Have You Heard Where Joe Biden’s 2020 Sexual Accuser Is Now?

current events, Joe Biden, Political wrongdoing, response to Biden assault charges 4 Minutes
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She’s defected to Russia, where she feels so much safer! That’s what Tara Reade told Sputnik, the Russian government media organization, in a broadcast she shared with convicted Russian agent Maria Butina, who was deported to Russia in 2019 after serving thirteen months in a US federal prison.

Reade said she plans to apply for Russian citizenship, though she hopes to retain her US citizenship too. Butina announced at the Sputnik soiree that she will ask Putin to “fast-track” Reade’s citizenship request. A nice little bit of propaganda when he sorely needs it.

Why am I bothering to write about this story now? Because I think it demonstrates another example of the Kremlin’s determination to undermine President Biden, personally, in any way possible.

And I worry how the press will handle all this, assuming they feel so inclined.

I also think it’s highly likely that the far right, Putin-admiring Republicans will use it to sully Biden’s reputation among women voters and try to minimize their likely nominee’s dirty laundry list of sexual abuses—just as E. Jean Carroll’s defamation win against Trump has reignited #metoo discussions on the national scene.

Reade told Sputnik that a Republican legislator informed her she was in physical danger.

She decided to go to Russia, she said, because she’d received death threats this year after repeating her allegation against Biden and tweeting that she was “willing to testify under oath in Congress if asked.”

John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications for the National Security Council, was asked to comment on her claims that she felt safer in Russia than in the US.

Saying he’d “be loath to comment on the musings of a potential Russian citizen,” Kirby emphatically denied her charges that the US government was endangering her life.

Ah, a new conspiracy theory to unfold as Jim Jordan and other witch-hunting Republican committee chairs repeatedly fail to turn up anything. It’s probably just a matter of time til they’ll want to subpoena Biden’s papers at the University of Delaware, which was one of the demands made of him in 2020.

I was alerted to this latest Reade story when I opened my Twitter account a few days ago and saw a 2020 tweet I had sent, with a big heart indicating “like.”

At first, I was confused. The retweeter was Michael Stern, a former prosecutor and USA Today contributor whose strong piece pointing out all the flaws in Reade’s story had helped persuade me Reade’s charges against Biden were false.

I soon read about Tara’s travels and realized Michael Stern was sending an appreciation for my 2020 support.

Stern had been a sex crimes prosecutor, and he has great sensitivity to women who come forward with such claims. That sensitivity was clear in his piece, and it was important to me.

I quoted him liberally as one of several sources in a veryvery lengthy piece I posted in May, 2020: “Why I Believe Joe Biden Did Not Commit Sexual Assault.”

As I noted in that piece, Reade’s affection for Russia was previously evident. Although in 2017, she condemned Putin’s interference in the 2016 election, a year later she referred to him as a “genius” whose athleticism is “intoxicating to American women.”

And she wrote, “President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image protects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity.”

Obviously, this is a deeply troubled woman who is being used by others.

In pointing out many of the inconsistencies in Reade’s story, I expressed my concerns then that the mainstream media were being insufficiently diligent in their coverage. Some rushed to her defense without doing their homework.

I have the same concerns now. How will they react if the House crazies, now further enraged by their failure to hold the US hostage over the debt ceiling, go all out—or all in—to raise questions about Biden that have been fully put to rest?

As I concluded that 2020 post: There were mea culpas after the damage was done from members of the media for obsessing over Hillary’s emails in 2016 while letting Donald Trump off the hook. That must not happen again.

Here’s some of the press coverage I’ve seen this time. Please keep in mind that Reade’s charges were–eventually–widely discredited in 2020.

The New York Times ran a short article that included several of the issues about Reade’s credibility and focused its conclusion on the current geopolitics between the US and Russia.

CNN wrote that it “cannot verify Reade’s claims of receiving threats on her life.” It concluded: Reade said that “this illusion of Russia as an enemy is propagated by a few Washington elites who are determined to cause problems.”

Curiously, the CNN article contains a video bearing the description “New details emerge on Reade’s exit from Biden’s office” that has no new details. It is their 2020 story, but there’s no identifying date.

Time headlined: “White House Says Claim Tara Reade’s Life Was at Risk by US Government ‘Absolutely False.’”

The Guardian reported factually on Reade’s defection, while linking to a Fox piece (!) citing her concerns about testifying before Congress and quoting her that “if something happens to me, all roads lead to Joe Biden.”

Fox ran another story with a combination of teasers and disclaimers, to my mind. I’m not going to quote from it, but you can read it at the link.

I wrote the 2020 post only after it appeared that the original story had “legs.” That doesn’t seem to be happening yet. Perhaps this one will just wither away.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would not be giving the Tara Goes to Russia story a second thought.

But we just don’t seem to have many ordinary circumstances these days.

Annie

Published by annieasksyou

I've been a nonfiction writer for many years, exploring diverse topics that pique my curiosity, as noted in my first blog posting (Greetings!). I'm seeking dialogue with others committed to joining me in this exploration, sharing my conviction that different views can be exchanged in a respectful, civil discourse where we can learn from one another and be agreeable, even when we disagree. These postings depend for their enrichment on your participation: your ideas, insights, knowledge, opinions, and personal stories.

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24 thoughts on “Have You Heard Where Joe Biden’s 2020 Sexual Accuser Is Now?”

  2. Political nonsense, is right. (Also, I really liked “veryvery” — so writerly of you. And no, I don’t recall the earlier piece as being long, just informative and interesting, as always.) And no, not too many ordinary circumstances these days, you’re right.

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  3. She has said she is willing to testify under oath, I don’t see a problem.:)
    I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told
    I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles
    Such are promises
    All lies and jest
    Still a man hears what he wants to hear
    And disregards the rest, hmm
    Paul Simon/Art Garfunkel

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      1. An asset is a resource with economic value that an individual, corporation, or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide a future benefit.
        The initial thought was the press and the “view from nowhere” in the storytelling. It is not unreasonable to envision TR as having squandered her resistance for mumbles though.
        The Russian assets displayed don’t seem to have much value IMHO. May all of Joe’s enemies be this incompetent.

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  4. I suspect Reade will grow tired of Russia, and want to come back, within a year or less. She’ll be celebrated and given attention as long as the regime perceives her as useful, but once that peters out, the reality of life in a dreary, impoverished mafia-state will grow steadily more oppressive. And she’ll soon find she can’t speak freely about anything the regime finds objectionable. People who are used to freedom of speech don’t have the instincts to cope with the repression in places like Russia.

    It’s all too plausible that she has been getting death threats, unfortunately. We live in a time when far too many people consider threats or actual violence to be an appropriate response to anybody who says anything they don’t like. The link round-ups on my blog have covered a lot of examples. I see no reason to think the US government had anything to do with any threats against Reade, though. Freelance jackasses do that kind of thing all by themselves.

    I don’t think your 2020 piece was excessively long considering that you were including a great deal of supporting evidence, which is necessary in such a case. It’s the only valid way to judge the truth or falsity of a claim. The journalist who merely says “So-and-so says X, but So-and-so says Y”, or who just describes one side’s position with a lot of slanted language and words ending in -ist and -phobe in order to discredit it, is a failure as a journalist. Only an examination of the supporting evidence can determine which side is likely to be telling the truth. In this case, for example, the fact that several people with whom Reade claims she discussed her accusations deny that she ever spoke to them about it, is very damaging to her credibility.

    Her “sensuous” encomium to Putin is bizarre. It’s so at odds with what he’s actually like that it suggests she lives in a fantasy world, complete with fantasy versions of public figures which have nothing to do with the reality of those individuals. She might have an equally (but differently) warped fantasy version of Biden as well.

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    1. Reade has long had a troubled life and financial problems, Infidel, so I can’t imagine she’ll find solace anywhere—least of all in Putin’s Russia. I’d like to know who’s bankrolling her.

      As for death threats, though not inconceivable, she said she learned about them from a Republican lawmaker. Based on all the contradictions that surfaced during her 2020 accusations against Biden, I think she has a flair for the dramatic and weaves her own reality—essentially the conclusion you reached after reading her description of Putin. Your suggestion about her possible Biden fixation is plausible.

      I appreciate your careful reading of my 2020 post. I wrote a follow-up four days later when the drumbeats were becoming louder.
      WordPress reminded me about it by linking to it below this piece.

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  5. Thanks for this update AND for the comments it has inspired. I can imagine that more than one US citizen who has moved to Russia ends up having second thoughts. And her quotation which you included — “President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image protects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity.” — is certainly at odds with my understanding of the oligarch billionaire who (tragically) appears to deal with political opposition using sophisticated poison and/or open windows in tall buildings.

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    1. I’m sorry willedare, I didn’t mean to cob from your post! It was the second thing I thought of when I read about this a couple of days ago; that piece had a photo of Ms. Reade making her pronouncements, in Russia, with Maria Butina seated to one side of Tara Reade.

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  7. In the world of politics facts, distortions and downright lies have parallels with tradeable items in financial markets; they have variable valuables which rise and fall. Next year she could be a 5 cent column in a supermarket magazine.
    I am somewhat sceptical of folk who ‘hightail’ it to Russia. (that includes Snowden) During the British notorious spy scandal of the 1950s/60s. Two characters Guy Burgess and Kim Philby high placed officials who had been spying for the USSR for many years, fled there when the authorities were closing in. Both lived to regret it. And they had been useful.
    Tara Reade is nowhere near of that sort of currency. As others have pointed out she will find Russia ‘different’, and it is likely will be subject to surveillance and suspicion, as possibly being a very deep cover plant. Never underestimate the duplicitous and convoluted mindsets of the Intelligence and Security worlds, particularly in Russia.
    In the febrile world of the current Republican & MAGA toxicity none of this matters a damn anyway. They have a story to run with, that’s all they care about. Do they care about Trump’s crimes, of course not. Judgement and Perspective went out of their window a long time ago.

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