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Biden Accuser Turned Down By Me-Too Women’s Organization

March 24, 2020

A former staff member of Joe Biden who says he acted inappropriately toward her was turned away by a legal defense fund that spends millions of dollars supporting sexual harassment lawsuits by women.

A staff member of the organization, Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, first encouraged the Biden accuser but then in February told her the organization can’t help her because Biden is running for president and taking him on in court might jeopardize the organization’s nonprofit status, according to a story published by The Intercept on Tuesday, March 24.

A tax law expert told The Intercept the explanation doesn’t make sense, because as long as the organization uses the same “long-established neutral criteria” it uses toward other targets in a manner “completely independent of their running for office,” the organization would not be violating tax law governing nonprofit groups.

The managing director of the public relations firm that works for Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund is also a top adviser to the Biden presidential campaign, according to The Intercept.

The accuser, Tara Reade, spoke publicly in April 2019 in support of a Democratic female Nevada politician who accused Biden of sniffing her hair and slow-kissing the back of her head just before a campaign event in November 2014.

Reade told The Union, a northern California newspaper, that Biden on multiple occasions touched her inappropriately when she worked in his U.S. Senate office in Washington D.C. in 1993, then in her mid-20s.

“He used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck. I would just kind of freeze and wait for him to stop doing that,” Reade said last year, according to The Union, adding that when she complained to the U.S. Senate personnel office Biden’s staff made her work life unbearable and she eventually quit.

Biden has been accused of inappropriately touching women on multiple occasions, including when he was vice president.

Reade was attacked last year by some left-of-center commentators, who noted her support for Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary. (She later moved to Bernie Sanders.) They also noted her past public praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Reade says her accusation has nothing to do with politics, and that she strongly opposes the re-election of President Donald Trump, who is Biden’s likely opponent in the November 2020 general election.

Reade first contacted Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which is an arm of the National Women’s Law Center, in February 2020, looking for help.

Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund has committed more than $10 million to help fund 174 legal cases for women who have claimed sexual harassment, according to the organization’s web site.

“There is more to the story of the harassment that she did not feel safe sharing at that time,” a staff member of the National Women’s Law Center wrote in an internal note at the time that she shared with Reade, according to The Intercept.

The story in The Intercept does not describe the additional details of what Reade says she experienced from Biden.


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