De-facto Democratic nominee Joe Biden has addressed sexual assault allegations leveled against him by Tara Reade. Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Biden claimed the alleged assault "never happened." He said he is not questioning Reade's motives, but he outright denied that such an assault ever took place.
Reade recently accused Biden of pinning her up against a wall and penetrating her with his fingers in the 1990s. When she pulled away, Biden allegedly said, "Come on, I heard you liked me." She said he then went on to say, "You're nothing to me, nothing."
Asked directly if he assaulted Reade, Biden opened the new interview saying, “No, it is not true. I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened. And it didn’t; it never happened."
Reade claimed that she filed a complaint with the Senate personnel office around the time the alleged assault took place, but Biden has refuted that a complaint was filed. "I don’t remember any complaint ever having been made," he said.
Additionally, Biden has called upon the Secretary of the Senate to find any record of the complaint that may exist and release it to the press. "Women have a right to be heard, and the pressure to rigorously investigate the claims that they make," Biden said. "I’ll always uphold that principle. But in the end, in every case, the truth is what matters. And in this case, the truth is the claims are false."
Prior to his appearance on Morning Joe, Biden released a statement in which he also denied the allegations. "While the details of these allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault are complicated, two things are not complicated. One is that women deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and when they step forward they should be heard, not silenced. The second is that their stories should be subject to appropriate inquiry and scrutiny," stated the former Vice President to Barack Obama.
"Responsible news organizations should examine and evaluate the full and growing record of inconsistencies in her story, which has changed repeatedly in both small and big ways," Biden's statement continued. "But this much bears emphasizing," he said. "She has said she raised some of these issues with her supervisor and senior staffers from my office at the time. They—both men and a woman—have said, unequivocally, that she never came to them and complained or raised issues. News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one—not one—who corroborated her allegations in any way. Indeed, many of them spoke to the culture of an office that would not have tolerated harassment in any way—as indeed I would not have."
Watch the Democratic nominee's full interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe above.
