Tara Reade Biden allegation megathread

[GeneralMacArthur]

Since the other thread was locked, discuss here.

Here are the basics:

Tara Reade worked as an aide in Biden's office for 9 months in the early 1990s.

In April 2019, she came out and said that Biden used to touch her on the shoulder in a way that made her uncomfortable.  She also said that she was asked by his staff to serve drinks at a party, and told by someone that it was because Biden "liked her legs."  She refused to serve drinks, and believed this was why her office was moved to a less-desirable location, which was her given reason (in April 2019) for resigning.

Shortly thereafter, Edward Isaac-Dovere from The Atlantic uncovered blog posts where she claimed she had left the Biden gig, and DC in general, in solidarity with Russia and in protest of American imperialism.  She also wrote adoring blog posts praising Russia and Vladimir Putin "with eyes of love."  She deleted the blog posts and replaced them with a donation page.

What if I told you that everything you learned about Russia was wrong?  President Putin scares the power elite in America because he is a compassionate, caring, visionary leader. … To President Putin, I say keep your eyes to the beautiful future and maybe, just maybe America will come to see Russia as I do, with eyes of love. To all my Russian friends, happy holiday and Happy New Year.

At the time, the blog posts were the end of her credibility.  She was clearly one of those kooky Russia-obsessed RT/Jimmy Dore/Jill Stein people who had been caught lying and then deleted the evidence.  Biden issued a blanket apology for all physical affection throughout his career and has since ceased the practice.

Sometime in February 2020, she got in contact with Time's Up, saying that Biden had raped her.  The group did not want to politicize itself and refused to advocate on her behalf.  Subsequently, she went to Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi, himself a serial sexual predator, and did a podcast interview where she claimed Biden had once pushed her up against a wall and molested her.

Ryan Grim at The Intercept picked up the story, using the angle of a loose connection between Time's Up and the Biden campaign to imply that there was a vast conspiracy to cover up a Biden rape allegation.  The world's most obnoxious pundit and conspiracy theorist, Krystal Ball, also ran with the story.  Krystal Ball, incidentally, works at GOP-owned-and-operated The Hill alongside John Solomon, the original "journalist" behind the Hunter Biden story.

Together with Tara herself, these four began promoting it all over Twitter with the hashtag #IBelieveTara.  Tara herself promoted it along with a lot of pro-Bernie-Sanders language and hashtags, including directly tagging @BernieSanders in one of her accusations.  She has since deleted the "Biden raped me #Bernie2020" tweets.  Meanwhile Sanders groups on social media have been relentlessly promoting the story.  For instance, on the pro-Sanders subreddit /r/PresidentialRaceMemes, every single post on the front page is "Biden is a rapist" memes.  Today pretty much all of social media is Sanders and Trump folks working hand-in-hand to push the idea that Biden is a rapist.

This is how a smear begins, folks.  You are watching the unfolding of a hit on Biden, and it has all the familiar elements from similar hits we saw against Clinton in 2016.  You laugh it off now but in six months social media will be flooded with "Zdravstvuyte fellow progressive, I wish I could vote for Biden since I agree with him on everything but I can't bring myself to vote for a rapist."

[GeneralMacArthur]

The hate and vitriol towards Biden on twitter seems exponentially louder than it was against Hillary in 2016

It's a finely-tuned disinformation machine at this point.  As soon as someone comes up with a new story damaging to the Democratic Party or its desired nominees, or favorable to Sanders/Trump, you can predict exactly how it will spread and who will play what role.

And you can just as easily predict which Atlas users will be on here buying into it 100%.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Folks need to stop taking the whole "Believe women" thing out of context.

The context is, prior to #MeToo, when women would go to police officers or their HR department or their friends/family and talk about being sexually harassed or assaulted or raped, they would get laughed off or blamed or ignored.

The point was, hey authority figures, stop doing that, treat these claims seriously.  It's your job.  Do a rape kit test, investigate if the claim is credible, and if it is then pursue action.

The point was not, hey voters, this rando crazy person says Joe Biden raped her, now you have to believe it.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Looks like this woman was actually a huge Biden fan prior to 2017 and frequently wrote glowing praise of his work combatting sexual assault.  In 2017 she was very concerned about Russian interference in our elections and Trump's ties to Russia.

Some time afterwards she did a complete 180 and fell in love with Putin and started ranting about American imperialism.  It was about two years later that she wrote blog posts swearing her allegiance to Russia and started telling everyone that Biden had sexually harassed her.  Now, a year later, she's upgrading her story to Biden raping her.

https://twitter.com/tepsac1/status/1242995220112740353?s=21

[GeneralMacArthur]

I love when liberals show their "believe women" shtick only applies when it's allegations against a Republican. These accusations may well be truthful; unless someone liking a world leader makes them automatically a liar?

Oh the irony in the OP accusing the publishers of pushing a "conspiracy" that Time's Up would decline to support allegations against Biden, but simultaneously claiming this woman is involved in another RUSSIAN CONSPIRACY. Let's not listen to the partisan hacks, listen to the woman's account and know that she worked for Biden and evaluate yourself. I don't think it's an outlandish claim, and she sounds sincere in the interview. That's all we can really say for now.

Where did I say this was a Russian conspiracy?  Russia doesn't have anything to do with this woman, although it is extremely likely that this story is being signal-boosted by Russian bots on social media and will get extensive coverage from Russian "news" sites.

Also, the "lol you say believe all woman but won't believe this kook" thing is tired.  Give it a rest.  That's not what "believe all women" means and you have been posting on Atlas long enough to know that.  Stop pretending to be stupid.

[GeneralMacArthur]

It's possible that I'm secretly working for North Korea and come on here to hate on Bernie because Biden is our Manchurian candidate.

Literally anything is possible.

But you only treat utterly ludicrous things seriously when it's part of your agenda.  It's pretty clear that promoting this woman's story is part of the agenda of the Rose/Trump alliance and that they would continue promoting it even were it definitively proven 100% false.

If these allegations were being made against Bernie Sanders, the exact same bad actors in this thread going "lol guess it's not believe-all-women huh dems" would be screaming bloody murder.  And before you go "lol MacArthur would be all over it" no I wouldn't because my side doesn't get into these stupid smear campaigns and cover-up theories.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The title is locked.  But the allegation is false.

We need to have some standards on Atlas.  If Alex Jones came out and said that Barack Obama was a rapist, folks like Russian Bear would believe it, or at least pretend to believe it to be annoying.

That doesn't mean we have to respect their opinions.  This is obviously false and simply refusing to call it false is lending it a dangerous amount of credibility.

You could make the same case about PizzaGate.  Can I prove that Hillary Clinton isn't running a secret pedophilia ring in a pizzeria basement?  I can not.  Alex Jones is reporting on it from the right, and Jimmy Dore is reporting on it from the left, so it's an issue of non-partisan concern.  And multiple users on Atlas say they believe the story.  So we can't label it as false.

The story here isn't the rape allegation and whether or not it's true.  The story is how pathetic and disgusting it is that BernieWorld is pushing an obviously fake rape allegation to try to smear Joe Biden, whether that will handicap him in the general, and on a scale of 1-10 how ashamed are Bernie supporters that their movement is doing Trump's dirty work?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Lots of reasons to be skeptical, for sure. But I still think it should be investigated to the extent possible, and neither completely dismissed or touted as fact until we learn more. (Of course, these things are almost never "proven," so an inability to prove it hardly means it didn't happen. Only so much you can do, after all.) I just think it's best to not speak about these things in absolute terms when there is obviously no way that anyone can truly know for sure and we still have limited information.

What would that investigation even look like?  This isn't like the Blasey Ford thing where she left an extensive trail of evidence demonstrating how this event had been impacting her for her entire life.  She had documented conversations with her therapist, with friends and family, the changes to her home layout, and there was evidence that Kavanaugh was lying about the party and the people involved.

With this, it's just "Biden raped me in a DC alleyway" and that's it.  People just want her to take a lie detector test, which is notoriously random, so that if it says she's not lying they can use that as a weapon.

[GeneralMacArthur]

For all those saying "whatabout Kavanaugh"

Another Kavanaugh Accuser Admits Fabricating Rape

There were a whole bunch of Kavanaugh accusers who came out around the same time as Christine Blasey Ford.  You don't remember them, because the media didn't cover them.  Nobody covered them except the fringe left, the 2018 version of Ryan Grim and Krystal Ball, folks who had no credibility left to lose.

They didn't receive any coverage because their claims were not credible and they themselves came off as untrustworthy and had rather obvious financial/political motivations.  Typically, when a random person makes a rape allegation against a major public official, the media investigates it quietly and only prints it if there is an actual story.  A random person claiming to have had some sort of noteworthy interaction with a celebrity or politician, with zero evidence or credibility to back it up, is not newsworthy.

Christine Blasey Ford was unique in that her claim was backed up by substantial evidence and she herself was highly credible.  Imagine the following:

• Instead of a highly-respected academic, Ford is a crazy cat lady using a fake name who has $500,000 in debt
• Instead of going through the proper channels, Ford tells her "I was raped by Kavanaugh" story to Jimmy Dore on his Aggressive Progressives YouTube show
• Ford has a bunch of Medium writings about how Catholicism is a cult, JFK was secretly serving the Pope, and the Jesuits are part of the New World Order.  She deletes them and scrubs her social media after they are discovered.
• After the story is released, Ford tweets out "Kavanaugh is a rapist and must be stopped!  #F**kTrump #BlueWave2018"
• A year earlier, Ford had also appeared in the media to say she had asked Kavanaugh out in high school and "I never understood why he didn't ask me to prom"
• Ford was friends with Kavanaugh on Facebook and had written things like "good luck with your new job!" and "Future supreme court justice, my hero" on his wall over the years
• Ford made no effort to put together an actual legal team, and instead just pushed her story all over social media

do you think we would have done the same thing?  No.  She would have been dismissed by the media just like all the other Kavanaugh accusers and faded into obscurity.

[GeneralMacArthur]

LMAO, last year she was posting replies to Trump saying Biden should be investigated for Burisma.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Fox News now has coverage.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-campaign-denies-false-allegations-of-sexual-assault

For her part, Reade has openly advocated for Sanders' candidacy, at a time when Biden has amassed a daunting delegate lead over the Vermont senator in the Democratic presidential primary. The former vice president is widely expected to be able to clinch the nomination once primaries that have been postponed amid the coronavirus pandemic resume.

“Please stay in Bernie,” Reade tweeted earlier this month.

“I will sue anyone who continues to slander me call me a Russian agent The Charges of sexual harassment & worse against Biden are true I will have the information collected of your slander turned over to law enforcement #DemocraticPrimary #BernieForPresident,” another tweet, purportedly posted by Reade this month, said.

this woman is deranged

[GeneralMacArthur]

Huffington Post has an article about it now.  They take a very anti-Biden spin:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-sexual-assault-tara-reade_n_5e7e69c8c5b6256a7a2a88f2

The allegations are reported uncritically, without any information about why Reade is seen as non-credible, such as her changing her story, her Russia fetishism, her using this allegation to promote Bernie Sanders, etc.

It's hilarious and sad that when the author reached out to the Biden campaign for comment, they said:

“Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims,” Kate Bedingfield said in a statement to HuffPost. “We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false.”

but then the author didn't rigorously vet the claims at all, she just reported exactly what Tara Reade wanted her to report.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Will ya?

You Trump hacks keep using this line, it doesn't mean what you think it means.  You'd know that if you actually gave a damn about victims instead of just seeing them as political props to use as weapons against Democrats.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Will ya?

You Trump hacks keep using this line, it doesn't mean what you think it means.  You'd know that if you actually gave a damn about victims instead of just seeing them as political props to use as weapons against Democrats.

What does it mean then?

Prior to #MeToo, when women came forward with allegations of sexual assault, they simply weren't taken seriously.

You would have police officers saying "she was asking for it" or ask "what was she wearing?"

You would have the public at large trying to rationalize the assault and say "she deserved it."

The police wouldn't even investigate, or they would do a rape kit but leave it untested.

Friends and family would all assume it was a misunderstanding or that it was somehow your fault.

If you accused a major public figure, folks would automatically assume you were a liar trying to get publicity.

The #MeToo movement changed that.  The message was "Believe Women."  When they come forward with allegations of sexual assault, don't just automatically call them a liar, or laugh at them, or assume it was a misunderstanding.  Assault does happen and it's much more common than you probably think.

However, the conservatives have twisted and misinterpreted this message to mean "Believe women no matter what."  As if belief or dis-belief is the sole step you take.  No, what happen is you believe her, and then if you are actually in a position to take actions on her claim, you investigate the claim and decide whether or not it's true.  This is not a particularly difficult subtlety to grasp.  It probably would have been better to say "Listen to women" but you would have misinterpreted that as well.

So when Tara Reade came out, we say "ok, I believe you and hear what you're saying, now I want to investigate."  We investigated, and we discovered a million huge red flags.  Now we say, we are not going to punish Biden for this, because there's so many red flags that we have huge doubts about the credibility of the accuser and her story.

It's really not that hard so stop playing stupid.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Ok this is extremely frustrating and I wanted to scream whilst reading it--

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/joe-biden-sexual-assault-allegations-why-has-media-ignored-claims

Yeah between this and the HuffPo article it seems like there are a few feminist pundits willing to turn a blind eye to the numerous red flags in this story.  Why?  Because it's really easy to slap down a "Democrats and the liberal media are hypocrites" story.  It's slightly harder to say "this story is obviously baloney."  Notice how neither of these articles even mentions any of the numerous holes in the story.  It's just presented as fact and used as the basis for a "here's why I think the Democratic media won't pay attention" take.

[GeneralMacArthur]

So when Tara Reade came out, we say "ok, I believe you and hear what you're saying, now I want to investigate."  We investigated, and we discovered a million huge red flags.  Now we say, we are not going to punish Biden for this, because there's so many red flags that we have huge doubts about the credibility of the accuser and her story.

It's really not that hard so stop playing stupid.

Who are "we"? Random users of Atlas/Twitter? LOL. Ok.

Why hasn't MSM just debunked the story? What's difference compared to Swetnick's beyond ridiculous claims that MSM could never collaborate?


Impeachment Inquiry gives a brilliant example of Roy Moore story. WaPo saw holes in it and debunked this bogus story. All Lib Media happily reported this was bogus!

Perhaps, they work on it. No doubt, we'll soon see the many red flags and Bernie Bros will be ashamed!

"We" would be your target audience with your deplorable Trump hackery.  Who are you upset at.

The media?  They investigated the story, saw it for the BS it is, and ignored it, just like they did with your false flag allegation against Roy Moore.

Left-leaning individuals on Atlas/Twitter?  We investigated the story, saw it for BS, and have been diligently calling it out as BS in any social venue where it's brought up.  For instance, this very thread.

The liberal media didn't report on the fake allegation against Roy Moore until it was definitively proven fake.  Then, the story wasn't the allegation, it was that Project Veritas was putting together a fake allegation.  If this Tara Reade story is definitively proven fake, I expect it to get MSM attention because Bernie-world promoting a false allegation against Biden in a desperate attempt to torpedo his character is newsworthy.

What I don't get about you, Russian Bear, is why after a year on this forum you still run around feigning ignorance on these subjects.  Do you just enjoy being an object of ridicule and mockery?  Do you enjoy being used as a foil to illustrate the stupidity of the right?  I refuse to believe that you actually believe the things you're writing.  If you do, you need to do some self-reflection.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Tara Reade claimed earlier on Twitter to have reported to at least three separate witnesses (NOT her brother) what she "saw" as part of Biden's staff.

I'm sure these witnesses and the record of her complaint will materialize any day now.

Very odd that she describes being raped by Biden as something she "saw." Does anyone seriously believe this crap?

https://twitter.com/fliedgaff/status/1243656078627205120?s=21

[GeneralMacArthur]

The Democrats now appear hypocritical.  And the red avatars here ARE, if not hypocritical, walking back a whole lot of what they have said over time.

Which Old Atlas Forum was I on when I would hear the entire #MeToo and #believeallwomen schtick.  The position of Brave New Atlas Democrats is, #believeallwomenexceptaccusersofjoeandbill.  Their standard became inconvenient when it threatened to be used against their lock for the Democratic nomination.

Tara Reade has made an untimely accusation and she's changed her story, so that's two (2) strikes against her credibility.  She had lots of time to say something, and I'm skeptical of people who do this once the accused person is on the biggest possible stage.  And I certainly agree Blasey Ford's accusation is more substantial.  But it would be nice if liberals and Democrats would walk back the #MeToo rhetoric that ruled out the possibility of false accusations.  Gary Dotson and the Duke U Lacrosse team say, "Hi!", by the way.

You literally have to look two posts above to see a very clear explanation I wrote of why this is not the case.

So either you didn't see it at all, you saw it and ignored it, or you read it but are playing dumb.  Which is it?

The position of the Democratic Party was never that false accusations are impossible.  Maybe people like Kirsten Gillibrand or Lena Dunham.  But they are not the mainstream of the party.  We've already had a false rape allegation against Robert Mueller of all people.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The Democrats now appear hypocritical.  And the red avatars here ARE, if not hypocritical, walking back a whole lot of what they have said over time.

Which Old Atlas Forum was I on when I would hear the entire #MeToo and #believeallwomen schtick.  The position of Brave New Atlas Democrats is, #believeallwomenexceptaccusersofjoeandbill.  Their standard became inconvenient when it threatened to be used against their lock for the Democratic nomination.

Tara Reade has made an untimely accusation and she's changed her story, so that's two (2) strikes against her credibility.  She had lots of time to say something, and I'm skeptical of people who do this once the accused person is on the biggest possible stage.  And I certainly agree Blasey Ford's accusation is more substantial.  But it would be nice if liberals and Democrats would walk back the #MeToo rhetoric that ruled out the possibility of false accusations.  Gary Dotson and the Duke U Lacrosse team say, "Hi!", by the way.

You literally have to look two posts above to see a very clear explanation I wrote of why this is not the case.

So either you didn't see it at all, you saw it and ignored it, or you read it but are playing dumb.  Which is it?

The position of the Democratic Party was never that false accusations are impossible.  Maybe people like Kirsten Gillibrand or Lena Dunham.  But they are not the mainstream of the party.  We've already had a false rape allegation against Robert Mueller of all people.

If the intercept is not credible. Weren't they the ones that broke the Kavanaugh-Blasey ford allegations?

The one thing The Intercept does that wins them their awards is publish leaks.  They have a very low bar for publishing leaks.  They don't care who it hurts, they don't care about its credibility, they don't care what the impact is.  That means they're more likely to publish your leak than other news outlets that have integrity.

In the Christine Blasey Ford case, Ford was working behind the scenes with Feinstein's office and some Senate legal/ethics folks to prepare her case.  Someone on Capitol Hill leaked that this was happening to The Intercept.  This was against Blasey Ford's wishes and hurt her ability to roll out her case in a well-controlled fashion.  Instead it plunged Capitol Hill into chaos.  You could have leaked it to the National Enquirer and gotten the exact same result.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Democrats accusing a woman of lying because it's against their guy is extremely gross. Lots of mental gymnastics from Biden supporters, and you know your side is losing when you're having to resort to things like implicating because she didn't see a counselor/follow what non-survivors may consider the "traditional" path of recovering her story is somehow less meaningful or believable.

Also, Tara being a Bernie supporter in NO WAY shape or form makes her story less plausible. Come on. Use your heads. We're supposed to be better than this.

Facts aren't mental gymnastics.

What facts? At best you can say that the accusation is unlikely to be true, but there are no facts disproving it.

We've cited facts as evidence for why her accusation is almost certainly untrue.  Chief among these facts are:

• She is a Russophile conspiracy theorist who's proudly bragged about the political motivations for her accusation ("Biden raped me #Bernie2020").
• She deleted the articles that were evidence of her insanity, and then lied about it on Twitter.

• Her social media posts, and her background in general make her seem very non-credible.  She seems to have completely changed her worldview in the last two years, based on "watching Oliver Stone movies."  She filed for bankruptcy with over $400,000 in debt, and then changed her name.
• She seems completely uninterested in an actual legal case or investigation against Biden and solely interested in self-promotion and political assassination.
• Consistent with her doing this to help Bernie Sanders, she ran straight to Bernie-friendly media to push this story.
• The story itself is totally bizarre and contradicts everything we know about Biden's personality.  Even the most fervent Biden-haters admit that he is fiercely devoted to his wife and family.  On top of that, the dramatic dialogue like "You're nothing to me" is just ridiculous to imagine Biden saying.
• She has changed her story numerous times; for example, whom she told about the assault, and why she left her job.
   First she "didn't know why she left", then she left because she felt like she wasn't being respected, then she says she was fired in retaliation, but in her blog she says she left in protest of American imperialism.
• In addition to coming up with this new rape story, she has also changed her characterization of her previous story of Biden touching her shoulder, which she now characterizes as sexual harassment (but didn't in 2019)
• Prior to claiming to have been raped by Biden, she had long been a supporter of Biden and praised him; specifically, she has repeatedly praised him for his activities combatting sexual assault
• Biden has been a major public figure for 50 years, including VP for 8, was vetted by Team Obama and has been through two national elections, and has been the subject of extraordinary illegal efforts by the Trump administration to destroy his candidacy.  Somehow, through all of that, it never once came up that he raped a woman.  It only comes up now, when Biden is beating Tara Reade's candidate for the nomination.

[GeneralMacArthur]

One of the main reasons why you should not believe Tara Reade is that she has prosecuted her case against Biden entirely on social media and entirely in the context of trying to sink his candidacy and boost the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

As the primary has unfolded, and in particular over the last month, her claims about Biden have evolved to become more and more extreme and dramatic, culminating in the rape accusation that she made through three of Bernie Sander's biggest media sycophants:  Katie Halper, Krystal Ball, and Ryan Grim.

The nice thing about social media is, it's not too hard to go back and find this stuff.  So let's do it (tl;dr at the bottom).

Let's rewind to:  April 2019:  "Reade says she doesn't consider the acts towards her sexualization" [1].  From the same source, we also have "Reade said she tried to share her story when she worked for Biden, but was told to say nothing" and "In June 1993 Reade found herself in an office without windows. Two months later she left Biden’s office, she said."  These are important details because she will subsequently claim to have been fired when she spoke up.

A month later, she adds an aspect not printed in the story:  She reported it to three supervisors as well as previously-mentioned Senate personnel.  May 23, 2019:  "I did file a complaint with three supervisors at the time and Senate personnel"[2]

December, 8 months later, is the first time she re-characterizes her experience as "sexual harassment".  She also changes the number of staffers from three down to two:  Dec 11, 2019:  " I reported the sexual harassment to two supervisors and Senate Personnel, I lost my job."[3]

On Jan 9, she wrote an article called POWERFUL MEN AND THE WOMEN THEY CHOOSE TO DESTROY [4].  But the only thing she mentions in this article is the drink-serving objectification outrage.  Jan 9, 2020:  "I reported Joe Biden’s sexual harassment of me at a time when no one listened and supervisors looked at me like I was the one with the problem. Some women even suggested, I comply with serving drinks to those male donors as suggested, to advance my career and winked they would like his attention or to be in the room with some of those men. This was my life, I wondered, to parade in front of men hoping I am worthy of their attention?"

During this time she is apparently a Marianne Williamson supporter.  After Marianne Williamson drops out, she switches to supporting Bernie Sanders, on Jan 20.  In the same tweet announcing her support for Sanders, she again talks about being harassed, fired, and silenced by Biden.  Jan 20, 2020:  "I have decided this week to vote for Bernie. He represents our collective needs as a nation. He will address climate change restorative justice. I am a former Senate staffer for Joe Biden, I reported Bidens sexual harassment of me and was fired. silenced." [5].

Move forward a few more weeks, now she claims her report is in the national archives.  Mar 3, 2020:  "I spoke out in 93 to Senate Personnel in national archives & last April." [6]

After Super Tuesday, her tone becomes much more aggressive.  Now it's not just sexual harassment.  Mar 5, 2020:  "First,  Biden is a misogynist pred. I worked for him. I know.the 61 Billionaires and celebs backing him are toxic.  I support a Bernie/ Warren ticket and found bernie supporters kind and inclusive." [7]

A day later, she is now saying that Biden threatened her directly, and personally fired her.  She also now adds the ominous (and worse) to her harassment claim.  Mar 6, 2020:  "I have been silenced and threatened directly by Biden. He sexually harassed me  ( and worse ) as a Senate aide and ended my career when I spoke up." [8]

There are literally dozens of tweets with her using the phrase "sexually harassed (and worse)" about Biden.  Almost all of them are either promoting Bernie or attacking Biden with some sort of Sanders talking point.  For example, after Bernie's Michigan loss:  Mar 10, 2020:  "If I could describe the rage I feel at watching the oligarchs win over millions of peoples rally call for systematic change. Or the personal, of watching Biden who sexually harassed me &worse go to power. Scorch. The. F##king. Earth. Rage. F##k unity. #NotMeUs #Bernie2020"[9]

It isn't until March 17 that she first starts suggesting that she was raped by Biden.  She writes a tweet tagging Ronan Farrow and the MeToo movement.  Of course, she also explicitly tags this as an effort to help Sanders win.  Mar 17:  "My full account of what Biden did to me is being silenced. Some people know what Biden did to me but yet it is not public. It would disqualify him.Joe Biden sexually harassed me and more Do not let me be silenced! Contact me. #NotMeUs @RonanFarrow @MeTooMVMT @BernieSanders" [10]

After Bernie gets swept again, she offers her story with Biden as an October Surprise that will rescue Bernie's candidacy.  Mar 22:  "Tell Bernie to stay in ! voters deserve to hear my silenced history w Biden" [11]

Two days later, she does the interview with Katie Halper that is released on SoundCloud.  It's quickly followed up with Ryan Grim's article at The Intercept, and then she does her Skype interview with Krystal Ball.  And that's where this all started.  So now you know how we got here.  I won't even go into the changing story between her Halper interview and her Ball interview.

Summary

In 2017 and earlier, Tara Reade was a huge Biden supporter.  After the Union article in April 2019, when she was attacked by journalists for being a Russian conspiracy nut, she became a full-time Biden hater and was really into the Hunter Biden conspiracy and talking points like "61 billionaires" and "candidate of the oligarchs."  She relentlessly promoted her NV Union article in replies to celebrities and journalists.  She called him Blue MAGA, Blue Trump, things like that.  She also complained in nearly every tweet about being labelled a "Russian asset."

Throughout all this Biden hatred, she never mentioned being raped.  In fact, she never even used the term "sexual harassment" until 8 months after the Union article was published.  After that, she started saying Biden had "sexually harassed" her in nearly every tweet across hundreds of tweets.  Based on her Jan 9 Medium post, though, the "sexual harassment" was still limited to just being asked to serve drinks at a party.  It isn't until March 5, after Super Tuesday, that the story evolves to Biden being a "sexual predator."  A day later she starts implying there is more to the story, adding the "and worse" phrase.  Like "sexual harassment", she had never used this phrase before March 5, but thereafter began using it in every single tweet, across hundreds of tweets.  Her tweets become increasingly unhinged and aggressive as Bernie continues to lose, culminating in her rape allegation, implied on March 17 and given in interview on March 24.

There is another aspect to these escalating claims.  Prior to January, her interest seems to be mostly self-promotion and anger at being labeled a Russian asset.  But once the contests start, she switches motivations, using the allegations as a way to support Sanders.  Now, when she tweets about Biden, she often tags @BernieSanders or #NotMeUs, #Bernie2020, #BernieIsOurFDR, things like that.  Her support of Sanders escalates alongside the nature of her allegations.

So what's the takeaway?

To me, it's pretty clear what's going on here.  Tara Reade is probably mentally unstable and really wants attention for her story.  Despite being a Biden supporter earlier, after she was attacked for her Putin fetishism she bore a hardcore grudge against the Biden campaign.  This is supported by her literally hundreds of zero-engagement tweets linking the Union article and complaining about the Russia allegation in responses to celebrities and journalists.  When this failed to get attention, she re-labeled it as sexual harassment, wrote an article and promoted it.

After Marianne Williamson dropped out, Reade became a die-hard Bernie supporter.  When Bernie suffered a stunning defeat on Super Tuesday, Reade suddenly began claiming there was more to the story, and made explicit her desire to use her allegations as a weapon to torpedo the Biden campaign and promote Sanders.  The nature of the story steadily evolved as the primaries continued until they became the full-fledged rape allegation we know today.  All of this was clearly done to promote the Sanders campaign as evidenced by her tagging and the context of her tweets.

Throughout all this, Reade has claimed that she filed a complaint with the Senate, which would be in the "national archives."  She also claims to have complained to several supervisors, although the number of supervisors is inconsistent between tweets.  A real journalist could go dig this stuff up, if true, and she first made this claim about a documented complaint in May 2019, so there's been plenty of time.  The fact that no journalist has uncovered it is evidence that she is lying.  That also explains why the only folks reporting this story are fake journalists uninterested in investigation, such as Ryan Grim.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Fake News!  Imagine that!

Joe Biden ought to be dealt with fairly on this.  So, too, should every person in this situation.  Principles of timeliness of filing a complaint, presumption of innocence for the accused, the right to confront one's accuser(s) and such ought not to be watered down for the sake of political expediency in the name of "women" and "victims". 

If Joe Biden gets more grief on this issue than he deserves, large elements in his own party are, in part, responsible.  Perhaps we can now finally get away with the Mobocracy on this issue and get back to enforce the law on this issue while providing the same fairness for the accused the Democratic Party states it wants for poor and indigent criminal defendants.

That's not really what this is about.  This isn't a he-said-she-said.  This is just straight up an obviously fabricated rape allegation.  "How to deal with it" shouldn't be a question because anyone who does the minimum journalism required can easily see that it is fake.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Fake News!  Imagine that!

Joe Biden ought to be dealt with fairly on this.  So, too, should every person in this situation.  Principles of timeliness of filing a complaint, presumption of innocence for the accused, the right to confront one's accuser(s) and such ought not to be watered down for the sake of political expediency in the name of "women" and "victims". 

If Joe Biden gets more grief on this issue than he deserves, large elements in his own party are, in part, responsible.  Perhaps we can now finally get away with the Mobocracy on this issue and get back to enforce the law on this issue while providing the same fairness for the accused the Democratic Party states it wants for poor and indigent criminal defendants.

That's not really what this is about.  This isn't a he-said-she-said.  This is just straight up an obviously fabricated rape allegation.  "How to deal with it" shouldn't be a question because anyone who does the minimum journalism required can easily see that it is fake.

Elements of the Democratic Party and the Feminist Left have demanded that even lame accusations such as these receive a full vetting, and that the onus be placed on the accused.  I consider the allegation lame.  But it's as lame as any number of allegations against Trump, and the response you have given here to defend Biden would be roundly condemned if it were made against Trump.  Of course, it would be fine to use regarding Bill Clinton. 

This is what a full vetting looks like.

[GeneralMacArthur]

It's embarrassing that you call yourself a Democrat and write this insane psychopathic sh**t.

"Insane psychopathic sh**t" you mean the truth? I am all for supporting these accusations, and she said that there is a complaint filed and multiple witnesses. Now I just want to know, where are they?

Yeah, where are the witnesses?  What a concept; to expect witnesses to actually materialize.

Christine Blasey Ford had several corroborating witnesses giving evidence that she had described being raped by Kavanaugh well before he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

Example 1:  She provided therapist records to WaPo wherein she described being raped in high school

Example 2:  Keith Kogler submitted written testimony that she had named Kavanaugh as the rapist in an e-mail and that everything else she had said in the trial was true

and so on and so forth.

Tara Reade has claimed on Twitter nearly 1,000 times that she went to supervisors several times and submitted an official Senate complaint, which would be recorded.  Yet she has never named those supervisors, never provided any details of that complaint, and no journalist has been able to dig it up despite this being a potential bombshell story.  You don't think Fox News would have someone on the case trying to find her old senate complaint about being raped by Joe Biden?  You don't think Breitbart would have tried to find the names of her supervisors and e-mail them to ask if she ever told them Biden raped her?

None of the evidence/witnesses has ever been uncovered because it doesn't exist.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Friends and family of Tara Reade have stated, repeatedly, that she told them about the assault at the time. It is quite likely that she has avoided talking about it in public because she was assaulted by one of the most powerful men in America.

At the time, she told her mother, brother, and a friend who worked in Sen. Ted Kennedy’s office about the incident. Her mother has since passed away, but both her friend and brother told The Intercept they recalled hearing about it from her at the time. Reade’s friend, who asked to remain anonymous so as not to be part of the public blowback, said she discouraged Reade from coming forward at all, concerned that she would be attacked and would never get the apology she was hoping for. Reade and her brother, Collin Moulton, both said that their mother urged her to call the police, but her brother urged her to move on instead. “Woefully, I did not encourage her to follow up,” he said. “I wasn’t one of her better advocates. I said let it go, move on, guys are idiots.” (Moulton, who lives in Georgia, said he voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and has no intention to vote for either Biden or Donald Trump.)

The experience in Biden’s office derailed her life, Reade’s friend said. “Back then people assumed girls just get over it,” she said. “But no, it plants a seed and lives can spin out of control. Yes, everybody’s an adult, but guess what, so is he.” At the time, there was just no way that Reade’s effort to right the wrong could succeed, her friend said, but this time, she’s determined to be heard. “It was the ‘90s,” she said. “There was no Me Too. There was no Time’s Up.”

Even in this small snippet from The Intercept article, there are lots of inconsistencies.  Her brother laments that she never followed-up, but Reade says she did follow-up by filing several complaints after the alleged assault, and that she was personally fired by Biden out of vengeance.  Reade's friend doesn't talk about the sexual assault at all.  The friend's statement is consistent with the original story, which is that Reade was traumatized by being asked to serve drinks at a party and believed the Biden staff was out to get her after she said no.  Her friend also says that Reade's goal in all this is to get an apology from Biden, when Reade's goal is clearly to destroy Biden's candidacy:

https://twitter.com/ReadeAlexandra/status/1235045691073761280