The three reasons why Tara Reade is lying

In recent years, the phrase “believe women” has become part of the national lexicon. It’s simple on paper — in order to reverse the shameful legacy of how domestic violence and sexual assault have gone unpunished, we must give those who claim to have been victims an adequate chance to be heard and take their claims seriously.

However, as Cornell Law professor Sherry Colb notes, taking a woman’s complaint seriously “in no way rules out a later conclusion that her claim is false.” We have reached that point with Tara Reade’s claim that she was brutally sexually assaulted by Joe Biden in 1993.

Much has been made of the people who can supposedly corroborate what Reade told them about what happened while she was working as an aide in Biden’s Senate office. But forensic evidence always trumps eyewitness testimony. And in the last few weeks, evidence has come to light that not only casts serious doubt about Reade’s credibility, but raises serious doubt about whether the incident happened at all in the manner that Reade now says it happened.

I come at this from a dual perspective. I am a domestic violence survivor who stayed in a marriage to an abusive and controlling woman in part because I feared no one would believe a 5–3 woman could abuse and control a 6–3 guy. Additionally, in retaliation for coming forward and standing up for myself, I was targeted with a false accusation of making a girl watch X-rated movies — one that took five months to be dismissed despite the fact that my time card should have been conclusive proof that it could not possibly have happened.

Those defending Reade in the face of evidence that her story doesn’t add up forget that while sweeping domestic violence and sexual assault under the rug is wrong, it is equally wrong to continue chasing down claims that are clearly not credible. To do so makes it harder for those who really have been abused and assaulted to be believed.

In recent days, enough has come to light for me to conclude that, absent something I haven’t heard or seen, Tara Reade’s claim is not just non-credible, but without merit. Moreover, the evidence that Reade’s claim is without merit is such that in the absence of something I haven’t heard or seen, the investigation demanded by Reade’s supporters and elements of the media would not be credible.

What’s that evidence, you ask? Well, there are three factors that, taken together, should prove that Reade is not telling the truth.

1. Reade edited an old blog post to match her new claims rather than simply create a new post — and did so just days after promoting her previous story as the truth.

Much has been made of Reade famously tweeting this just days before going public with her new claims against Biden.

But it turns out that she did something even more damning that that tweet. On April 29, blogger Roman Smith revealed that on March 24, mere hours before Reade went public with her new claims against Biden on Katie Helper’s podcast, she edited a post on her Medium blog from April 4, 2019 about her experiences in Biden’s office to match the new allegations she was about to make.

The edits were done in a way to make it appear that they were part of the original. One problem — Reade had also submitted the original story to The (Grass Valley) Union, which ran it on April 17, 2019. It describes how Biden touched her on a few occasions in a way that made her uncomfortable — with no mention whatsoever about sexual assault.

Reade tweeted it the very next day.

She confirmed it as a true account a few days later.

Reade tweeted links to this story no fewer than 15 other times between then and 2020. The last of those tweets came on March 15. As in nine days before she went public. And I have a receipt.

So let’s see. After over a year of claiming that Biden just touched her, suddenly she turns around and edits her blog to claim that it was actually sexual assault? And she does so a mere nine days after the last promoted the unedited version as the true story? There is absolutely, positively no good-faith reason that I’m aware of for why Reade would do this.

When I first learned about Reade editing her old posts last week, I asked Reade for an explanation. Her defenders claim she was merely clarifying her old account. But as Smith notes, those edits completely changed the meaning of her original post, and did so in a way that was incredibly misleading at best. It is beyond belief that a woman with a law degree wouldn’t have realized how this looks. If Reade wanted to get the truth out and be believed, why not simply do a new post?

I was going to give Reade until this weekend to explain these edits before writing this, given that her claim that she has received death threats cannot be discounted. But when you combine the fact that she edited her old post with the fact that she was promoting the original story as true mere days before going public, it would be intellectually dishonest to continue giving Reade the benefit of the doubt.

If I were a prosecutor and I were looking at this case, there is no way ethically that I could take this to trial. A witness who is saying one thing when she is on record as saying something totally different? No matter how guilty the defendant may be on paper, taking this case to trial would have the effect of ignoring every safeguard that is supposed to be in place to make sure that innocent people aren’t unjustly convicted.

Indeed, this situation reminds me of the rape case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011. If you’ll remember, the case unraveled when the accuser, an immigrant from Guinea, was caught in a series of lies and inconsistencies. According to a filing by prosecutors in Manhattan, the accuser had given no fewer than three differing accounts about what happened before, during and after DSK allegedly assaulted her. She had also lied about being gang-raped in Guinea, and claimed she had no interest in making money on the case despite being caught on tape discussing that very prospect with her boyfriend. Prosecutors even uncovered evidence that she may have lied to the grand jury that indicted DSK. These and other lies left prosecutors with no other option but to dismiss the charges.

This situation is no different. No prosecutor with an iota of decency would bring an indictment of sexual assault in a situation like this. Granted, the prospect of blowing up a presidential bid doesn’t require the same standard as in a criminal case. But to do so based on the word of someone who can be proven to have lied would be an attack on our democracy almost on the level of Russia’s attempt to hack the 2016 election. And speaking of which — this should put an end to any talk of Russian involvement. Putin isn’t normally this sloppy.

2. In all likelihood, Reade never filed a complaint.

Reade told The New York Times that she filed a complaint about Biden with the Senate personnel office. However, The Times was unable to find any complaint, and Reade claimed not to have a copy of it. Retired prosecutor Michael Stern found it unusual that Reade didn’t have a copy of the complaint, but did keep her employment records. Reade has since stated the complaint would have been about harassment, not sexual assault.

That isn’t in and of itself enough to discount Reade’s credibility. Indeed, it led to speculation that the complaint might be in the National Archives or in Biden’s office archives at the University of Delaware. Reade’s defenders, such as Lyla Gold of Current Affairs, seized on it, suggesting the possibility that either Biden intentionally funneled the complaint into his Senate papers or they had been deposited in the National Archives without his knowledge. But on Monday, evidence came to light that strongly suggests there never was a complaint.

If you’ll remember, soon after denying Reade’s allegation on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Biden asked the Secretary of the Senate to find and release any documents related to a possible complaint by Reade. The Secretary of the Senate turned the request down on the advice of legal counsel, citing both confidentiality laws and a Senate resolution that barred disclosing Senate records if such disclosure was prohibited by law.

Later, NBC News obtained details on what the procedure for reporting harassment complaints would have been at the time. Under those procedures, Reade would have had to submit a “request for counseling” with the Senate Office of Fair Employment Practices — the Senate’s version of an HR department. It would have documented Reade’s allegation while informing her of her rights and responsibilities. After the counseling process, the next step would have been mediation, during which Biden’s office would have been notified of her claim.

However, Reade told the AP that she “chickened out” when she walked into the office to file the counseling request. That would have ended the process then and there. NBC’s Mike Memoli has more details.

Given the stakes, it’s not unreasonable to believe that the Secretary of the Senate would have found a legal way to release any complaint had it been in the Senate records. And she would have done so in a way that Biden would have wound up with egg on his face had he contested it.

This has fueled speculation that the complaint may have been funneled to Biden’s Senate papers. However, former Congressman David Jolly, who spent 11 years as a staffer to his predecessor, Bill Young, believes that any attempt to mine Biden’s Senate papers for such a complaint would be a fool’s errand.

Which means that if records of a complaint existed, they would be stored in the Senate employment records, not in Biden’s Senate papers.

This would not be a red flag in and of itself. But Reade is adamant that she did make a complaint, even though she doesn’t have a copy of it. In all likelihood, the reason she doesn’t have a copy is that there was no complaint.

3. People who know the Capitol’s layout have cast doubt on the details of Reade’s account.

A number of people who know the layout of the Capitol have looked at the details of where and when Reade says she was assaulted, and doubt that it could have happened in the way Reade says it happened. That includes congressional staffers from both sides of the aisle, as well as reporters.

When Newsweek White House correspondent and lifelong Washington-area resident Andrew Feinberg looked at Reade’s claims, a lot didn’t ring true with him. For one, he finds it hard to believe Reade saw Biden in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building because there was no “large, empty space” in the basement in 1993. Feinberg also noted that at the time, there was a plaster model of the statue that sits atop the Capitol dome which would have obstructed the view from the elevators.

Feinberg noted that the “side area” where she says Biden assaulted her corresponds to an area near the Capitol subway terminal. However, the area that’s out of view of the rotunda shares a wall with a Capitol Police post. It’s hard to believe that a Capitol Police officer wouldn’t have seen her. It’s also a very high-traffic area, and it seems hard to believe that no one would have noticed anything suspicious — especially only two years removed from the Anita Hill imbroglio.

Republican strategist Cheri Jacobs doubts Reade’s claim that the assault took place in a hallway near his office, because there aren’t any private hallways anywhere in the Senate office buildings.

She also claims that if Biden was a predator, anyone who worked on Capitol Hill in those days would have known about it.

Vicki Ringer, public affairs director at Planned Parenthood South Carolina, has spent a lot of time in Washington. She believes that if the assault happened the way Reade claims it happened, someone would have seen it.

The bottom line

There are other reasons to doubt Reade’s credibility. But these factors are absolutely lethal to Reade’s credibility. She claims the assault happened in an area where it was not possible for anyone to notice. She says she filed a complaint, but all indications are that she did not do so.

But most damning of all, she edited one of her old blog posts to match her new claims when there was no possible good-faith reason for her to do so. And she made those edits mere days after promoting the original version.

Add it up, and Tara Reade’s claim to have been sexually assaulted is not only non-credible, but without merit. Moreover, the evidence is such that in the absence of something absolutely earthshaking coming to light or a whopper of an explanation from Reade, the investigation demanded by Reade’s defenders would serve no purpose. In the absence of such an explanation from Reade, the probe demanded by her defenders would only serve to send the message that bringing sexual predators and domestic abusers is so important that we must continue to chase down claims even when they are clearly non-credible.

The more I look at the evidence that suggests Reade’s claim isn’t credible, the more I’m convinced that what she has done is a betrayal to all survivors. Her behavior has made it that much harder for us to be believed. Shame on you, Tara.