by Mary Margaret Olohan
2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden requested Friday that the secretary of the Senate locate any complaint made by his accuser Tara Reade.
The former vice president issued a letter to Secretary Julie Adams asking for her to find out whether Reade ever issued a sexual harassment complaint against him.
Biden’s request follows his Friday morning appearance on MSNBC where he denied Reade’s allegations and said that if any such complaint existed, it would be in the National Archives.
But the National Archives told the Daily Caller News Foundation that this is incorrect information: “any records of Senate personnel complaints from 1993 would have remained under the control of the Senate.”
Biden notes in his letter to Adams that he previously understood that such a complaint would be in the possession of the National Archives but has been since informed that it would be under the control of the Senate.
“I am writing to request your assistance in determining whether 27 years ago a staff member in my United States office filed a complaint alleging sexual harassment,” Biden wrote in the letter.
And Friday concludes with a request from @JoeBiden to the Secretary of the Senate to locate any complaint by Tara Reade pic.twitter.com/3V15k2R7i6
— David Catanese (@davecatanese) May 1, 2020
“According to public reports, the staff member, Ms. Tara Reade, has stated that in 1993 she filed such a complaint with the office responsible for enforcing the Senate employees’ rights in the workplace,” Biden states in the letter.
Biden asks Adams to “take or direct” any necessary steps to find the complaint and to make its results public.
“I would ask that the public release include not only a complaint if one exists, but any and all other documents in the records that relate to the allegation,” he concludes.
Reade worked as a Senate staffer for Biden in 1993 and has accused the then-senator of kissing her, touching her and penetrating her with his fingers without her consent.
After the alleged assault, Reade told the DCNF, she complained about sexual harassment to three Biden staffers: Marianne Baker, Biden’s executive assistant, and Dennis Toner and Ted Kaufman, who were both top Biden aides at the time.
But Kaufman, Baker and Toner would not take action when Reade complained to them about sexual harassment, Reade said, so she filed a written complaint with an office she called the “Senate Personnel Office.”
She was told that someone would call her in for a full discussion and meeting — but “that never happened,” she told the DCNF. She said she does not have the complaint form.
Reade attempted to track the complaint down in 2019. She said she was told that “it would have gone back to Joe Biden’s office, to the chief of staff.” She is unsure who told her this, but believes it might have been OWCR.
If this complaint were located, she said, it would show that Biden’s staff members lied on the record when they said they did not have meetings with her, noting that she had more than five meetings total — informal and formal — with these staff members.
It would also show the approximate dates of when some of the events she has mentioned happened, she told the DCNF.
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Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Joe Biden” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “National Archives” by David Samuel. CC BY-SA 3.0.
