What Did Joe Biden Do to Tara Reade? Sexual Assault Allegations Won't Go Away

With Joe Biden as the presumed Democratic candidate, it's all but guaranteed that he'll be going up against Donald Trump in the 2020 general election come November. And one name that you'll likely be hearing over and over again in the coming months— in relation to Biden — is Tara Reade.

The woman's allegations have plagued the former vice president since he first announced he was running for the Democratic ticket in April 2019. And although Biden has denied having sexually assaulted Tara back in the '90s, she has doubled down. Let's take a closer look at what Tara alleges Biden did when she managed interns at his Senate office. 

According to Tara's account, in the summer of 1993 — when she worked at Biden's Senate office — she was told to meet him in a corridor  to give him a duffel bag. That's when, Tara alleges, Biden pushed her up against a wall and sexually assaulted her.

The senator "had me up against the wall; he used his knee to spread open my legs," and "put his fingers inside me," she recently told CNN.

When Tara resisted, Biden was annoyed and allegedly said, "Come on man. I heard — I thought you liked me." His annoyance turned to anger, according to Tara, when he told her, "You are nothing to me. You are nothing."

Biden then grabbed her by the shoulders and said, "You're OK. You're fine," before he walked away.

In April 2019, Tara joined several other women in accusing Biden of inappropriate touching. “He used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck,” Tara told The Union. “I would just kind of freeze and wait for him to stop doing that.”

It wasn't until during a podcast with journalist Katie Halper in March 2020 that Tara came forward with even more serious allegations against Biden — which the presidential candidate has since denied.

"Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims," Biden's communications director, Kate Bedingfield, said in an April 2020 statement. "We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false."

In late April, a segment from CNN's Larry King Live from Aug. 11, 1993 resurfaced — and it reportedly features Tara's mother calling the show to seek advice about her daughter's situation with Biden.

The clip features the voice of an unnamed woman from San Luis Obispo, CA. "Yes, hello. I'm wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington?" she asked. "My daughter has just left there after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him."

Larry King responded, "In other words, she had a story to tell but out of respect for the person she worked for, she didn't tell it?"

"That's true," the woman replied.

No names or mention of sexual assault were included.

As for Tara, she's convinced the voice on the call is that of her mother, Jeanette Altimus, who died a few years ago. Tara shared with CNN that she called her mother the night of the alleged 1993 assault— and that Jeanette strongly advised her to go to the police. Tara didn't end up filing a report with authorities. However, she said her mother told her she had indeed called into Larry King Live.

"I think what makes me emotional is that I was really hard on her and I said, 'Why would you do that, it's scary to me,'" Tara told CNN. "I had told her not to do that and she did and she did it on her own and I know now. I wish I could go back and I could hug her and say thank you for being a good mom and trying to protect me."

Despite the fact that Biden has refuted these claims of sexually assault, we wouldn't expect the allegations to go away anytime soon. In fact, we fully expect the name Tara Reade to be thrown around even more leading up to Election Day on Nov. 3. And now you know why.