Critics of Tara Reade – the woman who has accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she was a staff assistant in his Senate office – claim that if her story were credible she would have told it sooner; and the mainstream media would have covered it. In fact, as her tweets and emails to reporters, media outlets, politicians and organizations demonstrate, Reade has been trying to tell her story for nearly a year, but was ignored or turned away. That is why she wound up telling her story publicly for the first time to me on my podcast.
I’m an independent writer and podcaster. I don’t hide my politics, nor am I an “objective” investigative reporter with the resources of a legacy publication. But in March, a friend, herself a sexual assault survivor, said she’d spoken to a woman named Tara Reade, who had told her a credible story about being sexually assaulted by Joe Biden and asked me to speak with her. I agreed to speak to Reade and the people she said she’d told about the alleged assault at the time, and if her story seemed credible, I’d do my best to put her in touch with a journalist who could do her story justice. I spoke to Reade and her confidants, and reviewed documents. There seemed much to Reade’s story, and I moved ahead to find her help.
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, who broke the Christine Blasey Ford allegation against Brett Kavanaugh, was already working on a piece on Reade focused on Time’s Up – the not-for-profit founded to support women in telling their #MeToo stories – and its refusal to help her. I reached out to mainstream reporters but no one bit. Rightwing reporters were showing interest in the story, but neither I nor Reade, a lifelong Democrat who identifies as a progressive feminist, wanted her story and the #MeToo movement weaponized to help Trump. Because I believed Reade – and because no one else she had reached out to had agreed to interview her – I released my interview a day after Grim published his article.
You can hear and read Reade’s heart-wrenching account yourself, but to summarize her claims: she says she brought Joe Biden his gym bag as she’d been instructed. The two of them were alone and that is when she says “he just had me up against the wall and his hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And then he went down my skirt, but then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers … Everything shattered in that moment.”
Reade’s good friend Jane (not her real name), who lived at the same residence and interned for another senator at the time, told me that Reade called her after the incident: “When I said, ‘Did you feel like you could walk away?’, [Tara] said no. And that his hand went where it shouldn’t below the belt…He said something that made [Tara] feel like a grain of dust… small and insignificant. On the phone…you can’t see someone’s facial expression… but you can tell when someone’s voice is shaking… She was definitely confused, disoriented.”
Reade’s brother also remembers learning about the incident: “First my mom told me about it. She was up in arms. And I was like I don’t know what happened. I think my sister was trying to spare me.” Indeed, Reade did try to spare her younger brother somewhat but, as he told me, “I remember my sister being specifically asked to handle a gym bag… And there was a moment he had her up against the wall and made a hand move under her clothes.”
Both Grim’s article and my interview were followed by a deafening silence, with only a handful of outlets covering the story. Two articles sought to justify why the mainstream media didn’t cover it. At Salon, one writer attributed the lack of media attention to a number of “red flags”, including that Reade’s story had “changed over time”, when in fact Reade provided more details over time, something that is common among survivors of sexual assault. The writer also pointed out that before 2019 her “public statements about Biden were entirely positive”. (Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers advanced the same discredited argument against his accusers, who praised him both publicly and privately after their alleged assaults.) Jezebel suggested the media was ignoring the story “because of the way Halper…aired the allegations”, and “lets Reade speak uninterrupted, leaving her to tearfully stumble over her story”.
Whether you believe Reade or not, it’s hard to justify the media’s refusal to give her a hearing. When Grim broke Blasey Ford’s story, virtually every major US legacy news outlet considered it newsworthy enough to cover within four days. But it took the New York Times 19 days to cover Reade’s story. The article originally reported that it “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable”. After the publication, the second part of the sentence was deleted at the behest of the Biden campaign, as the paper’s executive editor actually admitted: “The campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct.” The Washington Post, which took 20 days to report on the story, managed to misquote a police report Reade filed as saying she “disclosed that she believes she was the victim of sexual assault”. But the words “she believes”, didn’t appear in the actual police report.
Two interns the Times interviewed corroborated Reade’s allegation that she was removed of her duties supervising them (in retaliation, she claimed, for reporting earlier sexual harassment). The Times did not include a response from the campaign on her demotion. And while Biden’s campaign has denied the sexual assault allegation, he has not. In the dozen media events (including a town hall) since the story broke, not a single reporter has asked him about it.
Election Day, Americans will be asked to choose between two candidates, both of whom face credible allegations of sexual assault. Nobody is more upset about this than Tara Reade: “I tried so hard to be heard when there were 20 Democrats running,” she told me. Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill Clinton of rape, became a Trump supporter when he cynically and opportunistically let her tell the story. But, Tara says, “I will never ever support Trump. I am never voting Republican.” Instead, Tara will not participate in an election “between the man who assaulted me and a man who has committed similar assaults on other women.”
We are in an excruciating situation with no easy solutions. Tara wants Biden to step down, understandably, as do others who see him as a disastrous candidate. Others wish Tara had been listened to before Biden was the last man standing, but now see no alternative. Both positions are understandable and neither should be shamed. But what is shameful is ignoring or belittling Tara because it’s politically inconvenient to grapple with her story. The powerful media, politicians and organizations who ignored her or didn’t take her seriously enough have no authority to say anything besides “I’m sorry,” and promise to do better, for Tara, women like her and the #MeToo movement they’ve already harmed.
Tara Reade says Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. She deserves to be heard
Katie Halper
I published the former aide’s accusation against the Democratic presidential candidate on my podcast after other media outlets ignored her
Photograph: Michael Stravato/AP
Critics of Tara Reade – the woman who has accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she was a staff assistant in his Senate office – claim that if her story were credible she would have told it sooner; and the mainstream media would have covered it. In fact, as her tweets and emails to reporters, media outlets, politicians and organizations demonstrate, Reade has been trying to tell her story for nearly a year, but was ignored or turned away. That is why she wound up telling her story publicly for the first time to me on my podcast.
I’m an independent writer and podcaster. I don’t hide my politics, nor am I an “objective” investigative reporter with the resources of a legacy publication. But in March, a friend, herself a sexual assault survivor, said she’d spoken to a woman named Tara Reade, who had told her a credible story about being sexually assaulted by Joe Biden and asked me to speak with her. I agreed to speak to Reade and the people she said she’d told about the alleged assault at the time, and if her story seemed credible, I’d do my best to put her in touch with a journalist who could do her story justice. I spoke to Reade and her confidants, and reviewed documents. There seemed much to Reade’s story, and I moved ahead to find her help.
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, who broke the Christine Blasey Ford allegation against Brett Kavanaugh, was already working on a piece on Reade focused on Time’s Up – the not-for-profit founded to support women in telling their #MeToo stories – and its refusal to help her. I reached out to mainstream reporters but no one bit. Rightwing reporters were showing interest in the story, but neither I nor Reade, a lifelong Democrat who identifies as a progressive feminist, wanted her story and the #MeToo movement weaponized to help Trump. Because I believed Reade – and because no one else she had reached out to had agreed to interview her – I released my interview a day after Grim published his article.
You can hear and read Reade’s heart-wrenching account yourself, but to summarize her claims: she says she brought Joe Biden his gym bag as she’d been instructed. The two of them were alone and that is when she says “he just had me up against the wall and his hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And then he went down my skirt, but then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers … Everything shattered in that moment.”
Reade’s good friend Jane (not her real name), who lived at the same residence and interned for another senator at the time, told me that Reade called her after the incident: “When I said, ‘Did you feel like you could walk away?’, [Tara] said no. And that his hand went where it shouldn’t below the belt…He said something that made [Tara] feel like a grain of dust… small and insignificant. On the phone…you can’t see someone’s facial expression… but you can tell when someone’s voice is shaking… She was definitely confused, disoriented.”
Reade’s brother also remembers learning about the incident: “First my mom told me about it. She was up in arms. And I was like I don’t know what happened. I think my sister was trying to spare me.” Indeed, Reade did try to spare her younger brother somewhat but, as he told me, “I remember my sister being specifically asked to handle a gym bag… And there was a moment he had her up against the wall and made a hand move under her clothes.”
Both Grim’s article and my interview were followed by a deafening silence, with only a handful of outlets covering the story. Two articles sought to justify why the mainstream media didn’t cover it. At Salon, one writer attributed the lack of media attention to a number of “red flags”, including that Reade’s story had “changed over time”, when in fact Reade provided more details over time, something that is common among survivors of sexual assault. The writer also pointed out that before 2019 her “public statements about Biden were entirely positive”. (Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers advanced the same discredited argument against his accusers, who praised him both publicly and privately after their alleged assaults.) Jezebel suggested the media was ignoring the story “because of the way Halper…aired the allegations”, and “lets Reade speak uninterrupted, leaving her to tearfully stumble over her story”.
Whether you believe Reade or not, it’s hard to justify the media’s refusal to give her a hearing. When Grim broke Blasey Ford’s story, virtually every major US legacy news outlet considered it newsworthy enough to cover within four days. But it took the New York Times 19 days to cover Reade’s story. The article originally reported that it “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable”. After the publication, the second part of the sentence was deleted at the behest of the Biden campaign, as the paper’s executive editor actually admitted: “The campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct.” The Washington Post, which took 20 days to report on the story, managed to misquote a police report Reade filed as saying she “disclosed that she believes she was the victim of sexual assault”. But the words “she believes”, didn’t appear in the actual police report.
Two interns the Times interviewed corroborated Reade’s allegation that she was removed of her duties supervising them (in retaliation, she claimed, for reporting earlier sexual harassment). The Times did not include a response from the campaign on her demotion. And while Biden’s campaign has denied the sexual assault allegation, he has not. In the dozen media events (including a town hall) since the story broke, not a single reporter has asked him about it.
Election Day, Americans will be asked to choose between two candidates, both of whom face credible allegations of sexual assault. Nobody is more upset about this than Tara Reade: “I tried so hard to be heard when there were 20 Democrats running,” she told me. Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill Clinton of rape, became a Trump supporter when he cynically and opportunistically let her tell the story. But, Tara says, “I will never ever support Trump. I am never voting Republican.” Instead, Tara will not participate in an election “between the man who assaulted me and a man who has committed similar assaults on other women.”
We are in an excruciating situation with no easy solutions. Tara wants Biden to step down, understandably, as do others who see him as a disastrous candidate. Others wish Tara had been listened to before Biden was the last man standing, but now see no alternative. Both positions are understandable and neither should be shamed. But what is shameful is ignoring or belittling Tara because it’s politically inconvenient to grapple with her story. The powerful media, politicians and organizations who ignored her or didn’t take her seriously enough have no authority to say anything besides “I’m sorry,” and promise to do better, for Tara, women like her and the #MeToo movement they’ve already harmed.
Katie Halper is the host of the Katie Halper show the cohost of Rolling Stone’s Useful Idiots podcast