Biden has vowed to select a woman as his vice-presidential running mate, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has publicly lobbied to be Biden’s pick. On Tuesday, she said Reade’s claims wouldn’t stand in the way of that.
“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Abrams told HuffPost on Tuesday. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case. The New York Times conducted a thorough investigation, and nothing in The Times review or any other later reports suggests anything other than what I already know about Joe Biden: That he will make women proud as the next President of the United States.”
Last month, former Biden aide Tara Reade alleged that the then-senator put his hands up her skirt and digitally penetrated her without consent in a Senate hallway in 1993. The Biden campaign denied the accusations and most prominent Democrats and Biden supporters, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, remained silent on the issue.
Business Insider published a report on Monday that included an interview with a former neighbor of Reade’s, Lynda LaCasse, who says Reade told her the details of Biden’s alleged assault in 1995 or 1996. A former California state senate colleague of Reade’s told Business Insider that Reade told her in the mid-1990s that she was sexually harassed by Biden and later fired from his office.
And last week, The Intercept reported about a recording that Reade alleges is her mother, calling in to “Larry King Live” in 1993 to ask how her daughter should handle her issues with “a prominent senator.” In the recording, the woman doesn’t mention harassment or retaliation or specify who the “prominent senator” is.