Biden says he does not want University of Delaware records searched amid Tara Reade allegations
Joe Biden argues searching the university's Senate records could expose past political positions that can be taken out of context during the campaign; Peter Doocy reports.
President Trump's reelection campaign released a scathing video Friday alleging a "double standard" on sexual-assault allegations, implicitly comparing how a number of high-profile Democrats handled the allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation process with how they are now handling allegations against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The video includes clips of heavy hitters such as Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and even Biden himself emphasizing the importance of believing women who come forward with sexual-assault allegations. The new Trump ad comes in the wake of an MSNBC interview where Biden addressed for the first time the allegations of former Senate staffer Tara Reade that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
Biden denied the allegations Friday, and his campaign has for weeks.
BIDEN DENIES SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATION, IN HIS FIRST COMMENTS ON TARA READE'S CLAIMS
"Do we value women? Do we believe women?" Gillibrand says in the video released by the Trump campaign.
"We believe women," Booker says.
"Women should be believed," Biden says.
"You have a right to be believed, we're with you," former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says.
"The double standard exhibited by Biden, prominent liberal women’s groups and Democrat elected officials -- some of whom want to be Biden’s running mate -- is glaring and cannot be allowed to stand," Trump campaign Principal Deputy Communications Director Erin Perrine said in a statement.
WOMEN'S GROUPS START TO BREAK SILENCE ON BIDEN ALLEGATIONS, AS CANDIDATE MAKES FIRST STATEMENT
"There will be a great temptation among Biden’s supporters to take his lackluster interview performance and declare ‘case closed’ and move on," Perrine continued. "We do not know what, if anything, was done to Tara Reade, but there cannot be one set of rules for Joe Biden and another set for everyone else.”
Biden sought to leave no wiggle room in his denial Friday.
"No, it is not true. I'm saying unequivocally it never, never happened and it didn't. It never happened," Biden said on MSNBC.
Biden also addressed the Reade allegation in a written statement ahead of the MSNBC interview.
"While the details of these allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault are complicated, two things are not complicated," he said. "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."
While it is true that Democrats were quick to condemn Kavanaugh during his contentious 2018 confirmation battle -- and many took weeks if not more to go on the record about the Reade allegations -- most of their statements emphasized that the former aide's claims should be listened to and considered, as Biden said in his comments Friday.
"I think it would be important for Vice President Biden to respond to those allegations," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said in an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio Thursday. "It was a long time ago. Now the details that she has relayed are details that we should all listen to. I think any time a woman makes an accusation about sexual assault, it's important to take very seriously. We've seen both The New York Times and The Washington Post have investigations, and at least The New York Times has responded based on their investigation that they don't see any pattern of behavior."
Several others have made similar comments, though some came more than a month after the initial allegations against Biden broke, as Shaheen's did.
Reade initially came forward in 2019 accusing Biden of inappropriate touching, as did a number of other women at the time. But she then told a far more graphic version of her story to The Intercept and podcast host Katie Halper in late March, which raised the level of her accusation to sexual assault.
Reade, who was a supporter for Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary campaign, has had a handful of associates come forward to back her story, saying that Reade had previously mentioned the alleged assault to them. But other former Senate aides have pushed back against or outright denied Reade's account.
The former Biden aide's story was bolstered, however, when a video resurfaced last week of a woman whom Reade claims is her mother calling in to "Larry King Live" in August 1993 to discuss her daughter's "problems" working for a prominent U.S. senator. The woman on the call never explicitly spoke about sexual assault and never used Biden's name, but the call occurred at a time that corresponds with when Reade says she was forced out of her job.
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Many on the right have argued that Democrats are making calculated statements about believing women now without condemning Biden despite there appearing to be more corroboration for the Reade claims than there was for the claims against Kavanaugh, and that Democrats seemed to have no qualms about trashing Kavanaugh in 2018.
"In fact, every single Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee called for the withdrawal of the Kavanaugh nomination over the *SWETNICK* allegations," Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor for the Federalist, tweeted Friday in reference to a batch of graphic and unsupported gang-rape allegations against the then-nominee that were promoted by disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti. Kavanaugh denied them all.
"Don't revise history," she continued, "however embarrassing and discrediting it might be."
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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