To this point, Joe Biden has not personally addressed the sexual assault allegation former staffer Tara Reade leveled against him in March, with his campaign denying the story and his surrogates—including potential running mates—defending him in media appearances. “I believe Joe Biden,” Stacey Abrams told CNN on Tuesday. “I know Joe Biden and I think he’s telling the truth and this did not happen.” But as the 27-year-old accusation picks up steam in the news media, the former vice president may soon have little choice but to speak to the claims himself.
“I think he needs to say something forceful,” Gilda Cobb-Hunter, president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, told the Washington Post, “so that we can try to put it behind us.”
The Reade allegation has become an increasingly vexing problem for Democrats, seven months out from November’s high-stakes election against Donald Trump. Reade, a former Senate staffer to Biden, says he assaulted her in the basement of a Capitol Hill office complex in 1993. Biden’s campaign denied the accusation, and prominent Democrats—as well as women’s groups—had been largely quiet on the matter. But the claim has become a growing liability for the presumptive Democratic nominee in recent days. Last week, video surfaced in which a woman believed to be Reade’s mother called in to Larry King Live in 1993 to discuss “problems” her daughter had while working for a “prominent senator.” Then, on Monday, Business Insider reported that a former neighbor of Reade said the ex-Biden aide had detailed the allegation to her in the mid-1990s.
The Biden campaign has issued talking points to Democrats, urging them to defend the candidate as a “fierce advocate” for women and to point to a New York Times investigation into the allegation that was inconclusive about Reade’s claims. “Biden believes that all women have the right to be heard and to have their claims thoroughly reviewed,” read one talking point obtained by Buzzfeed News. “In this case, a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth: this incident did not happen.”
Several top Democrats have defended Biden in recent days. “All women in these cases have the right to be hurt and have their claims thoroughly reviewed,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is believed to be on Biden’s VP shortlist. “When I see Vice President Biden, someone I worked with, I see him on—a leader on domestic abuse—led the bill before people were even willing to talk about those horrific crimes and has really been a champion of abuses of power against women and has used his voice on the domestic abuse front in such a big way.” “[Reade] has a right to tell her story,” Senator Kamala Harris, another potential running mate, said recently. “And I believe that and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”
“The Joe Biden I know is somebody who has really fought for women and empowerment of women and for women’s equality and rights,” Harris added.
But high-profile Democrats vouching for him is unlikely to be enough going forward. Though Trump has been credibly accused by multiple women of sexual assault and harassment—and he is on tape bragging about how his celebrity status allowed him to grope women—his campaign has seized on the allegations, accusing Democrats who’d fought Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation following misconduct claims of hypocrisy. “There’s no doubt that there is a double standard that exists,” Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso told Politico.