(Staff articles from The FOX NEWS & NEW YORK TIMES in April 2020.)
The allegations were leveled earlier this week by a woman named Tara Reade, an apparent supporter of Biden’s primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who said she was a staff assistant for Biden in 1993 when he was in the Senate.
Reade has come forward before—last year, when multiple women emerged claiming inappropriate touching by Biden. Reade, at the time, claimed Biden put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed his fingers up and down her neck, but was unable to gain traction on her story aside from an article in a local newspaper.
But this week, Reade told a far more graphic account, with different and more serious details, raising the allegation to the level of sexual assault. Reade’s story first resurfaced in an article in The Intercept. She then was interviewed by podcast host Katie Halper. There, Reade claimed that in 1993, she was asked by a more senior member of Biden’s staff to bring the then-senator his gym bag near the Capitol building, which led to the encounter in question.