If Tara Reade wanted to be viewed as credible, one big mistake is that she is represented by a lawyer who is a big Trump donor. Given Trump's willingness to pay off people and engage in crime boss-like activities, the link to Trump frankly makes me suspicious. Then again, I remember the sexual assault story that Rolling Stone did about a University of Virginia fraternity that turned out to be false and seemingly the product of a disturbed mind. That is not to say I am prone to disbelieve victims of assault. Simply that one must carefully look at all angles of allegations. A piece in New York Magazine does exactly that and while not conclusive, raises more reasons to distrust Reade's changing allegations which, if untrue, do nothing to help the cause of women who are true victims of assault. Note in the piece how a friend of Reade's admits to lying and how the supposed venue of the assault doesn't fit the actual physical layout of the alleged location. Here are article highlights:
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.
Since then, however, three detailed reports — by Vox’s Laura McGann, PBS NewsHour, and Politico’s Natasha Korecki — have delved into Reade’s allegations. Neither reaches a definitive conclusion. But all of them on balance add a lot of grounds for skepticism. At this point, Reade’s allegation seems to me to be more likely to be false than true.
McGann’s story recounts her yearlong effort to report on and corroborate Reade’s claims. The main problem she describes is that Reade dramatically changed her allegation. Reporters knew that Reade had previously described a culture of harassment without sexual assault, and then, in March, suddenly added a specific account of sexual assault.
McGann, by revisiting the two accounts and trying to understand the reason Reade changed them, zeroes in on two specific problems.
1. Reade’s account of why she changed her story seems not to be true. McGann describes her lengthy, and sympathetic, efforts to prove out Reade’s charge of sexual harassment. She was surprised when Reade claimed she had decided not to share the full story because reporters were shutting her down . . . . If you follow the entire account of McGann’s contact with Reade, this is a little hard to swallow.
2. Reade’s friend admitted to lying to a reporter to fit Reade’s narrative. McGann spoke with one Reade friend, who told her last year that Biden had harassed Reade but had definitely not sexually assaulted her: . . . After Reade changed her allegation, McGann circled back to the friend, who explained that she had said something the friend knew to be false because Reade “wanted to leave a layer there” . . . .Omitting a relevant detail to protect your friend is one thing. Adding false detail is another.
PBS NewsHour’s report turns up several more problems.
3. All 74 Biden staffers NewsHour contacted did not know of any sexual assault. Of the 74 former Biden staffers NewsHour spoke with, 62 were female. “None of the people interviewed said that they had experienced sexual harassment, assault, or misconduct by Biden,” it reported, “All said they never heard any rumors or allegations of Biden engaging in sexual misconduct, until the recent assault allegation made by Tara Reade.”
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. But NewsHour describes the route as a “main thoroughfare,” making it at least a somewhat unlikely location for a sexual assault.
5. The fundraiser claim sounds shaky. Reade has said she was told to serve drinks at a fundraiser in Washington. However, several former staffers recalled Biden avoided events in Washington and rushed to catch a train back to Delaware every night (a fact about Biden that is widely known). Others recalled an office policy forbidding his Senate staff from doing campaign work.
None of these sources could conclusively state that Reade was never assigned to serve drinks at a Washington fundraiser. But that claim is deeply at odds with the general practices they observed.
6. One colleague recalls she was fired for cause. The most explosive detail in NewsHour’s report comes from Ben Savage, a former co-worker who sat next to Reade in the mailroom: . . . told the NewsHour that Reade was fired for her poor performance on the job, which he witnessed — not as retaliation for her complaints about sexual harassment. . . . . . Savage’s recollection calls into question not only Reade’s explosive second allegation of sexual assault, but also her first allegation. And it would supply a motive for her to have lied to friends in the 1990s: If she was embarrassed for having been fired, she had a reason to have concocted a false account of what ended her employment.
7. Many people who know Reade do not trust her. Korecki’s reporting for Politico does not address the Biden allegations directly, except insofar as it recounts the way she discussed Biden over the years (often very positively.) The main takeaway is that Reade seems to lie to people frequently. In particular, she preys upon their sympathy to take advantage of their good nature. She has abused the goodwill of landlords and neighbors in this way, repeatedly, leaving them to see her as a dishonest person. It’s possible a person with these qualities could have been sexually assaulted, but the pattern certainly has bearing on her credibility.
Again, none of this constitutes proof. It is possible more evidence will be found to either strengthen or weaken the basis of her claim. But the reporting by McGann and NewsHour collectively adds a fair amount of weight to the scale. Wherever you stood beforehand, there has to be at least somewhat more doubt now.
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