the harasser, nor does it mention sexual assault allegations, but appears to be the earliest official document relating to Reade’s accusations, the Tribune in San Luis Obispo reported on Thursday.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, previously denied Reade’s allegation, saying it “never ever happened.” Some Democratic lawmakers have come to his defence. (dpa)
