The NPR Politics Podcast - Former Staffer Accuses Joe Biden Of Sexual Assault

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

Note: This podcast contains an explicit description of an alleged sexual assault.Tara Reade, a former junior staffer in Joe Biden's Senate office, has accused the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of sexually assaulting her in 1993. The Biden campaign denies the accusation and says the alleged incident "absolutely did not happen."This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and campaign correspondent Asma Khalid. Email the show at [e-mail] Join the Facebook group at n.pr/politicsgroup Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/politicsnewsletter Find and support your local public radio station at donate.npr.orgLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. It is 210 Eastern on Monday, April 20th. And I want to flag that today's podcast will contain some explicit content about sexual assault, and it may not be suitable for all listeners. A former junior staffer in Joe Biden's Senate office, Tara Reid, has accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993. The Biden campaign denies the accusation and says the alleged incident, quote, absolutely did not happen.

And Asma, you have reported this story out. You spoke to Reid, you spoke to several people who worked in the office at the time, and you spoke to the Biden campaign. So let's start with Reid. What is she alleging? Well, I spoke to her multiple times, and she told me that at some point in the spring of 1993, she was asked by her then supervisor to deliver this duffel bag to Joe Biden as he was heading toward the Capitol. And then she says when she met up with Biden to drop off that bag, this happened. He put me up against the wall and his hands went underneath my clothing and he was touching me in my private areas and without my consent. She says that Joe Biden penetrated her vagina with his fingers. After immediately after the assault, when I had pulled away, he looked at me, pointed his finger and he said, you're nothing to me. Nothing. And I must have looked emotional. He then took me by the shoulders and just kind of just said, you're okay. you're fine, you're okay.

And then he had adjusted his clothing and grabbed his bag and walked away. And Reid could not recall exactly where this alleged assault occurred, but she told me it was likely in the basement of a Senate office building. Asma, did she talk to you at all about why she would make the decision to tell her story now? Well, we did talk about this, and Tahereh Reid says that she was trying to find a safe space to come forward with a story for a while. She says that she had been contacting a number of news outlets for months, but the first time that she publicly alleged an assault was in late March, as Joe Biden seemed to be consolidating his support as the presumptive Democratic nominee. And, you know, critics do point out that she had an opportunity to tell her story before. as Joe Biden seemed to be consolidating his support as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

And, you know, critics do point out that she had an opportunity to tell her story before. She was interviewed by journalists in the spring of last year. At that point in time, she came forward with a different story. She told a story of Biden touching her shoulder and her neck in a way that made her feel uncomfortable, but she never mentioned sexual assault. What has the response been from Biden's team? Well, Joe Biden himself has not responded to the story. His deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, put out a statement flat out denying Tara Reid's story. She pointed out that Biden authored the landmark Violence Against Women Act.

Bedingfield also said that Biden believes women have a right to be heard respectfully, but that such claims should also be diligently reviewed by the press. And what's clear, she says, about this claim is, quote, it is untrue. It absolutely did not happen. So last year, she was part of a group of women who accused Biden of not respecting their personal space, of making them feel uncomfortable, correct? That's right. You know, in the spring of 2019, there was a woman, Lucy Flores, a former Nevada state legislator who came forward and told this story of Joe Biden giving her a kiss on her hair, on her head. And, you know, and at that point, other women came forward and talked about unwanted touching from Joe Biden. You know, at that time, as we mentioned, Tara Reid did come forward.

She told her local paper in California this story. But again, it was about touching. It was not about a sexual assault. Nothing akin to what she's describing now in this story in pretty, you know, graphic detail. The first time that we heard about a sexual assault allegation from Tara Reid was in late March of this year. She went on a left-leaning podcast called The Kitty Helper Show and gave this account. It's similar to what she told me about a sexual assault. And pretty quickly afterward, the story took off on left-wing and right-wing corners of the internet. So Asma, you talk to a lot of people as you put this story

together. Is there anyone from Reid's life who corroborates her account? So Tara told me that she told three people at the time about this alleged assault. Those people were her mother, her brother, and a friend. Her mother has since passed away, and her friend did speak with me over the phone. She did not want to be identified publicly by name, but she did corroborate Reed's account. Her brother did not respond to our initial request for comment. I called him, sent him a text message, etc. But he sent me a text message response late the night before we published our story. And in that text message, he said that he recalled Reed telling him of an incident in the early 1990s in which Reed says that she brought a gym bag to Biden. And, you know, I'm going to read directly from the text message. He told me, quote, they were alone in a private area or room. He more or less cornered her against

the wall. He put his hands under her clothes. My mom wanted her to go to the police. Reid did not go to the police at the time, and there is no contemporaneous notes or documentation of the alleged incident that have been found. She told me that, you know, she did not talk to anyone in Biden's office specifically about this alleged assault, though she says she did complain about harassment. And she says she filed a complaint to some Senate personnel office, but she doesn't have a copy of the complaint. And she couldn't remember the name of the office where she had filed this paperwork. The Biden campaign has rejected these allegations in totality. They say it absolutely did not happen. You also talked to people who worked for Biden around the same time of this event. What did they tell you? That's right. I spoke to multiple people

from this time period, and nobody could confirm Reid's account. You know, Reid told me that she reported her concerns not about the alleged assault, but about broader harassment concerns to three specific people in the office. Those three people were Biden's longtime aide, Dennis Toner, his then chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, and his executive assistant, Marianne Baker. All three say that she never came to them, that they never had these conversations. Here's Dennis Toner. If a conversation had occurred, I would remember it. It's something that would be so out of character with what was how you would describe Joe Biden. And Toner told me that no

conversation about harassment ever occurred. He said not with Reid, not with anyone else in the office. Other staffers told me that they don't remember hearing any talk of this, not even, you know, sort of office gossip. I spoke with a woman whose name is Melissa Lefkoe. She was a junior staffer at the time, a woman who essentially had the same job as Tara Reid. She said that that position did not have the kind of regular access to Biden that Reid has described at times.

And Lefkoe, like other former Biden staffers that I spoke with, said the reason that they have trouble believing this story is because what Reid's describing is so counter to the culture in the office, the culture that they had experienced. You know, they point out that Biden had women in senior positions at a time when that just wasn't the norm. Here's Melissa Lefkoe. When you work on the Hill, you know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and Biden was a good guy. And I mean that wholeheartedly.

This is akin to what I heard from other women that I spoke with from Biden's office, who said that what Tara Reid is describing just runs so counter to their own personal experience of working for him. You know, but of course, they cannot definitively prove that what Tara Reed is alleging did not happen. There's more to talk about on this. We're going to take a quick break first. This message comes from NPR sponsor StoryPoint Wines, maker of StoryPoint, a bold new wine brand with a rich layered taste profile. Enjoy StoryPoint wine while you connect with those you love,

either at home or at a virtual happy hour. Raise a glass and share a story. StoryPoint believes that the stories we share can bring joy even in trying times. Visit storypointvineyards.com slash politics to purchase. Shipping is included in your online order, so consider shipping a bottle to a friend, too. Hey, it's Guy Raz from NPR's How I Built This, and each week on the show during this unprecedented crisis, I'll be asking some of the top founders and builders how they're dealing with the economic impact of the coronavirus and hear about some of the ways they're pivoting to fight it.

Subscribe or listen now to How I Built This. Okay, we're back. And Asma, where does Tara Reid's claim stand right now? Reid told me that she filed a police report a little over a week ago with the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department because she was worried about her safety after receiving online harassment. We did obtain confirmation of that police report, a record of which names Biden from a law enforcement source. But, you know, look, even after reporting out this story and talking to so many people, there are still just some unknowns about the entire episode.

What are the biggest unknowns? You know, some of Reid's details have been inconsistent, and her story has changed over time. And, you know, Biden supporters specifically point to a few things that make them question Tara Reid herself and question her credibility. They point to this outspoken support that she's made of Bernie Sanders. You know, Reid, I should point out, was also supportive of Elizabeth Warren and Marianne Williamson. But they also point to these effusive online posts that she had written in the past praising the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. And they also wonder why as recently as 2017,

Reid was online praising Joe Biden. Reid told me, you know, she wonders why essentially any of that matters when you're talking about an allegation of sexual assault. She told me that she voted for the Obama Biden ticket twice, and she personally does not want Donald Trump to become president again. She's not going to vote Republican, but she also does not intend to vote for Joe Biden. So taking a few steps back, there's a lot of dynamics going on here, including who Joe Biden is likely running against in the fall election. What is the broader context that we should put this all in? Yeah, I mean, you mentioned Donald Trump, and more than a dozen women have publicly accused President Trump of various incidences of sexual assault. Biden has never

been accused of sexual assault before. But you know, to people who believed Tara Reid's story, it reminds them of these allegations that we've talked a bit about. And those are these stories of Joe Biden before he officially jumped into this presidential campaign about invading women's personal space and this unwanted touching. At that time, a number of women talked about these stories, whether it was like rubbing their shoulders or smelling their hair or kissing them on the head. And I do think that we should be very clear that while many of them describe this behavior as demeaning, they did not say that it was sexual. You know, this is not the first time that a presidential candidate or even a president has been accused of sexual assault or sexually inappropriate behavior. But it is the first election to take place since the Me Too movement.

And I wonder what impact you've seen that have on this. Gosh, I think that's probably one of the most important and interesting questions about all of this, because in the last couple of years, you know, Democrats, including Biden, have been insisting that society should believe women. It's this mantra touted by the left. But I think one of the bigger takeaways from this story is how Democrats have been grappling with what that means. You know, we've seen both the Biden campaign and his surrogates try not to discredit Tara Reid herself and walk this really fine line. But I mean, I'm curious what you all think, because I do think it raises these bigger, broader questions about the effect and the impact of the MeToo movement. You know, one thing I think about, and you know, we don't know the answer to this,

because one of the things it's hard to know if this is an issue that's really going to have an impact on voters. And it's hard to get a sense of that because there really is no campaigning happening right now. Joe Biden's not doing town hall meetings. He's not being confronted by it. So I'm curious to see if it's having any impact. Asma, you wrote a long digital story on this. You can read the whole story at NPR.org if you want to know more about this. That is all for today, though. I'm Scott Detrow.

I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.