Allegedly, former Vice President Joe Biden’s awkwardness with women goes beyond mere unwanted touching and into unwanted skinny dipping.
Writing in the Washington Times, Ronald Kessler recalled how several Secret Service agents told him when researching his book, “The First Family Detail,” that Joe Biden stands second behind Hillary Clinton in the ranks for worst assignment to protect – from his penchant for rapidly changing schedules to his, well, “bizarre” swimming habits.
“Mr. Biden’s lack of consideration was even more stunning when it came to female agents, who were offended that the vice president bizarrely swam naked in front of them often daily at his pools at the vice president’s residence in Washington and at his home in Delaware,” Kessler wrote.
Though this alleged behavior of Joe Biden has been circulating the web as far back as 2014, it has seen a revisited in recent days in light of Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault against him. But when news of Biden’s aquatic nakedness first broke, it barely became a major story mostly because left-wing media outlets dismissed the allegation as mere speculation while trashing the source. Here’s what Conor Friedersdorf wrote in The Atlantic at the time:
Let me tell you that virtually no one in the Washington, D.C., political press is scandalized by skinny dipping. But every time it emerges that someone in public life has swam naked, there is widespread, disingenuous playacting on the question. You’d suddenly think that Maude Flanders was managing the newsroom. While I have no idea if the reporting in the new book on the Secret Service is credible, outlets treating it as credible enough to report have been distracted by skinny-dipping from what is indisputably more important news.
The partisan Media Matters got in on the action as well by blasting Kessler’s credibility, a journalist who previously won two George Polk awards and who tipped off the Washington Post in 2012 about Secret Service agents visiting prostitutes prior to a presidential visit. Other outlets, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, trashed Kessler’s book as “National Enquirer-Style Gossip” and pure speculation based on anonymous sources.
That was in the pre-#MeToo era. Six years later, Biden has since been accused by seven women of inappropriate touching or invading their personal space. Biden’s former Senate staffer Tara Reade alleges that he forcefully penetrated her with his fingers while she served under him in the U.S. Senate in 1993.
Reade has since detailed her account in multiple interviews and filed a criminal complaint against the former vice president with the Washington, D.C., police department. A former neighbor of Reade and Reade’s brother have both publicly stated that Reade told them of the alleged assault in the 1990s. Recently surfaced evidence also suggests that Reade’s mother called in to CNN’s Larry King in the 1990s to complain about a prominent senator with whom her daughter had “problems.”
The Associated Press has also reported that two new people, both of whom wished to remain anonymous, said that Reade spoke of Biden’s behavior prior to her going public.
Last week, new evidence emerged that appeared to partly support Reade’s claim when the San Louis Obispo Tribune reported on court documents from 1996 that revealed she had complained about sexual harassment in Biden’s senate offices.
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