For the First Time, Joe Biden Publicly Responds to Sexual-Assault Allegations

This morning Joe Biden, the former vice president and now the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, strongly denied charges that he had sexually assaulted a Senate staffer in the 1990s.

The charges have been levied by Tara Reade, who worked briefly as a staff assistant for Biden when he was a senator from Delaware. In April, Reade told the New York Times that in 1993 Biden pinned her to a wall in a Senate building, reached under her clothing, and penetrated her with his fingers. The Biden campaign has strenuously denied that the incident ever happened or was reported by Reade at the time. Today marked the first time Biden has ever addressed the charge directly, doing so in an essay published on the Medium website and then during a contentious, 18-minute live interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

In the essay, Biden wrote: “I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago. They aren’t true. This never happened.” The former vice president then added: “While the details of these allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault are complicated, two things are not complicated. One is that women deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and when they step forward, they should be heard, not silenced. The second is that their stories should be subject to appropriate inquiry and scrutiny. Responsible news organizations should examine and evaluate the full and growing record of inconsistencies in her story, which has changed repeatedly in both small and big ways.”

Biden said he was inviting those journalists to investigate Reade’s claims, saying that “there is only one place a complaint of this kind could be—the National Archives.” He added, “I am requesting that the Secretary of the Senate ask the Archives to identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document. If there was ever any such complaint, the record will be there.”

He deflected the suggestion made by some of his critics that he should also open up to scrutiny his personal papers from his time as a senator, which have been donated to the University of Delaware, saying they “do not contain personnel files.” He added: “It is the practice of senators to establish a library of personal papers that document their public record: speeches, policy proposals, positions taken, and the writing of bills.”

Biden’s appearance on Morning Joe, which was highly promoted the day before, came less than an hour after the Medium post was published. And it took a curious turn when Biden was interviewed remotely from his home in Delaware. The two male cohosts, Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist, went off-camera, leaving the questioning to Mika Brzezinski. (The two men returned later to quiz Biden about the 2020 campaign against Donald Trump and how he would be responding to the pandemic if he were president.)

Brzezinski got right to the point, after saying, “It’s just going to be you and me,” and opened the interview by asking: “Did you sexually assault Tara Reade?”

Biden looked directly into the camera and said, “No, it is not true. I’m saying unequivocally it never, never happened. It didn’t.”

Brzezinski also pressed Biden on statements he had made during the 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, when decades-old allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford surfaced. Brzezinski reminded him that he had said at the time, “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time.”

The Morning Joe cohost then turned to the allegation by Reade and its believability. “Is the essence of what she is saying real?” Brzezinski said of Tara Reade. “Why do you think she’s doing this?”

“I’m not going to question her motive—I’m not going to get into that at all,” Biden replied. “I don’t know why these she’s saying this. I don’t know why after 27 years all of a sudden this gets raised. I don’t understand it. But I’m not going to go in and question her motive. I’m not going to attack her. She has a right to say whatever she wants to say. But I have a right to say look at the facts, check it out. Find out if what any of what she says is true.”

Brzezinski pressed again. “As it pertained to Dr. Ford, high-level Democrats said she should be believed, that they believed it happened,” she said. “You said, if someone like Dr. Ford were to come out, the essence of what she is saying has to be believed, has to be real. Why? Why? Why is it real for Dr. Ford but not for Tara Reade?”

Biden argued that his position then and his stance now were not inconsistent. “She has a right to say what she wants to say, but I have a right to say look at the facts.”

“I’m not suggesting she had no right to come forward,” Biden added. “Any woman, they should come forward, they should be heard. And then it should be investigated. And if there’s anything that is consistent with what’s being said, and she makes the case or the case is made, then it should be believed. But only the truth matters.”

As Brzezinski continued to press, Biden replied, “I don’t know what else I can say to you.”

Then, in a long, contentious, and at times highly confusing exchange, Brzezinski repeatedly asked why Biden wouldn’t allow a search for any documents related to Reade at the University of Delaware in that cache of personal papers. He responded several times, “They’re not there,” repeating his assertion on Medium that no personnel files were housed at the university. “I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make,” the former vice president finally said, clearly looking exasperated.

After the interview was over (and Scarborough and Geist returned to pick up the questioning about the pandemic), reaction on social media was mixed. “Mika, you’re conducting one of the worst interviews I’ve ever watched,” said one critic, while others called it disgraceful and foolish.

But other members of the media quickly came to Brzezinski’s defense. “Watch as Mika actually gets Joe Biden flustered on whether he will call for a search of University of Delaware records on Tara Reade,” tweeted Scott Whitlock, a contributor to National Review. “This is the kind of interview journalists could have been doing for the last 36 days but failed to.”

“Not sure you can fault Mika’s questioning,” tweeted Jonah Goldberg, editor in chief of The Dispatch and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. “Those weren’t softballs. Sure, I’d like some more granular follow-ups, but that was a grilling.”

Jennifer Palmieri, the communication director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 and a frequent contributor to MSNBC, also praised Brzezinski. “Friends, I don’t get this badgering I see of @morningmika for ‘harping’ or being too hard on @JoeBiden,” Palmieri tweeted. “I love and respect @JoeBiden, but he needed to answer every single question she put to him. It would be a disservice to all involved if she had not done so. Hats off to her.”

And shortly after the interview ended, Brzezinski, who along with Scarborough (her longtime cohost and now husband) has been an enthusiastic supporter of Biden in his coming race against Trump, took to Twitter to sum up the experience. “The interview with @JoeBiden was difficult, having known and greatly respected him for decades. (I still do.) The notion that all women are to be believed, which dominated the Kavanaugh hearings, was revisited. Should it be? Were Democrats wrong then or now?”

Originally Appeared on Vogue