The secretary of the Senate rejected a request by former Vice President Joe Biden to release documents related to a staffer that worked for him in the 1990s.
Biden requested on Friday that Senate Secretary Julie Adams turn over personnel files related to Tara Reade, who has accused Biden of sexually assaulting her when she worked for him in the Senate in 1993. Adams’ office released a statement on Monday saying that she could not comply with Biden’s request.
“Based on the law’s strict confidentiality requirements (Section 313) and the Senate’s own direction that disclosure of Senate Records is not authorized if prohibited by law (Senate Resolution 474, 96th Congress, Section 3(a)), Senate Legal Counsel advises that the Secretary has no discretion to disclose any such information as requested in Vice President Biden’s letter of May 1,” Adams’ office said in a statement according to Fox News.
5) "Senate Legal Counsel advises that the Secretary has no discretion to disclose any such information as requested in Vice President Biden’s letter of May 1.”
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) May 4, 2020
Biden sat for an interview with MSNBC on Friday and directly addressed Reade’s allegations for the first time since they surfaced in March. Reade has alleged that in 1993 then-Sen. Biden pushed her against a wall, “went down my skirt, but then up inside. He penetrated me with his fingers.”
Biden denied the allegations in the MSNBC interview and in a statement issued just before, saying “They aren’t true. This never happened.”
“[Reade] has said she raised some of these issues with her supervisor and senior staffers from my office at the time,” Biden’s statement continued. “They — both men and a woman — have said, unequivocally, that she never came to them and complained or raised issues. News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one — not one — who corroborated her allegations in any way.”
Reade has pointed out several people – a friend, her brother, and a former neighbor – that have all said Reade told them about the alleged sexual assault within several years of it happening. Reade has also said she told her mother, who died in 2016.
CNN footage from August 1993, the month Reade stopped working for Biden, surfaced in April showing a woman calling in to “Larry King Live” and claiming to have a daughter who had an incident while working for a “prominent senator.” The woman asked whether her daughter should have gone to the police or found another solution. Reade has identified the caller as her mother.
Reade has said that one more piece of evidence likely exists in Biden’s personnel files from his time as a U.S. senator: a complaint Reade filed against Biden alleging inappropriate conduct, but not sexual assault. Reade claims the document exists in files Biden donated to the University of Delaware in 2011.
Biden has said that he did not include personnel files in the donation to Delaware, and Reade’s complaint, if it exists, is in the National Archives. The National Archives, on Saturday, denied that it would have such documents.
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