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March 27, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – An ex-Senate staffer for former Vice President Joe Biden has come forward to accuse the Democrat presidential contender of sexual assault, presenting an apparent conflict with Biden’s own public declarations that sexual misconduct claims from women should be generally met with the presumption of truth.

Tara Reade detailed her story this week in interviews on Hill TV and the Katie Halper Show, Law & Crime reports. She says that in 1993, then-Senator Biden assaulted her in a “semi-private” stairwell on Capitol Hill.

“He was, at first, talking to someone, they went away, and then he said ‘Come here,’ and then when I gave him the gym bag, it happened all in one motion almost,” Reade says. “And he had me against the wall. And then his hands were down my skirt and up my skirt. And I was wearing–I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. And then, with his hand, he went from there and entered me–with his hand–and as he was trying to kiss me, and saying things to me.”

“He was trying to kiss me, and I was pulling away,” she continued. “And what I remember of that time is feeling really shocked and surprised because there was no real conversation right beforehand. There was no precursor. It just happened. And then, when he did that, I was obviously pulling away. And he pulled back and said, you know, ‘Come on man, I heard you liked me,’ something to that effect. And that’s what kind of jolted me–I was trying to think what I did wrong to bring that on to me. He looked angry and irritated with me […] And he said to me, when he pulled back, he pointed his finger at me, he said, ‘You’re nothing to me. You’re nothing.’ And he straightened his clothes and he went away.”

Reade, who has a history of criticizing Biden and championing socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders on social media, added that she “was in a very difficult position because he was my boss and he was like my dad’s age at the time.” She said beforehand she had admired Biden as “this champion of women’s rights in my eyes and I couldn’t believe it was happening. It didn’t seem–it seemed surreal. I just–I knew–I just felt sick.”

Law & Crime notes that Reade was one of eight women who accused Biden of inappropriate, unwanted touching in early 2019 (a notorious habit of the former vice president’s, which has often been captured on video). Reade says she did not share the full scope of her story at the time partly because she feared retaliation, and partly because the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund ultimately decided not to pursue the case because a suit against a presidential candidate could have risked the group’s nonprofit status.

So far, the Biden campaign has not responded to Reade’s allegations.

Whatever the truth of her claims, any response Biden ultimately makes risks a potential conflict with his own past statements on sexual assault. In 2018, when future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh faced rape and assault allegations from multiple women (none of whom had corroborating evidence, and all of whom struggled with inconsistencies in their stories), Biden said, “for a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, 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. But nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron.”

Biden has also argued that the length of time between an alleged incident and a woman going public should not be counted against a claim’s credibility:

The ardently pro-abortion Biden is the frontrunner for the Democrat presidential nomination to face President Donald Trump in November.