Two new reports on Tara Reade’s allegation don't reach a definitive conclusion, but both of them on balance add a lot of grounds for skepticism. jonathanchait writes
Photo: Mark Reinstein/Getty Images When Tara Reade first made her assault allegation against Joe Biden, I thought the charge was more likely to be true than false. To be clear, I had no intention of changing my vote. The allegation came too late to reopen the nominating process without doing violence to the expressed will of the electorate. And I’ve always believed the primary criteria for voting on a candidate is their policy impact .
In a recent conversation, I asked Reade why she would say the media was shutting her down when she was initially so adamant with me that this wasn’t a misconduct story. The only answer she gave was that she was speaking about the response to her claims “collectively.” And in her opinion, the added details still fit her construct that “this is not a story about sexual misconduct,” because, she told me, sexual assault itself is about power.2.
I spoke with Reade’s friend again this week. She said that Reade had told her about the alleged assault the week it happened in 1993. I asked the friend why, then, did she volunteer so explicitly that Biden “never tried to kiss her” or touch her inappropriately. “It just organically rolled out that way,” the friend said. “[Reade] and I had many conversations a year ago about what her degree of comfort was. She wanted to leave a layer there, and I did not want to betray that.
4. The physical geography does not line up with Reade’s claim. Her lawyer described the scene of the alleged assault as “a semiprivate area like an alcove” between the Russell building and the Capitol. NewsHour walked the route between those buildings and found “no out-of-view areas, like an alcove.” There are stairwells, which is not so different from an alcove that it’s impossible Reade mistook it for one.
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