The other thread has reached 100 pages, so I'm starting a new one.
Old thread: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=366108.0At this point, the rape allegation is, beyond a reasonable doubt, false. Details at the bottom of this post.
We are now in the aftermath phase. What are the consequences?
As of this post (May 22), Tara is facing at least three potential lawsuits.
- The obvious slander lawsuit from the Biden campaign (unlikely)
- Perjury for lying about her credentials in court (very likely)
- Fraud from all the people she's taken advantage of in the past (Lynn Hummer already lawyered up)
But Tara did not act alone. Her story was promoted relentlessly by a small set of "journalists" who abandoned any pretense of objectivity to act as PR agents for Tara Reade. These sleazeball partisan hacks thought if they pushed this story hard enough, they could force Biden out of the race and install Sanders as the nominee. When the story didn't work, they continued to desperately lie about it for weeks. These journalists should have to answer for their abandonment of ethics. They are:
- Ryan Grim, DC bureau chief for The Intercept and contributor for The Young Turks
- Katie Halper, podcast host for Rolling Stone
- Nathan Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs
- Rich McHugh, former investigative journalist NBC
- Chris Hayes, MSNBC
- Krystal Ball, The Hill
But more important, and more relevant to Atlas, are the consequences to the Biden campaign. For weeks, this story was used to smear his name in every possible medium. Mainstream outlets had segment after segment about the allegation where they treated it as a proven fact, asking "should Biden drop out? Should you vote for him even though he's a rapist?" Fox News covered its entire front page in Tara Reade articles. The NYT ran dozens of editorials and thinkpieces about how "even if Joe Biden is a rapist..." and left-wing media, of course, was screaming "Biden is a rapist, he must be replaced with Sanders!"
The impact this had on Biden's campaign is clear in polling. More than half of America believes that Biden raped Tara Reade, including 30-40% of Democrats. Now that we know the story is false, all coverage has disappeared. There will be no mainstream media segments clearing Biden's name. There will be no NYT editorials apologizing. Fox News and left-wing media will continue to act as though it's true.
There will be some satisfaction in watching Reade, Grim, Robinson, Halper, etc. pay for what they've done. But we must also keep an eye on the public perception of Biden. The average American has no idea who Ryan Grim is, and will not read the POLITICO article about Tara Reade's history of compulsive lying. All he'll remember is that he saw a story once about Biden raping a woman. The Biden campaign must find a way to raise awareness of the truth. It will be interesting to watch.
The Tara Reade allegation is falseIs it ok to call it false?Just like the Jacob Wohl rape allegations, the Rolling Stone rape story, the Emma Sulkowicz rape allegation, the Duke Lacrosse rape allegation, and other famous examples, we will never have 100% certainty. The only way to get 100% certainty is for Tara Reade to confess to fabricating this allegation. Despite not achieving this "100% certainty" bar in any of those cases, there is zero controversy in referring to them as false rape cases. Jacob Wohl, for instance, has never confessed to fabricating his Robert Mueller rape story, but we still call it a false story. In the same way, we should call Tara Reade's allegation false. She is never going to confess, so we must go off available evidence, which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that it is false.
We must also be careful not to let the
consequences of calling it false color our actual belief. There are some who fear that by accepting the falsity of this allegation, #MeToo will be hurt, or future rape victims will be hurt. We can not let the consequences of the truth stand in the way of the truth itself. The story is false. That such a high-profile false rape allegation will hurt #MeToo does not make it any less false.
Strongest reasons why it is false1:
Tara Reade keeps changing her story. If you believe Tara Reade's allegation, the next question is "which allegation?" She has changed virtually every detail of the story time and time again. Often she changes details in response to new evidence proving the old details are false. For instance, she has changed the location of the assault several times because people keep going to these very public locations and proving that an assault couldn't possibly have occurred there. Even the details of her story that she does keep consistent contradict statements she has made earlier. For instance, she has told seven different stories about why she left her job:
- Fired as a medical discrimination thing for an unknown disease (reason given by Tara in mid-90s)
- Left to follow her boyfriend to work on a job in a different state (reason given by Tara in 2009)
- Quit in protest of American imperialism and xenophobia (reason given by Tara in 2018)
- Left voluntarily to get away from sexual harassment (reason given by Tara in first version of 2019 story)
- "Forced out" by staff bullying over her refusal to serve drinks at an event (later versions of 2019 story)
- Fired (in April) as retaliation for filing a complaint (in June) (Tara's 2020 story version 1)
- Personally fired by an angry Joe Biden (Tara's 2020 story version 2)
Pro-Reade partisans have tried to pass this off as "common victim behavior." It is not. What it is is the behavior of someone who lies, gets caught, then tries to maintain the lie by changing her story.
2:
Tara Reade is a compulsive liar and manipulator. She has an extraordinarily lengthy track record, documented by multiple major publications, of lying about virtually every detail of her life. She fabricates stories and uses them to take advantage of people. She lied to property owners to get free housing, then ran away without paying. She lied to Lynn Hummer to steal thousands of dollars from her charity, and now faces a lawsuit. She lied under oath about her credentials in court, sending people to prison with false testimony, and now all those cases are mistrialed. She has lied repeatedly about being contacted by the media and presidential campaigns.
She tells ridiculous, obvious lies every single day on Twitter. For instance, NYT wrote a story yesterday showing that she lied about having an undergraduate degree, and she's now claiming that the president of Antioch University gave her a "secret diploma", so top secret there is no physical copy of it. The president himself says this is a lie. I mean, these aren't even good lies. Even her own lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, has abandoned her because of all these lies.
Why would we ever trust Tara Reade's word over Joe Biden's when she's lied about everything else in her life?
3:
The vast conspiracy required for her story to be true. Reade says her rape was common knowledge in the office, and that as retaliation she was discriminated against, bullied, and eventually fired. PBS contacted 74 former Biden staffers, many of whom were contemporaries of Tara Reade. They all disputed the story, many of them directly calling out multiple details as lies. AP contacted 21 Biden staffers who worked at the same time as Reade and heard the same thing. Reade says she told three supervisors, all three of them say she is lying. Reade says she filed a complaint with the Senate. Biden has asked for this complaint, if it exists, to be released, but the complaint has mysteriously disappeared. Furthermore, nobody remembers this complaint being made, even though it would have been an absolute bombshell story.
For Reade's story to be true, you have to believe that nearly 100 former Biden staffers are all lying in concert to protect him. You have to believe that all these random Senate staffers covered up her complaint and destroyed the evidence. This is quite the extraordinary conspiracy. Of course, the alternative story is that these 100-ish people are telling the truth, the complaint never existed, and Tara Reade is making this all up.
4:
The complete lack of evidence. Put simply, there is absolutely no evidence that Tara Reade's story is true. She originally said she filed a complaint with the senate, and offered this up as evidence, but when Biden called her bluff she changed her story and now she only did an "intake form" and it wasn't about the rape (even this is almost certainly a lie). This story has been thoroughly investigated by hundreds of journalists and not a single one of them has found a single shred of evidence that it is true.
Instead of evidence, we've been given "corroboration." But it's all fallen apart. The Larry King phone call was in the media for days, but her mother praises Biden on that call and only complains about Tara's being fired. Lynda LaCasse said Reade told her about the assault, but has since retracted. Reade's "anonymous friend" says Reade told her about the assault, but changed her story from 2019 to align with Reade, and admits to being coached by Reade before going public. Reade's brother says he remembers it, but also had to change his story, and was coached by Nathan Robinson. Reade offered 4 other friends to NBC as corroborators, but all 4 said she never told them about the assault. None of this is valid stuff. In fact, it's more proof that the story is false, because Reade keeps having to coach people on what to say or lie about what they're saying.
5:
The motive. Imagine if Christine Blasey Ford had spent decades bragging about her friendship with Brett Kavanaugh. Imagine if she had written dozens of Tweets praising him and calling him a "champion for women's rights." Imagine if, a year before going public, she had become obsessed with some crazy conspiracy theory about Kavanaugh and written hundreds of tweets about how Kavanaugh was destroying her career and her marriage. Imagine if she had written dozens of Tweets about how Kavanaugh needed to be destroyed at all costs, how he was a puppet of oligarchs and out to destroy the country. Imagine if she had replied to a Dianne Feinstein tweet about stopping Kavanaugh with "timing... wait for it... tick tock...."
Her story would never have even hit the papers. She would be labeled an obvious partisan hack, someone who was only now turning on Kavanaugh for personal+political reasons.
Of course, Christine Blasey Ford did none of these things. Part of what made her such a strong witness was her complete lack of any ulterior motive for lying. These are all things that Tara Reade did. Dozens of people who knew Reade say she bragged constantly about her work in Biden's office. In fact she repeatedly lied under oath about working with him on the Violence Against Women Act. She praised Biden dozens of times on her personal social media pages.
In 2019, Tara Reade became obsessed with this conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was destroying her career and personal life by trying to "silence her" by labeling her a Russian agent. She wrote dozens of Tweets on this subject and hated Biden so much that she started replying to Trump asking him to destroy Joe Biden. She was so obsessed with this theory that Time's Up lawyers say when she called them, it wasn't to talk about a rape allegation, it was to talk about Biden calling her a Russian agent. In the weeks before she went public, she wrote tons of Tweets about how Sanders was our only hope, Biden was a puppet of billionaires and Blue MAGA, Biden must be stopped at all costs. She wrote tweets about how her story was going to stop Biden. She tweeted at Bernie saying "wait Bernie don't drop out, I'll rescue you with my story!" And then there's the infamous "tick tock" tweet to Ryan Grim.
Tara Reade is lying. Why would she lie? This is why.
Some good articlesMy article on this subject:
The Tara Reade Case: 8 Things the Media Won't Tell YouGood article from April laying out all the problems with the story:
USAToday pieceTYT alum Michael Tracey, of all people, had a very thorough piece:
Do you believe Tara Reade?
