New Reporting Increases Doubts on Tara Reade’s Allegations

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.

Police Find No Evidence To Support Alleged UVA Gang Rape

As numerous Virginia news outlets are reporting, the City of Charlottesville Police Department has found no evidence to support the alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity that a now debunked Rolling Stone article sensationalized last year.  Tellingly, the alleged victim did not provide a statement or testimony during the police investigation.  Even more tellingly, the police could not confirm that "Jackie's" supposed date that night even exists.  As I have said before, if the entire story is false - as seems to be the case - I hope the fraternity and its members take legal action against the false victim and Rolling Stone and the "journalist" who wrote the defamatory piece.  Here are excerpts from the Huffington Post:

Charlottesville Police announced Monday that its investigation into an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity did not find enough evidence to support the account described in a Rolling Stone magazine article published last year. 

Charlottesville Chief of Police Tim Longo said during a press conference the case would not be closed, however, because he cannot say conclusively that no assault took place. The alleged victim, a female undergraduate identified only as Jackie, did not provide a statement or any testimony to Charlottesville police during its investigation, Longo said. 

The Rolling Stone article published in November detailed the alleged gang rape of Jackie on Sept. 28, 2012, at Phi Psi. Upon the article's publication, UVA President Teresa Sullivan asked Charlottesville, Virginia, police to investigate the incident described in the magazine, while she temporarily suspended social activities for Greek life. 

In December, reporting in the Washington Post and other outlets discredited the Rolling Stone's account of the alleged rape. The magazine admitted later that its article had significant errors, and commissioned the Columbia University School of Journalism to conduct an independent review of its reporting and editing of the piece.

"Unfortunately, we're not able to conclude to any substantive degree that an incident that is described in [the article] occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi or any other fraternity, for that matter," Longo said.

Charlottesville police spoke with nine of 11 men who lived in the Phi Psi house in fall 2012, all of whom said they did not know anything about a sexual assault or about Jackie, according to Longo. Police also spoke with Jackie's friends and roommates, reviewed photographic evidence, phone records and interviewed members of other fraternities.

Longo said police also could not determine whether Haven Monahan, the man with whom Jackie said she went on a date on Sept. 28, 2012, even existed.

Stephen Scipione, president of the UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi, took a more combative stance in a statement Monday, blaming Rolling Stone for leveling untrue allegations against the fraternity. 

"These false accusations have been extremely damaging to our entire organization, but we can only begin to imagine the setback this must have dealt to survivors of sexual assault,” Scipione said. “We hope that Rolling Stone’s actions do not discourage any survivors from coming forward to seek the justice they deserve."

Longo said Jackie also declined to waive federal privacy rights to allow police to review educational records they believed would be useful in their investigation. Police did speak with Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the Rolling Stone story, who provided additional information that was not included in the article. 

Gay Air Force Pilot 'Outed' by False Accusation

The Idaho Statesman is reporting that Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach who is now being drummed out of the Air Force under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was outed through a false accusation against him. Sadly, this is something that happens REGULARLY and I have two clients who were the victims of the same type of bogus accusation that they had come onto another service member. In fact, nothing of the kind ever happened yet bot were forced from the Navy where they had been competent and honorable service members. Truth be told, when the military is not actively running witch hunts of its own - something that DOES happen - it is jumping onto wildly untrue allegations made by disgruntled service members or out right homophobic bigots. The unfairness of the policy and the nastiness it encourage is an affront to what America is supposed to be about. And again, the only thing that truly gives rise to DADT is religious discrimination - something supposedly barred by the Constitution. Here are some story highlights:

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On April 3, 2003, Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach flew his F-15E toward an Iraqi ambush site about a mile from U.S. Army troops advancing on Baghdad airport. Fehrenbach faced anti-aircraft fire, surface-to-air missiles and a mechanical problem on his wingman's plane. Still, he destroyed the enemy position and helped clear the way for the Army to take the airport that night. For his heroism, the Notre Dame grad won an Air Medal with a valor device, one of his nine Air Medals.

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Five years later, Fehrenbach confronted a crisis in a very different setting. A Boise police detective sat across a conference table questioning him about an alleged crime. Fehrenbach, stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base, was in a Catch-22. To clear himself of the claim he'd raped a man, Fehrenbach could tell police his side of the story. But admitting he'd had consensual sex could get him kicked out of the Air Force he loved after 18 years.

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Fehrenbach was soon cleared by police and the Ada County prosecutor's office. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations subsequently found no violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. AFOSI concluded that Fehrenbach and Shaner had consensual sex, and that Shaner was an "unreliable source of information." But the Air Force wasn't done: Fehrenbach's admission he'd had gay sex was a violation of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. . . . Had his accuser been a woman, he'd have gone back to work with no further issue."

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But the prospect of President Barack Obama fulfilling a campaign promise to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," prompted Fehrenbach to fight. In April, a board of five officers recommended an honorable discharge. Fehrenbach's goal was to continue to serve. With two more years, he'd reach 20 years and qualify for full retirement.

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He also seeks to raise hope among those who want gays to be free to serve openly, as they do in 26 countries, including Britain, France, Australia and Israel. "You coming out has galvanized a lot of people, and it brought a lot of people out of the woodwork," Maddow told Fehrenbach on June 23. "Absolutely " he replied. "I have literally gotten thousands and thousands of e-mails, letters, phone calls from people I have served with ... I can't even count the number who have said, literally, 'Dude, I'll go to war with you tomorrow.'"

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DADT is a travesty - it is unfortunate that we have a spineless - and untruthful - president who lacks the balls to issue a stop loss order while the nightmare of DADT is repealed.