Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday categorically denied allegations from a former Senate staffer that he sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s, saying “this never happened.”
Biden’s first public remarks on the allegation by a former employee, Tara Reade, come at a critical moment for the presumptive Democratic nominee as he tries to relieve mounting pressure after weeks of leaving denials to his campaign.
“I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,” Biden said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Biden said he will ask the National Archives to determine whether there is any record of a complaint being filed, as Reade has claimed, but he said repeatedly that he doesn’t believe such a record exists.
Reade did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. The National Archives also did not immediate reply to an AP inquiry.
“The former staffer has said she filed a complaint back in 1993,” Biden said. “But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint. The papers from my Senate years that I donated to the University of Delaware do not contain personnel files.”
Biden said, “There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be – the National Archives.” The former vice president said “there are so many inconsistencies” in Reade’s various accounts. But Biden said he does not “question her motive.” He said that over his five decades in public life, none of his employees, including Reade, were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.
“There’s no NDA signed,” Biden said. “No one’s ever signed, I’ve never asked anybody to sign an NDA. There are no NDAs, period, in my case. None.” The National Archives also did not respond to an AP inquiry about Senate records. Republicans worried about President Donald Trump’s increasingly precarious political standing are seizing on Reade’s allegation to portray Democrats as hypocrites who only defend women who allege wrongdoing against conservatives.