On May 1, 2020, Joe Biden opted to address the Tara Reade accusations himself. “No, it is not true. I’m saying unequivocally it never, never happened. And it didn’t. It never happened,” he boldly declared during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” But he didn’t stop there. In an official campaign statement, Biden doubled down by requesting that the National Archives get involved and provide a record of the report that Reade claimed that she had filed against him.
Unfortunately for Biden, the secretary of the senate rebuffed his request, citing that she did not possess the authority to do so. Meanwhile, Reade conducted an interview with the Associated Press where she claimed that the report she filed did not disclose accusations of sexual assault, but only harassment. “I was too scared to write about the sexual assault,” she said. “I talked about sexual harassment, retaliation. The main word I used — and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment — I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation,'” she maintained.
In the end, Reade’s accusations fell out of the headlines as conflicting accounts emerged, and Biden went on to win the 2020 election. Reade would later hightail it to Russia in May 2023. She told Sputnik that she made the decision to relocate due to safety concerns. “I just didn’t want to walk home and walk into a cage or be killed, which is basically my two choices,” she said.
