Tara Reade Biden allegation megathread

[GeneralMacArthur]

Guys, stop saying the Larry King clip "confirms that something happened." Nobody ever doubted that something happened.  The "something" is Reade losing her job!  She had a pretty sweet job working for a blue-chip senator and blew it.  Of course she and her mother were upset.  Of course she had a negative impression of the people who fired her.

That's a far, far more normal explanation for the call and fits perfectly with the language used by her mother and Reade's subsequent decades praising Biden.

There's no reason to believe the call is about rape, other than Reade's word, and she already lied about the contents of the call.  The phrasing used by her mother makes it extremely unlikely she is referring to her daughter being raped.

Also, just block Bomster and LimoLiberal.  They are concern trolls only here to make Democratic readers feel like "fellow Democrats are having second thoughts, maybe I should too?"

[GeneralMacArthur]

Tara: My mother called Larry King in 1993 and told him Biden raped me!

Tara's mother, 1993: Larry, my daughter worked for Biden and says his favorite ice cream flavor is cookie dough.

Bernie and Trump supporters: See!  Tara said her mom called Larry King about Biden, and she was telling the truth!  This is new corroborating evidence!  What a bombshell!  Biden must drop out and make Bernie the nominee!  Why isn't CNN covering this!?  If it were a Republican he'd already have been guillotined!  What about Kavanaugh?!

Bernie and Trump supporters pretending to be Biden supporters: I don't know you guys, I was a Biden supporter but after hearing that Larry King audio I'm starting to feel really nervous.  What if he really did rape her?  I might just stay home, I don't want to accidentally vote for a rapist.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Oh, I forgot to add.

Bernie and Trump supporters pretending to be Biden supporters:

this Larry King clip is going to give her story more credibility regardless of what any one person thinks about the veracity of the accusation. I don't know how far it will go or how long it will last, but the chances of this blowing over on its own have gone down significantly due to the uncovering of this call.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The video doesn't give her story more credibility.  It does the opposite.  And it certainly doesn't change anything about the race or dictate any necessary action from Biden.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Who's misrepresenting or exaggerating to defend Biden?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Apparently this woman also corroborated her previous story, and only changed to corroborate this story after hearing about it on the news.

Where are you seeing that?

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/PalmerReport/status/1254834630211010561

[GeneralMacArthur]

Drudge claims to have tape of Biden confessing to sexual assault.

Matt Drudge also claims he’s heterosexual, but that ain’t true either.

Obviously you didn't click on the link.

Nope.  But it claimed to be a Drudge Report link, so can you blame me?

It's a RickRoll.  Although I found it funny, it shouldn't be in this thread.

[GeneralMacArthur]

You know what's funny about this story?

Reade and LaCosse are neighbors, and Reade goes to her at the pool and says "I was raped by Joe Biden."

Then they don't talk again for twenty years.  They only became best friends recently.

So Reade didn't tell any of her actual close friends about this story, but she told this random neighbor whom she didn't even talk to for 20 years afterwards?

[GeneralMacArthur]

She claims to have told multiple people in Biden's office (she has been inconsistent about the exact number) and then filed a formal complaint with the Senate detailing what happened. That's a lot of people to keep a secret for 27 years, with all the research and background checks on Biden over the years. And even if the conspiracy was real, it seems even more far-fetched that every single one of them would continue to keep the secret today, when every major media organization would love to have a scoop that gives it credence.

It would be more believable if she claimed to have never told anyone until 2020.

Yeah, exactly.  It would have come up in the 2008 vetting.  Here's how this works:

"Biden had a bunch of people in his employ over 35 years.  We gotta make sure he was never a bad boss.  Let's get his supervisors in here."

"OK ma'am, in strict confidentiality, did you witness anything when you were Biden's chief of staff that might cause trouble if he's the VP nominee?"

"Why yes, in 1993 he raped a girl named Tara.  We covered it all up and paid off everyone in the Senate to keep mum, but she could still go to the press at any time."

and that would be the end of the vetting process.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Marty is lying.  Lorraine Sanchez did not corroborate that Biden raped Reade.  She only corroborated the shoulder touching that nobody is denying.  Similarly, her mother did not say that Tara was raped by Biden.  On the contrary her phone conversation transcript strongly implies that didn't happen.

As for her brother, he changed his story.  He is not credible.  The source that refuses to go on record is also, as a result, not credible.

I don't recall the details of the Kavanaugh case well but I'm pretty sure nobody questioned that they know each other.  They hung out in the same social circles and shared many friends.  Didn't Ford's friend give conservatives ammunition by saying she remembered the party with Kavanaugh and Ford but didn't remember her getting raped upstairs?

Also saying that nobody corroborated Ford is a lie.  She had several people claim she had told them this story before the nomination.  If you are calling this Reade nonsense "corroboration" you have to call the Ford one corroboration as well.  Personally I don't find either particularly useful as if the accuser is lying to the public she could also have lied to her friends or gotten her friends to lie for her.

Ford gave a lot of specific details that could have resulted in a more concrete conviction had there been a proper investigation.  We were denied that investigation.  Meanwhile Kavanaugh made a lot of very strong statements to the contrary that could have been easily proven or disproven... with a proper investigation.  With Reade, all the concrete details she's given us have either turned out to be lies or flatly contradicted by witnesses.

[GeneralMacArthur]

That CounterPunch (lol) article has already been debunked.  Biden didn't arrive in Washington until mid-73 because he stayed in Delaware to be with his kids after the accident.

[GeneralMacArthur]

This is in an awful middle ground of getting enough play to do damage and not enough play to get it out of the way. And in my gut I genuinely don’t believe her but in this country that doesn’t matter. Seemingly Trump is the only one who doesn’t fact consequences from stories like this.

And to people thinking I’m being a negative Nancy... that comey letter made the difference. Don’t think that can’t

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yet another hole in the story.  Reade says this happened in a hallway in the Russell Senate office building.

Reade’s assault allegation, which became public last month, involves an interaction in the spring of 1993. She said that she was sent by her manager to bring a gym bag to Biden, and they met in a hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building, in a tucked away corner. Before she knew it, he pressed her up against the wall, forcibly kissed her, and put a hand each up her blouse and skirt, penetrating her with his fingers.

Maybe, when you heard this story, you imagined some labyrinth of hallways where Tara could easily get lost and raped in some dusty nook where no one ever ventures.

Here's a floor plan of that building:



Anyone want to point out where Biden could possibly have raped Tara without immediately being seen and heard by anyone walking by?  There's only a few nooks and they're all for stairways, elevators or bathrooms.  Other than that it would have to be in another Senator's office.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Really, really sick stuff. "Debunking" posts that don't even remotely do such things. There is not even a little bit of a gotcha in the strawman you built.

Stop taking it upon yourself to do pathetic sub-amateur investigative work. You only make this more believable with your complete blindness.

I could literally write a novel debunking Tara Reade's claims with hard evidence and you would write the same thing.

Admit it.  You want to believe this, so you've chosen to adopt that worldview, and you're rejecting all evidence that doesn't fit your worldview.

Tara said she was raped in a hallway of the Russell Office Building.  There is no hallway in that building where she could possibly have been raped without a hundred people immediately noticing.  This isn't "sub-amateur investigative work" this is looking at one of the few hard facts she gives us in her testimony and seeing how it holds up.  And there's no strawman because it's literally her own words.

Does this single fact debunk her claim?  No, because she could have mis-remembered the office building.  But it's yet another in the "she could have mis-remembered A, and B, and C, and D, and E, and F, and..." line of excuses that you have to keep adding to in order to believe her claim.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yes, according to Tara the incident would only have taken 20 seconds or so.  But it clearly didn't go as Biden intended.  If Tara had actually let Biden finger her, it would have gone on a lot more than 20 seconds.

No one in their right mind would try to finger-bang a staffer from the privacy of an "alcove" (really just a doorway).  What, the doorway to some other Senator's office, where there would have been dozens of staffers working?  The idea that Biden would do something so brazen and risky doesn't match with him also being so secretive and crafty that he got away being a "sexual predator" (Tara's own words) for fifty years with no one ever noticing.  Contrast this with Senator Packwood, whose sexual habits were common gossip around Capitol Hill for years before he got "exposed."

And of course, the switcheroo to "oh she said it was a hallway but she meant a staircase" is just desperation and makes zero difference even if true.  As if a stairway is a safe place to have sex with your staff?  That's an even less safe place than a doorway "alcove."

Del Tachi is trying to change Tara's story to take place in the underground passage connecting the office building to other buildings.  Once again, Tara is very clear that it was a hallway in Russell, so this isn't Tara's story at this point, it's just your imagination.  Second, if Biden was hiding in some secret corner of an underground maze, how would Tara have found him in the first place?  Did the staffer give her specific directions to Biden's secret rape den?  When you try to think about it practically it just never sounds like something that would actually happen.

And the idea that this was some late-night rendezvous at the Russell Office Building and Biden/Tara were the only two there is just another thing Tara didn't say that y'all are making up to defend her.
 And it doesn't make sense either.  The story is that a senior staffer told Tara to go bring Biden his gym bag.  So you mean to tell me that Biden, who famously took the AMTRAK between Capitol Hill and Delaware almost every day, was wandering around the office building late at night and decided to go to the gym?  What was he doing in the office building if nobody else was there?  What were Tara and her supervisor doing there?  No, this took place during normal working hours, when the Russell Office Building would have been buzzing with senators, staffers, and other swamp denizens.  There is no place in the building where Biden could have expected to finger-bang a staffer without getting caught.  Period.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I haven't looked into this enough to make a definitive decision. But you're approaching it from the premise that the allegation is false and therefore you want to have the "case closed" as soon as possible.

All I've done is take Tara's own words, "we met in a hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building, in a tucked away corner", and say, is there a tucked-away corner in the Russell Senate Office Building where a sexual assault could plausibly happen?

The answer is no, which is the last page of this thread is people saying things like

• "Maybe it didn't happen in a corner, it happened in an office doorway alcove!"
• "Maybe it didn't happen in a corner, it happened in the stairway!"
• "Maybe it wasn't in Russell, maybe it was in the subway tunnel!"
• "Maybe it happened so late at night that nobody would be there!"

The fact that people are writing things like this shows why my argument is effective.  The story as Reade tells it does not make sense when you look at the map of Russell.  So they have to add their own totally-implausible details, or change the details she supplied, in order to make it make sense.

My concern, on the other hand, makes me want this to be looked at from as many angles and as many possibilities at possible - for one simple reason. If, in rushing to have Reade etc. labeled as "liars", "fake victims", etc., anything at all is missed, then it's almost a guarantee that it will come back in the last two weeks of October as CNN/MSNBC/etc make their final play to keep their cash cow around for four years. They are almost guaranteed to pull some shenanigan like this even if what they have is complete bullsh**t - anything they can pull out of a hat at that point that might actually be legitimate would be fatal.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing, I'm giving you yet another angle.  I already supplied, in the first five pages of this thread, more than enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Tara Reade is lying.  You can label her a liar based on that alone.  The rest is just me supplying even more angles, even more proof, that her story is fake.

Again, saying things like "since nothing was stated otherwise, it must have happened during the busiest part of the day" maybe works if you're trying to "win" the argument as fast as possible. As thoroughly as possible, no. And that's very very dangerous down the road.

Of course, you're now putting words in my mouth that I never said.  Here, let me make the "time of day" argument clearer:

Given that the Russell building is essentially just a square of long hallways with doors to offices, literally a single person walking down a hallway would have heard or seen Biden sexually assaulting Reade.  Biden isn't an idiot, so he wouldn't have done it unless it was a time when he was absolutely sure he could screw her in the hallway and not get caught (this is assuming no CCTV and no security/custodial staff).  But if you assume this is true there's a lot of tough questions you have to answer:

• Reade and her supervisor were still working -- were they the only staff in the building?  Why was Biden's office the only one doing any work?
• Biden was not a work-late guy, he took the train home to be with his kids and did his work on the train and at home.  Why would he be the only senator up late in the office?
• Biden wasn't even working, he was about to go to the gym.  Why would he be going to the gym late at night when the capitol was abandoned?  That contradicts what we know about Biden's habits.
• Biden wasn't in his office, he was elsewhere in the office building.  If nobody else was in the building, what was he even doing?
• Why would Biden take this risk in the first place?  Why wouldn't he just do what Senator Packwood did and find some abandoned office or hotel room to invite her to?

[GeneralMacArthur]

I didn't think Reade's allegations were real at first, but that Larry King interview is something else (assuming the caller was in fact her mother). There seems to be more evidence that something went down between them than there ever was for Kavanaugh and Ford.

You have to be trolling.

There's no way to prove the caller was Reade's mother, therefore there is no way to prove the caller was talking Biden, and there was no mention of rape or sexual assault. If you were an anonymous caller, wouldn't you be at least a little comfortable with naming a politician?

It proved absolutely nothing.

I know it didn't "prove" anything, and I didn't say it did! It is something worth investigating though, but that'll be more difficult now that CNN has scrubbed it from their archive.

CNN doesn't have any Larry King in their archive (just thumbnails with the show dates) and video of the call is already up on YouTube.  So you are definitely trolling here.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Biden didn't tell Reade to serve drinks because he liked her legs.

According to Reade herself, this is simply gossip that she overheard from other staffers.  "Of course Biden picked Reade for the party, she's got gorgeous legs", that kind of thing.

There's zero evidence that Biden actually made sexist decisions like this and even Reade herself isn't saying that.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Gen. MacArthur is taking a very expansive statement on the part of Reade - "it happened in a corner of a hallway in the Russell Senate Office Building at a time no one was around" - and saying the alleged event based upon this imprecise description is impossible.

Posters here aren't adding to Reade's story, they're pointing out that Mac's over-literal interpretation of such an unspecified description as definitive proof of its impossibility is ridiculous.  "A hallway in a Senate building" could mean a lot of things (especially considering this is a 30 year old allegation), and there's nothing internally or externally inconsistent about this aspect of Reade's allegations. 

And for added context, Christine Blasey Ford couldn't even locate the house where she claims Kavanaugh assaulted her, does that make her story literally impossible?

No, but if Ford had said "it happened in an upstairs bedroom in the house at 123 Main Street" and then someone went to the house at 123 Main Street and found that there was no upstairs and the only bedroom was directly adjacent to the living room where the party took place, that would certainly make her story a lot less credible.

There's nothing over-literal about this.
She said it happened in the Russell Office Building, so I looked at that building.  What's the less literal interpretation?  How is that open to interpretation at all?
She said it happened in a hallway, so I looked at the hallways.  What's the less literal interpretation?  How is that open to interpretation at all?

These aren't vague details that she would mis-remember 25 years later.  This is where she was when she was raped.  This would be the office where she worked, and the office where the Senate Gym is located.  It seems extremely implausible to me that she would mix it up with some other building.

I mean, here is your story, if you try to write a plausible account that aligns with Reade's testimony:  "It was late at night in Washington DC.  Joe Biden hadn't gone home like he always did, and wanted to do a late-night workout.  His office staff were still there working, but he was very confident that nobody else was in the building.  He also knew that there were no cameras, no security, no custodial staff.  So he attempted to sexually assault Tara Reade in a hallway where everyone could see her and, thanks to the marble floors, everyone could hear her."

[GeneralMacArthur]

I, too, am very concerned about hypotheticals that have an extremely low chance of being true.

What if hell is real and I'm going there?

What if the sun already exploded and we'll all die in five minutes?

What if The Matrix was a documentary and everything I perceive is just a simulation?

What if Biden really did rape Tara Reade and I'm voting for a rapist?

What if Obama really was an al-Qaeda sleeper agent and we let a terrorist run this country for eight years?

Can you people get it together?  JFC

[GeneralMacArthur]

These aren't vague details that she would mis-remember 25 years later.

Except, of course, that's exactly what happened in the CBF's case (she can't even locate the house where her alleged assault took place).

Point being, time clouds memories.  What Tara Reade said regarding the timing/location of the assault is possible, and this specific aspect of her account is too non-specific to readily disprove, much less claim as an impossibility.

No, honey, that's not what happened in the CBF case.  Ford never claimed to remember the address of a random house she went to.  Reade is claiming she remembers the attack taking place in the office where she worked every day.

[GeneralMacArthur]

These aren't vague details that she would mis-remember 25 years later.

Except, of course, that's exactly what happened in the CBF's case (she can't even locate the house where her alleged assault took place).

Point being, time clouds memories.  What Tara Reade said regarding the timing/location of the assault is possible, and this specific aspect of her account is too non-specific to readily disprove, much less claim as an impossibility.

No, honey, that's not what happened in the CBF case.  Ford never claimed to remember the address of a random house she went to.  Reade is claiming she remembers the attack taking place in the office where she worked every day.

Yeah, dummy, that's the point.  Reade says she actually does remember where the alleged assault took place and you've taken up a lot of space in this thread saying that this one, non-specific aspect of her story is somehow a gaping hole in the fact pattern.  But the thing is it's so non-specific that it can't be the impossibility you're making it out to be - several posts have already demonstrated that.

To be fair, the non-specificity of this aspect of Reade's story certainty doesn't bolster the allegations, but to act like it's a logical inconsistency that destroys the entire narrative is either nonsensical or in extremely bad faith.

There is no non-specificity.  She says exactly where it took place.  You're grasping at straws because it's impossible to ignore the simple truth that the rape could not possibly have taken place in the location she describes unless you make a series of incredibly unlikely assumptions.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Could some super sleuth get calendars of all 100 senators from 1993 and find a time when this plausibly could have happened, say a time when Biden was the only senator (including staffs) in the building, or at least on the floor?

You don't have to, all you have to know is that Biden left early in the evening every single day to take the Amtrak home to Delaware.  He would never have been the last guy in the building.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Del Tachi, I'm not staking my denial of Reade on this one detail.  It's just one of the dozens of holes in her story I've identified in this thread.