Joe Biden denies Tara Reade allegations, refuses to open personal archive

Joe Biden on Friday denied sexual assault allegations from former staffer Tara Reade — insisting the 1993 incident never happened while also repeatedly refusing to release “private” records which may contain information about the alleged incident.

“They aren’t true. This never happened,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said in a statement on Friday morning.

Biden also claimed that Reade never raised concerns with supervisors or senior staffers at the time of the alleged assault.

“News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one — not one — who corroborated her allegations in any way,” he wrote in the statement, which was released before an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“Indeed, many of them spoke to the culture of an office that would not have tolerated harassment in any way — as indeed I would not have.”

The presumptive Democratic nominee had dodged commenting on the accusations from his former staffer for weeks.

His campaign has emphatically denied claims and had circulated talking points to Democrats instructing them to say it never happened.

Reade has accused Biden of pinning her against a wall in 1993 when she was a staff assistant at his Senate office. She said Biden reached under her skirt and assaulted her.

The former veep told Morning Joe anchor Mika Brzezinski that he was “not worried at all” about Reade’s claims which he maintained were false.

“It is not true. I’m saying it unequivocally – it never happened. It didn’t. It never happened,” he said.

“This is an open book. There’s nothing for me to hide. Nothing at all,” he added.

Biden was not asked once about the multiple people who have come forward to corroborate Reade’s claims, or a CNN tape which recently emerged which bolstered his accuser’s story.

But he was repeatedly pressed by Brzezinski on whether or not he would release his Senate records spanning 36 years which are currently being kept by the University of Delaware — something he claimed wasn’t possible.

Reade believes the records, handed over by Biden in 2012, will contain her original complaint form, separation letter and other documents relating to the alleged assault.

“Let’s get this straight, there are no personnel documents. You can’t do that,” the former veep insisted. “They’re private documents. They don’t get put out in the public. They’re not part of the public record.”

Biden said the personnel records, if they existed, would be kept in the National Archives and called on the Secretary of the Senate to release any such complaint.

A National Archives spokesperson told Business Insider after the interview that they do not hold records from Biden’s office.

Reade also noted to ABC News that when she complained about the alleged incident to the Senate personnel office in 1993, she said that Biden “made her feel uncomfortable,” but that she did not mention an assault.

A report published Thursday revealed the University of Delaware is in possession of Biden’s senate records, and that board members have close financial and personal ties with Biden, the chairman even purchasing his home for a “top dollar” price of $1.2 million in the 1990s.

The presidential wannabe told Brzezinski that the documents were being withheld because he is running for office and said there were concerns any speeches he made or interviews with officials overseas could be “taken out of context.”

The towering Democratic figure said he had never reached out to his former staffer after she went public with her allegations and said he had no idea why she brought the charges against him.

“I’m not going to question her motive. I’m not going to get into that,” he said. “I don’t know why she’s saying this. I don’t know why after 27 years all of a sudden this gets raised.”

“I don’t understand it but I’m not going to go in and question her motive. I’m not going to attack her,” he added.

Many Democrats have struggled with the claims after they steadfastly backed Christine Blasey Ford, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, during his 2018 confirmation hearings and as they continue to highlight the host of accusations facing President Donald Trump.

Biden himself stumbled over remarks he made during the hearings, claiming at the time that if a woman came forward with charges of sexual harassment, people needed to start with the presumption that “the essence of what she is talking about is real.”

“The facts are that — look, I’m not suggesting she had no right to come forward,” Biden said Friday when asked why Reade was being treated differently to Ford.

“They should come forward, they should be heard, and then it should be investigated and if there’s anything that’s consistent with what’s being said, and she makes the case or the case is made that it should be believed, but always, truth matters. The truth matters,” he said.

The former veep’s campaign has steadfastly denied the allegations while also repeatedly saying that women had a right to tell their story, even as new evidence continues to emerge.

“We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s communications director, told Business Insider earlier this month.

A former neighbor of Reade’s, who is voting for Biden in November, spoke out earlier this week to say Reade had told her about the attack in the mid-1990s.

Last week, video also emerged of a woman calling into CNN’s Larry King in August 1993 to describe a situation involving her daughter who had “problems” while working in a prominent senator’s office.

Reade has said that the caller was her mother, who died in 2016.

In April, Reade filed a police report in Washington DC about the alleged assault and on Saturday officials said the case had been “moved to an inactive status.”

Top Democratic supporters of Biden have defended their pick for president — and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she supported him.

“I’m satisfied with how he has responded,” the highest-ranking Democrat said, even though Biden was still dodging the allegations.

The issue of Biden not releasing the documents could shape up to be a cudgel in the 2020 election battle — with Republicans already attacking the former veep over it on Friday.

“The most transparent thing Joe Biden did this morning was admit that he is hiding documents so they can’t be used against him,” GOP rapid response director Steve Guest said in a statement.

Brzezinski at one point asked, “So for complete transparency, why not push for the release of any documents with Tara Reade’s name on them whether it’s at the University of Delaware, or the National Archives?”