Evidence Mounts in Tara Reade’s Case Against Joe Biden

Content warning: descriptions of sexual assault

In recent days, evidence has mounted in support of former Senate staffer Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Reade initially revealed a detailed testimony of the 1993 incident in an interview with journalist Katie Halper last month. On April 24, The Intercept broke a story about a 1993 call Reade’s mother made to CNN’s “Larry King Live”, and, shortly thereafter, Reade’s former neighbor Lynda LaCasse came forward to corroborate details of Reade’s account.

In his recent piece, journalist Ryan Grim recounted Reade telling him in an interview that, shortly after the 1993 incident, she told her mother what had happened. Reade’s mother then called in to the CNN show “Larry King Live” to ask for advice. Indeed, evidence of such a call has surfaced. On August 11, 1993, Larry King introduced a caller from San Luis Obispo, California, which, as records indicate, was where Reade’s mother lived at the time. The caller then said the following:

“Yes, hello. I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there, after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him.”

After watching the video clip and listening to the caller’s voice, Tara Reade confirmed that this was indeed her late mother.

On April 27, Business Insider reported that Lynda LaCasse, Reade’s next-door neighbor in the mid-1990s, has come forward to recall her own conversation with Reade regarding the 1993 incident in question. In an interview, LaCasse recounted the following:

“So my daughter was asleep and her daughter was asleep. My son was, even at that age, he was like 12 or 13, so he was on his computer. We just started talking about things and she just told me about the senator that she had worked for and how he, she was working for him and he put his hand up her skirt.”

“I remember her saying, here was this person that she was working for, and she idolized him. And he kind of put her up against a wall. And he put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her. She felt like she was assaulted, and she really didn’t feel there was anything she could do.”

Additionally, another source — Lorraine Sanchez — who worked with Reade in the office of a California state senator in the mid-1990s, said that she remembers Reade alleging sexual harassment at the hands of her former boss (Biden), after which she was apparently fired as a result of reporting the incident.

Tara Reade’s credibility has certainly been strengthened by the aforementioned revelations. Her case has the potential to not only expose former Vice President Joe Biden as a sexual predator and rapist, but also expose the Biden campaign and its allies as unprincipled partisan hypocrites, entirely indifferent to the broader #MeToo movement and the plight of sexual assault victims. Such a development would then send the Democratic establishment scrambling to replace the struggling old timer with a fresh, polished neoliberal candidate like Andrew Cuomo — a move that would undoubtedly anger countless voters even further.

From the Iowa caucus debacle to the endless smearing of Senator Bernie Sanders to ignoring a credible rape allegation, Democratic Party elites have demonstrated that they are terrified of progressive change and have absolutely no plan for the future of their party, let alone the nation as a whole. This paranoid disdain for progressive and feminist causes could play a pivotal role in the results of the presidential election this November — possibly handing a victory to Donald Trump (another infamous sexual predator). What’s clear is that this election cycle has been unspeakably traumatic for survivors and their loved ones and has further deteriorated public trust in the democratic process.