Believe Women? Stacey Abrams Backs Up Joe Biden During Sexual Assault Allegations Against Him
Jose Nino
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On April 28, 2020, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams defended former President Joe Biden when questioned about sexual assault allegations for Tara Reade, a former legislative aide for the then-senator.
Reade claims that Biden allegedly sexually assaulted her in a “secluded part of Capitol Hill in 1993” according to a report from The Hill.
“I believe that women deserve to be heard and I believe they need to be listened to, but I also believe that those allegations have to be investigated by credible sources,” Abrams said on CNN’s Don Lemon. Abrams is a favorite for receiving the vice presidential nominee for the Democrat Party in 2020.
“The New York Times did a deep investigation and they found that the accusation was not credible,” she continued. “I believe Joe Biden.”
The Times sustained that they found “no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden” but didn’t reach a conclusion regarding the veracity of Reade’s allegations.
In 2019, Reade was one of numerous women who stepped up and said that Biden’s long history of feeling up women had made them uncomfortable.
In March, she alleged for the first time that Biden had sexually assaulted her. Lynda LaCasse, a former neighbor of Reade’s, stated earlier this week that she remembered Reade talking to her about the story of the alleged assault incident. Reade’s brother, Collin Moulton, claims that she told him that Biden “had his hand under her clothes at some point” on a prior occasion.
Reade asserts that she confronted other Biden aides about the incident at the time, but the aides that she mentioned have gone public saying that Reade never brought up the allegation with them. Reade also recounted that she filed a complaint with the human resources office in the Senate about the sexual assault incident. However, reporters have failed to find the complaint at this juncture. Reade asserts that the complaint is in Biden’s Senate archives at the University of Delaware. That said, the university has announced that it won’t release the former vice president’s records until he has exited from public life.
Biden’s campaign has strongly denied Reade’s allegations, but the former vice president has not gone public about the comments.
“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said to The Hill on a previous occassion. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand defended Biden on April 28 by saying “when we say believe women, it’s for this explicit intention of making sure there’s space for all women to come forward to speak their truth, to be heard.”
If the U.S. had a more honest mainstream media, they would be absolutely grilling Biden for these allegations.
Alas, we don’t live in that kind of an environment.
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