A woman accuses Joe Biden of sexual assault, and all hell breaks loose online. Here's what we know
Alexandra Tara Reade accused Biden of sexual assault. Salon untangles fact from fiction in the politicized fall-out
Amanda Marcotte
Last week, podcaster Katie Halper, an avid fan of presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, released an episode of her podcast containing a shocking accusation: In an interview, Alexandra Tara Reade, who briefly worked for former Vice President Joe Biden when he was in the U.S. Senate, said that Biden had sexually assaulted her in 1993, pinning her up against a wall and digitally penetrating her during an encounter on Capitol Hill. At the same time, Ryan Grim of The Intercept — a publication which has been strongly supportive of Sanders and critical of Biden — published a story insinuating that the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund had rejected Reade's case out of political loyalty to Biden.
These twin stories are currently tearing up social media, with competing conspiracy theories flying from both pro-Biden and pro-Sanders camps in response. Biden supporters are accusing Reade of being a Russian agent, or at least a kook with suspicious intentions who's in love with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sanders supporters are accusing the mainstream media and Time's Up of covering up Reade's accusations to protect Biden. (To be clear: Neither candidate's campaign has engaged with these conspiracy theories in any way.)
Reade says there were no witnesses to the alleged 1993 assault, which is of course extremely common in such cases. She said in her interview with Halper that she told her brother and a friend about the assault at the time, which Halper says she confirmed. That's the most common method of establishing credibility when reporting on allegations of sexual harassment or assault. The audio of the interview is compelling, as Reade speaks with a lot of emotion about the alleged assault. The same was true in her interviews with Salon.
Yet it is also true that outside of a handful of aggregated stories, there has been almost no high-profile media coverage of a story as explosive as this — an accusation that a former vice president and near-certain Democratic presidential nominee committed an act of sexual violence against a woman who worked for him. Why?
After reaching out to Reade, representatives from Time's Up, a lawyer who spoke with Reade, the Biden campaign, Reade's former bosses and the journalists who first broke the story, Salon hopes this story will offer clarity about what is and isn't true in the bizarre narratives swirling around Reade and her story. That clarity may also help answer the question of why the mainstream media has largely steered clear of this messy situation.
1. Is the mainstream media burying Reade's story out of loyalty to Biden and/or hatred of Sanders? That's unlikely. Here's why.
There's a reason why mainstream journalists such as Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker and Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of the New York Times — all Pulitzer Prize winners for their meticulous coverage of the 2017 Harvey Weinstein investigation — are so careful when reporting allegations of sexual harassment and assault. (Salon is not addressing any individual outlet's choice not to cover this specific story, but the general considerations typically involved in such a decision.) It's not just about fairness to the accused, but also to the accusers. Women who tell these stories inevitably get blasted by skeptics who pick their stories apart, so it's critical to their safety that the reporting holds up under close scrutiny. That's only going to be more true when the story has major political implications or confusing twists that could be interpreted as red flags — or both, like this one does.
Reade's story of what happened during her tenure working for Biden has changed over time. In April of 2019, Reade spoke to a local Nevada County paper, claiming Biden "would touch me on the shoulder or hold his hand on my shoulder running his index finger up my neck during a meeting."
She also recounted an incident where she says she was told by staff that she had to serve drinks at a Biden event because he "liked my legs." She told Salon she rejected this request and complained directly to supervisors Marianne Baker and Dennis Toner. Reade says that her complaints led to being sidelined and pushed out of Biden's office. Both Baker and Toner denied to Salon ever having such a conversation with Reade.
Reade's April 2019 account of why she left Biden's office also conflicts with earlier things she has written. In a December 2018 Medium post she's since deleted, Reade wrote that she quit working for Biden to pursue a vocation in the arts and because she loves "Russia with all my heart" and rejected "the reckless imperialism of America" and what she saw as an anti-Russian view on Capitol Hill.
Before 2019, Reade lived under another name — she changed it for many years to escape an abusive husband, and provided the paperwork demonstrating this to Salon — and her public statements about Biden were entirely positive. After making her April 2019 allegations that Biden had touched her inappropriately, Reade spent months tweeting that story, dozens of times, at various figures — politicians, celebrities, media outlets, even Donald Trump — to no response.
Under both her current and prior name, Reade has expressed public support for a variety of Democratic politicians in the past, ranging from Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson. Then, over the past few months, Reade began heavily retweeting pro-Sanders accounts and regularly engaging with prominent Sanders supporters like Halper. It was during this time that Reade started to hint publicly that what happened with Biden had been far more serious than her 2019 story detailed. Such hinting led — as Reade told Salon, which Halper confirmed — to an anonymous woman suggesting that Reade seek Halper out to tell her full story.
When asked why her story had changed so much in the past year, Reade told Salon that she had considered describing the assault to the original reporter from the Nevada County paper, but the "way he asked the questions" had "shut me down." (That reporter did not respond to Salon's request for comment.) She also said she felt intimidated by social media attacks and threats in the aftermath of her original accusations, and therefore stayed silent.
The timeline shows that Reade's involvement in the online world of Bernie fandom coincided with her escalation of accusations against Biden. To be clear, this does not mean she's lying. But taken along with the other discrepancies in Reade's accounts — which are also, on their own, not reasons to discredit her — it's enough to make publications take a slow and careful approach to amplifying this story.
"Other outlets, for good reason, do their own reporting on stories like this," Grim told Salon. "As they do, I expect we'll see more coverage."
Salon asked Grim and Halper about their reporting process, but got few answers. Halper confirmed Reade had been connected to her through a woman on Twitter. Grim confirmed that he and Reade have been in contact since early March. (Grim has relevant experience here: He broke the story about Christine Blasey Ford writing to Sen. Dianne Feinstein with her accusation that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had attempted to rape her in high school.)
Grim and Halper have both publicly said that they spoke to Reade's brother and friend, who both confirmed that Reade had told them about the alleged assault when it happened. Attempts to reach the brother and the friend — key steps in reporting a story like this independently — have proven fruitless for Salon. Reade did not respond to Salon's request for her friend's identity, and Reade's brother has not responded to Salon's requests to talk.
In light of these details, Salon concludes that mainstream outlets who are being criticized for not writing about Reade's allegations probably aren't making that choice because they're covering up for Joe Biden. What's more likely driving the silence — so far — is a genuine reluctance to dive into a story that contains such a high number of complicating factors and proves difficult to pin down, especially with the coronavirus emergency dominating the news cycle.