US Democratic candidate Joe Biden has spoken out on the allegations of sexually assaulting a former staff assistant, Tara Reade, nearly 30 years ago.
Speaking on Morning Joe, a show on US cable channel MSNBC Biden said: “I’m saying unequivocally: it never, never happened.”
He asked for a search of the Senate archives for any record of a complaint Ms Reade allegedly filed at the time.
Ms Reade made a criminal complaint to police last month that she was a victim of sexual assault without naming Mr Biden. The police complaint, she said, was filed “for safety reasons only” as the statute of limitations for her claim had expired.
Biden is running against Republican incumbent President Donald Trump with many questioning the mental health of the former Vice President.
She was working as a staff assistant to Mr Biden from 1992-93, when he was a senator for the US state of Delaware.
Ms Reade, now 56, says that in 1993 he forced her up against a wall in the halls of Congress, and put his hands under her shirt and skirt, penetrating her with a finger.
“I remember him saying, first, as he was doing it ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ and then him saying to me, when I pulled away… he said ‘Come on man, I heard you liked me,'” she told podcast host Katie Halper in March. “That phrase stayed with me.”
Ms Reade says records of Mr Biden’s 36-year career as a US senator will contain evidence that she complained to her superiors about him.
The records are being held at the University of Delaware, which has said it will not release any papers until two years after Biden leaves public life.
Unity News Network (UNN) Staff Writer | To find out more details about our staff, please head to the About Us section on our website.
