A resurfaced clip of "Larry King Live" from
1993 appears to include the mother of Tara Reade -- who has accused Joe Biden of past sexual assault while in the
Senate -- alluding to “problems” her daughter faced while working
as a staffer for the then-U.S. senator from Delaware.
In a telephone interview with Fox News on Friday night,
Reade confirmed that her mother called in to the show. Biden's presidential
campaign has adamantly denied Reade's allegations but the video could be
cited as evidence supporting Reade’s allegation – even though her late mother,
in the clip, does not specifically refer to a sexual assault claim.
The Intercept on Friday first reported the
transcript of a broadcast from Aug. 11, 1993, of a woman from San Luis
Obispo County, Calif., calling in to the show about her daughter's
experience on Capitol Hill.
"San Luis Obispo, California, hello," King
begins.
"Yes, hello. I’m wondering what a staffer would do
besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there, after
working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at
all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose
not to do it out of respect for him," the caller says.
"In other words, she had a story to tell but, out of
respect for the person she worked for, she didn’t tell it?" King inquires.
"This is my mom. I miss her so much and her brave
support of me," Reade tweeted about her mother, who died in 2016.
Reade's story first resurfaced in an article in The Intercept on March 24. Podcast host Katie Halper
then interviewed Reade, who said that in 1993, a more senior member of
Biden's staff asked her to bring the then-senator his gym bag near the U.S.
Capitol building, which led to the encounter in question.
"He greeted me, he remembered my name, and then we
were alone. It was the strangest thing," Reade told Halper. "There
was no like, exchange really. He just had me up against the wall."
Reade said that she was wearing “a business skirt,” but
“wasn’t wearing stockings — it was a hot day.”
She continued: “His hands were on me and underneath my
clothes, and he went down my skirt and then up inside it and he penetrated me
with his fingers and he was kissing me at the same time and he was saying some
things to me.”
Reade claimed Biden first asked if she wanted “to go
somewhere else.”
“I pulled away, he got finished doing what he was doing,”
Reade said. “He said: ‘Come on, man. I heard you liked me.’”
Reade said she tried to share her story last year, but
nobody listened to her. Earlier this month, she filed a criminal complaint
against Biden with police in Washington, D.C.
Fox News reached out to the Biden campaign on Friday for
comment. The campaign referred Fox News to a statement earlier this month from
Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield that said: “What is clear about
this claim: it is untrue. This absolutely did not happen."
"Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life
to changing the culture and the laws around violence against
women," Bedingfield said. "He authored and fought for the
passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He
firmly believes that women have a right to be heard - and heard respectfully.
Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press.
Speaking to Fox News on Friday, Reade recalled being
"furious" at her mother for phoning in to CNN after
having watched the clip on a recorded tape following the broadcast.
She told Fox News she "dreamt" about her mother
on Thursday night. The following morning, The Intercept's Ryan Grim told
her that he found the transcript.
Reade said she "cried" when she watched the
clip on Friday evening, telling Fox News it had been years since she had
heard mother's voice. She had urged Reade to file a police report at
the time of the alleged assault, Reade said.
"Always listen to your mom, always listen to your
mom," an emotional Reade told Fox News.
Still, the mother’s interview doesn’t specifically
corroborate Reade’s latest allegations of assault, and could be referring more
to the bullying allegations she raised last year. In a 2020 interview, Reade
laid more blame with Biden’s staffers for “bullying her” than with Biden
himself, The Washington Post reported.
Reade has come forward before: Last year, when multiple
women emerged claiming inappropriate touching by Biden.
Reade, at the time, claimed Biden put his hands on her
shoulders and rubbed his fingers up and down her neck, but was unable to gain
traction on her story aside from an article in a local newspaper.
But in recent weeks, Reade told a far more
graphic account, with different and more serious details, raising the
allegation to the level of sexual assault.
“Now we’ll see if a different set of rules still applies
to Joe Biden,” Erin Perrine, the principal deputy communications for
President Trump's re-election campaign, said in a statement to Fox News.
“Maybe now at least one reporter will ask him about it.”
Fox News has also requested comment from U.S. Sen. Bernie
Sanders, I-Vt., who ran against Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential
primary and recently endorsed Biden's campaign after wthdrawing from the race.
Fox News' Alex Pappas contributed to this
report.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News.
Follow him on Twitter @JosephWulfsohn.
______________________
RELATED
ARTICLE
Tammy Bruce: Hypocritical Dems ignore Biden
sexual assault allegations, but embraced Kavanaugh accuser
A newly surfaced explosive but unproven allegation of a
1993 sexual assault by then-Sen. Joe Biden is
being ignored and denied by Democrats – the same Democrats who were quick to
embrace clearly fabricated sexual assault allegations against now-Supreme Court
Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
The double-standard by Democrats eager to protect former
Vice President Biden – now their presumptive presidential nominee to challenge
President Trump in the November election – is a shocking example of their
grotesque hypocrisy and fraud.
We can all now see clearly that Democratic politicians –
the self-described champions of women – have never really cared about improving
the quality of women’s lives. Like abusers everywhere, they see women as
something to be used – a means to an end.
Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing on his nomination
to the Supreme Court was a tragic episode in our political and cultural
history. It serves as a reminder of the destructive cynicism of the
#BelieveAllWomen gang – a cynicism that has now come back to haunt Democrats.
Things are about to become extremely awkward for the
Biden camp because of the new information that has emerged lending credibility
to Tara Reade and her sexual harassment and assault allegations against
then-Sen. Biden, for whom she worked at the time as a member of his Senate
staff.
As the Intercept first reported, Reade claims she told
her mother, her brother and a close friend about her claim of sexual misconduct
by Biden at the time of the alleged sexual assault in 1993.
The Intercept, an investigative news site, reported:
“Reade also mentioned that her mother had made a phone call to ‘Larry King
Live’ on CNN, during which she made reference to her daughter’s experience on
Capitol Hill. Reade told The Intercept that her mother called in asking for
advice after Reade, then in her 20s, left Biden’s office.
‘“I remember it being an anonymous call and her saying my
daughter was sexually harassed and retaliated against and fired, where can she
go for help? I was mortified,’” the Intercept reported Reade said.
The video of the call broadcast on “Larry King Live” has
now been located. Reade confirms that it is her mother’s voice on the clip of
the show.
Fox News reported Friday: “In a telephone interview with
Fox News on Friday night, Reade confirmed that her mother called in to the
show. Biden's presidential campaign has adamantly denied Reade's allegations
but the video could be cited as evidence supporting Reade’s allegation – even
though her late mother, in the clip, does not specifically refer to a sexual
assault claim.”
Up to this point, the Democratic Party, its various
candidates for the presidency, and the liberal media have generally ignored
Reade. This comes after they made a cottage industry during and after the
Kavanaugh confirmation hearing of lecturing Americans that every woman claiming
sexual assault should automatically be believed, that due process wasn’t
necessary, and that a man accused of sexual misconduct should be presumed
guilty until he proves his innocence.
At the time, I noted on multiple occasions on Fox News
that this was the opposite of what serious women’s rights activists have been
working on for decades and would set the issue of sexual misconduct back for
years to come.
After all, the Democrats were telling Americans that
women either can’t be trusted – and so they and their allegations won’t survive
scrutiny – or that women are infants who are too fragile to engage with the
justice system.
Neither argument generates confidence in a woman accusing
someone of a serious crime. In one of the ultimate obscenities of identity
politics (where everyone always loses), the Democrats and left-wing media were
arguing during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing that men would have to be
sacrificed because women must be believed – simply because they are women.
Now, when faced with Reade – a woman with nothing
political to gain and a Democrat herself – the Democratic Party and its allies
apparently decided believing all women is circumstantial, with the main
circumstance requiring a Republican target.
When contacted about the new audio revelation, the Biden
campaign referred Fox News to a statement from earlier this month stating:
“What is clear about this claim: it is untrue. This absolutely did not
happen."
So, is the new mantra “Believe all women – except this
one?” At this rate, the Democrats need as many exceptions and cut-outs for
their own fake rule as House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, needs pints of ice
cream.
In a recent column published by Fox News covering the
Reade allegations, Adriana Cohen reminds us of Biden’s comments when asked
about uncorroborated accusations against Kavanaugh two years ago.
“For a woman to
come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start
off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about
is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse
or better over time,” Biden said.
Someone better tell the members of the Biden campaign the
opinion of their candidate.
Tammy Bruce, president of Independent Women’s
Voice, is a radio talk-show host, New York Times best-selling author and Fox
News political contributor.
