- The attorney who vetted 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden before he became former President Barack Obama’s vice president says that he found no sexual harassment complaints during this process.
- Attorney William Jeffress says Biden accuser Tara Reade’s name did not come up in the vetting process.
- But at least six people have corroborated details of Reade’s story.
The attorney who vetted 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden before he became former President Barack Obama’s vice president says that he found no sexual harassment complaints during this process.
Attorney William Jeffress discussed vetting Biden to become Obama’s VP with CNN’s Arlette Saenz related to his accuser, Tara Reade, and her allegations of sexual assault. 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.
Biden denied the allegations Friday morning on MSNBC and his campaign has also denied the assault saying it “absolutely did not happen.” He also requested Friday that the secretary of the Senate “take or direct” any necessary steps to find a complaint made by Reade and to make its results public if it is found. (RELATED: Biden Asks Secretary Of The Senate To Locate Any Tara Reade Complaint After Incorrectly Stating National Archives Would Have It)
“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 said. The Biden campaign has not responded to frequent and continued requests for comment from the DCNF.
Jeffress said that he and a team of almost 10 lawyers devoted about two months to “doing every deep dive into his long record in public service” when they vetted Biden, CNN reports. The team reportedly examined records and interviewed many past and present Biden Senate staffers, questioning whether any of these people knew about complaints or allegations made against Biden.
Reade’s name did not come up, Jeffress told CNN. He also added that no one suggested that the vetting team spoke with Reade.
At least six people have corroborated different aspects of Reade’s story, a DCNF review of public statements found: her mother, her brother, her former neighbor, her former coworker and at least two friends.
Reade’s mother appears to have called into a CNN show in 1993, the year Reade says the alleged assault occurred, asking for advice regarding her daughter’s problems with a prominent senator.
Her brother says she told him shortly after the alleged incident occurred, while her former neighbor says Reade described being assaulted in 1995 or 1996. Reade’s former coworker says that in the mid 1990’s, Reade described sexual harassment from her former Washington, D.C. boss.
An anonymous close friend who spoke to the Associated Press said that Reade described the alleged assault in 1993, while another anonymous close friend said that Reade described sexual harassment from Biden to her in 2007 or 2008.
Jeffress has not responded to a request for comment from the DCNF about the vetting process.
“We asked everybody an open-ended question — ‘Are you aware of any complaints of any illegal, unethical conduct, including discrimination or harassment?’ And the answer was uniformly no,” the attorney told CNN. “We never heard of any allegation against him of that sort.”
Reade has suggested that her complaint may be housed in the University of Delaware with Biden’s Senate records. The documents that are being kept secret until Biden “retires from public life,” spokeswoman Andrea Boyle Tippett told The Washington Post in July 2019.
Biden insisted Friday on MNSBC that such a complaint would not be at the University of Delaware and that searching for her name in these documents would be fruitless. The former vice president said that the University of Delaware files contain private conversations related to his time serving under Obama and other heads of state.
Patti Solis Doyle, who was campaign manager to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and chief of staff to Biden when he was vice president, also told CNN that there need not be a search for Reade’s name in the University of Delaware documents and said that she never heard anything about sexual assault allegations against Biden. (RELATED: Biden Calendar Casts Doubt On Second Accuser’s Harassment Claim, But Her Aunt Says She Was There)
“I was hired before Joe Biden was selected,” she said. “When I was hired, they had narrowed down to four people. Joe Biden was among those four, obviously. And the selection committee had done a thorough vet of all of those four people.”
“And if anything like a sexual assault or a sexual allegation had come up, certainly, I would have been given the heads-up on it,” she added.
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