Katie Halper interviews Tara Reade
4:39 1993 - sexual harrassment complaint
Biden was “very handsy with a lot of people” Didn’t talk with her.
It sounds as if the sexual harrassment was the result of being told that Biden thought she had nice legs and wanted her to be a server at an event that wasn’t part of her job. The senator thinks you’re pretty and have nice legs…
Talked to her supervisor, who advised her to “keep her head down”. Nothing in writing.
Time leading up to the incident is not clear in her mind.
Her mother told her this was retaliation
Eventually did talk to Ted Kaufman (chief of Biden’s staff?)
Never served drinks at the event
Told to take a gym bag to Biden.
Not wearing stockings, wearing blouse Down her skirt and then up inside it. ??? “Do you want to go somewhere else?” He looked annoyed “I heard you liked me” Wasn’t trying to do anything more. Couldn’t believe it was happening. Grabbed her by shoulders and told her, “You are fine.” Biden was angry as he left - he smiles when he’s angry
[The thing she didn’t want to say]( “You’re nothing to me. You’re nothing.” “You’re okay. You’re fine.”
Had hidden from her abusive husband.
Tara Reade’s Updated Medium Post: All Material Edits
4/29/20 Corrections:
Reade made the new allegations public on March 24th, not the 26th
The “datemodified” in the source code indicates the most recent edit
In April of 2019, Alexandra Tara Reade (formerly McCabe) wrote on Medium about her experience with Joe Biden. At this time, she was alleging inappropriate contact of a non-sexual nature — one of several women to come forward about Biden’s “handsy” behavior.
On March 24, 2020, Reade went public with a sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden. Given this was an addition to her prior account, her post on Medium underwent some level of scrutiny. To be absolutely clear: simply coming forward with new information is not “changing her story”. Abuse victims will often speak up about their experiences in different pieces. This is not abnormal.
However, retroactively editing prior statements IS changing her story. Upon inspecting the webpage’s source code, it appears Reade has done exactly that. On March 24th — the day she brought her new allegations against Biden — Reade edited her original post on Medium. The post maintained its April 2019 date, making the article look like her updates were part of the original. These updates added significant new information.
Source Code: The Article was Edited
Her Medium post can be found here. Opening the source code (a simple right-click in Chrome) allows us to view some basic metadata. Below is the segment of interest, with the relevant pieces bolded in red.
{"@context":"http:\u002F\u002Fschema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","image":["https:\u002F\u002Fmiro.medium.com\u002Fmax\u002F1200\u002F1*tjv0UwpefrXTe5YmcCXmrw@2x.jpeg"],"url":"https:\u002F\u002Fmedium.com\u002F@AlexandraTaraReade\u002Fa-girl-walks-into-the-senate-dd9ebdfce31b","dateCreated":"2019-04-06T18:56:32.009Z","datePublished":"2019-04-06T18:56:32.009Z","dateModified":"2020-03-24T22:18:47.379Z","headline":"A Girl Walks into the Senate… - Alexandra Tara Reade, J.D. - Medium","name":"A Girl Walks into the Senate… - Alexandra Tara Reade, J.D. - Medium"
In other words, the source code indicates that the article was edited as recently as March 24th.
Traditional internet archives (such as the Wayback Machine) do not have this article stored before March 26th, 2020. Normally, this would stop us from viewing any old versions of the article. However, The Union also posted Reade’s article in April of 2019. This allows us to compare the original post to Reade’s updated version.
The original, never modified version can be found here — published by The Union on April 17, 2019. Reade tweeted this article the very next day, and explicitly confirmed it was a correct accounting of her story a few days later. Reade continued to share the original as late as February 2020, presumably before editing her Medium post.
List of Edits
Original: https://www.theunion.com/opinion/columns/alexandra-tara-reade-a-girl-walks-into-the-senate/
Updated: https://medium.com/@AlexandraTaraReade/a-girl-walks-into-the-senate-dd9ebdfce31b
Below I have listed the segments of the article that were materially altered, roughly in order of importance (from most to least impactful).
Wording removed in the update will be red, italicized, and struck through
Wording added in the update will be red and bolded
(there are also a variety of immaterial changes to spelling and punctuation)
What this all means is up to you. But this much is clear: In the same day she accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, Tara Reade edited her previous statements to better match her new allegations.
View all posts by romansresearch
Published April 29, 2020May 1, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, says she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.
“I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,” Reade said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.”
Reade told the AP twice that she did not use the phrase “sexual harassment” in filing the complaint, but at other points in the interview said that was the behavior she believed she was describing. She said: “I talked about sexual harassment, retaliation. The main word I used — and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment — I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation.’”
Reade described the report after the AP discovered additional transcripts and notes from its interviews with Reade last year in which she says she “chickened out” after going to the Senate personnel office. The AP interviewed Reade in 2019 after she accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching. She did not raise allegations of sexual assault against Biden until this year, around the time he became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The existence of the Senate report has become a key element of the accusations against Biden, which he has flatly denied. Reade says she doesn’t have a copy of the report, and Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Reade.
But Reade is suggesting that even if the report surfaces, it would not corroborate her assault allegations because she chose not to detail them at the time.
According to a transcript of her 2019 interview with the AP, Reade said: “They have this counseling office or something, and I think I walked in there once, but then I chickened out.” She made a similar statement in a second interview with AP that same day, according to written notes from the interview.
On Friday, Reade said she was referring to having “chickened out” by not filing full harassment or assault allegations against Biden. In multiple interviews with the AP on Friday, Reade insisted she filed an “intake form” at the Senate personnel office, which included her contact information, the office she worked for and some broad details of her issues with Biden.
On Saturday, Reade told the AP there may have been a box to check on the form noting a sexual harassment complaint, but she couldn’t remember and wouldn’t know for sure until she saw the form. Reade also said she canceled a planned television interview with “Fox News Sunday” because of security concerns.
Reade was one of eight women who came forward last year with allegations that Biden made them feel uncomfortable with inappropriate displays of affection. Biden acknowledged the complaints and promised to be “more mindful about respecting personal space in the future.”
During one of the April 2019 interviews with the AP, she said Biden rubbed her shoulders and neck and played with her hair. She said she was asked by an aide in Biden’s Senate office to dress more conservatively and told “don’t be so sexy.”
She said of Biden: “I wasn’t scared of him, that he was going to take me in a room or anything. It wasn’t that kind of vibe.”
The AP reviewed notes of its 2019 interviews with Reade after she came forward in March with allegations of sexual assault against Biden. But reporters discovered an additional transcript and notes from those interviews on Friday.
A recording of one of the interviews was deleted before Reade emerged in 2020 with new allegations against Biden, in keeping with the reporter’s standard practice for disposing of old interviews. A portion of that interview was also recorded on video, but not the part in which she spoke of having “chickened out.”
The AP declined to publish details of the 2019 interviews at the time because reporters were unable to corroborate her allegations, and aspects of her story contradicted other reporting.
In recent weeks, Reade told the AP and other news organizations that Biden sexually assaulted her, pushing her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in 1993, groping her and penetrating her with his fingers. She says she was fired from Biden’s office after filing a complaint with the Senate alleging harassment.
The accusation has roiled Biden’s presidential campaign, sparking anxiety among Democrats. Republicans have accused Biden backers of hypocrisy, arguing that they have been quick to believe women who have accused President Donald Trump and other conservatives of assault. Trump has faced multiple accusations of assault and harassment, all of which he denies.
Reade says she was reluctant to share details of the assault during her initial conversations with reporters over a year ago because she was scared of backlash, and was still coming to terms with what happened to her.
Two of Reade’s associates said publicly this past week that Reade had conversations with them that they said corroborated aspects of her allegation. One, a former neighbor, said Reade told her about the alleged assault a few years after Reade said it happened. The other, a former coworker, said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by her boss during her previous job in Washington.
The AP has also spoken to two additional people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their families’ privacy, who said Reade had told them about aspects of her allegations against Biden years ago.
One friend, who knew Reade in 1993, said Reade told them about the alleged assault when it happened. The second friend met Reade more than a decade after the alleged incident and confirmed that Reade had a conversation with the friend in 2007 or 2008 about experiencing sexual harassment from Biden while working in his Senate office.
Thompson reported from Nevada City, California.
__
EDITOR’S NOTE — The headline of this story was changed for clarity and to incorporate a direct quote from Reade. The AP also added material to the story, which details the specific words and examples Reade says she used in a Senate complaint about Joe Biden. The AP is adding the material to reflect that while Reade says she did not specifically use the words “sexual harassment” in the complaint, she says the behavior she was describing amounts to sexual harassment.