RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former Vice President Joe Biden admitted back in December 2018 that “I am a gaffe machine.” That’s a gross understatement, to say the least. The Democrat establishment and the mainstream media continue to treat Biden’s endless stream of gaffes as just harmless patter from good old Uncle Joe. His supporters make excuses for Biden’s obvious mental decline and lash out at anyone who expresses concerns about his fitness to take on the rigors of the presidency. Now, however, they are circling the wagons after a story recently emerged that Joe Biden allegedly committed sexual assault against a former staffer, Tara Reade, when Biden was a vigorous 50 year-old senator. The Biden campaign has denied the allegation, claiming “these accusations are false.” Other women had come forward previously to report inappropriate touching by Biden. But Ms. Reade’s allegation shines a much harsher light on Biden’s possible predatory sexual behavior against one or more females on his staff.

Joe Biden is a self-professed champion of women who has supported the #MeToo movement’s presumption of guilt against the accused. “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally,” Biden said during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing, “you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time.” Now Biden himself stands accused of sexually assaulting Tara Reade in 1993. “He said ‘come on man, I heard you liked me,'” Ms. Reade told an interviewer. “I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was surreal.” According to Ms. Reade, Biden kissed her without her consent, proceeded to push her up against a wall, and used his fingers to penetrate her. Afterwards, Ms. Reade said, “He took his finger. He just like pointed at me and said you’re nothing to me.” There presumably were no witnesses to the alleged assault, although Ms. Reade’s brother and friend recall her contemporaneous account of the incident.

There has not been a word of support for Biden’s accuser from the Democratic Party establishment, #MeToo activists, and the mainstream media who want to see President Trump defeated no matter what it takes. Most media outlets have either ignored or buried the story, with a few limited exceptions. A staff writer for The Atlantic even tried to discredit Ms. Reade when she first came forward with allegations of Biden’s inappropriate touching. But even worse, a prominent #MeToo advocacy group rejected Ms. Reade’s pleas for help, throwing its high-minded claims of defense of sexual assault victims to the wolves in order to save Joe Biden’s hide.

The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund boasts of its support for “the brave individuals who have come forward, at great risk to themselves, to seek the justice they deserve and to protect others” from sexual harassment. It claims that it helps to pay legal costs for alleged victims and that it connects people to and helps pay for “media and storytelling assistance.” Tara Reade contacted the organization in January seeking its help in bringing to light her allegation against Biden. Time’s Up said no. Time Up’s justification was that it feared losing its nonprofit status if it assisted in a case against a candidate for federal office. But if we look behind the curtain, we find a web of clear conflicts of interest that may well explain why Ms. Reade was rebuffed. “While all of this was out between Reade and Time’s Up,” Breitbart reported, the Biden campaign’s relationship with a public relations firm, which was also closely associated with Time’s Up, “was taking on a new dimension.”

Anita Dunn is both a senior adviser on the Biden campaign and the Managing Director at the SKDKnickerbocker public relations firm. Hilary Rosen is a Biden surrogate, who was also involved in the founding of Time’s Up and is a partner in SKDKnickerbocker. SKDKnickerbocker helped launch the publicity for Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. On the website describing how victims of sexual harassment can get in touch with the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund for media assistance, the victims are told that, after they fill out a form, “SKDKnickerbocker (SKDK), public relations firm that works with the Fund, will email you to set up an evaluation over the phone. If the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund is able to offer you media assistance, SKDK will match you with a public relations firm in our Network.”

However, SKDKnickerbocker not only works with the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund but also for the Biden campaign. SKDK has received $881,740 from the Biden for President organization between June 25, 2019 and February 27, 2020, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The Biden campaign paid the vast bulk of this money – slightly in excess of $806,000 – in January and February of 2020. This sum is more than 10 times the amount that Biden’s campaign paid SKDKnickerbocker between June and December 2019. Tara Reade received the final word that the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund would not provide her with funding or public relations support in her case on February 11^th. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots.

Joe Biden is entitled to due process and deserves the presumption of innocence, which is more than he was willing to grant to Justice Kavanaugh. However, he is not entitled to be protected by a wall of silence, which is what his friends in the Democratic establishment and the media are doing by covering for him. Senator Kamala Harris, for example, endorsed Biden after she quit the presidential race. She is said to be on the short list of Biden’s potential running mates. Harris was among Justice Kavanaugh’s most strident critics when she sat in judgment on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Harris also released a campaign ad during her run for president accusing President Trump of being a “sexual predator.” Yet when it came to Tara Reade’s accusation against Biden of sexual predatory behavior, she says she contacted Senator Harris’s office but has received no response. As Brad Polumbo wrote in the Washington Examiner, if Harris does not immediately denounce Biden in light of Tara Reade’s accusation, she is little more than a “conniving politician willing to disregard due process for her political opponents, but not her allies.”

Tara Reade also claims to have received a brushoff from Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office, which told her simply to contact her local representative. Warren had said that one of her key reasons for opposing Justice Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation involved the allegations of sexual assault he was accused of. Yet her office found no time on Warren’s calendar for her to hear personally what Ms. Reade had to say about Joe Biden’s alleged sexual assault.

When Justice Kavanaugh was facing unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault, Warren made an impassioned plea on the Senate floor on behalf of survivors of sexual assault. She said that many of them do not come forward because they “believe they won’t be heard or taken seriously, or they think more about the impact on the perpetrator than their own safety and well-being, or they think the people with power – the ones who can actually do something – will instead ‘plow right through’ them. We never hear the stories of millions of sexual assault survivors. But some make the very difficult and personal decision to come forward and tell their stories. They, like all survivors, are courageous, and they deserve to be heard and treated with respect. Not dismissed, not attacked, not threatened.”

Tara Reade finally worked up the courage to come forward with her story of sexual assault. Unfortunately for the rally around Biden crowd, it pointed directly to the current presumed Democratic nominee for president. But Joe Biden’s connections have helped him ‘plow right through’ Tara Reade’s story. She was rebuffed by a leading #MeToo advocacy group with close ties to the Biden campaign. She has been vilified or simply ignored in the mainstream media and by faux feminist politicians. Biden, meanwhile, continues to hold forth on what he would do as president, including with respect to the coronavirus. CNN gave him airtime last Friday night in a televised town hall. CNN listed 5 takeaways from the town hall. Tara Reade’s allegation was not among them.

If Joe Biden does become the Democratic nominee for president, it will be up to the voters to decide what weight to give to Ms. Reade’s story. If true, it should add further doubts regarding Joe Biden’s character, on top of questions about his current mental condition. The jury is still out on what the former vice president may have done while he was the Obama administration’s point man in Ukraine to run interference for Burisma. This highly corrupt Ukrainian firm was under investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor who Biden caused to be fired while his son Hunter was on Burisma’s board.

Joe Biden likes to speak of restoring the soul of the nation. First, it appears that he has some serious repair work to do with his own soul. He can start by coming clean.