‘This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Despite efforts by the left-wing press to maintain near silence on the rape scandal ensnaring presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, new revelations could make it impossible to ignore.
On Monday, a former neighbor of Biden victim Tara Reade provided a corroborating account, saying Reade had discussed the allegations in the 1990s, shortly after they allegedly transpired, according to Business Insider.
The neighbor, Lynda LaCasse, acknowledged being a Biden supporter but maintained that Reade was being truthful in her accusations, which outlets like the New York Times have desperately sought to discredit amid pressure from the Biden campaign.
“This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it,” said LaCasse, who recalled Reade telling her about the 1993 attack sometime around 1995 or 1996.
Business Insider said at least four independent sources have now confirmed that Reade previously discussed her assault. The others are her brother, Collin Moulton; a former coworker, Lorraine Sanchez; and a friend who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
The revelation follows a shocking disclosure of what appeared to be contemporaneous video evidence from the ’90s, in which Reade’s now deceased mother had apparently phoned into CNN‘s Larry King Live offering details about the rape.
#BREAKING: HERE is the video from August 11,1993’s ‘Larry King Live’ described by @TheIntercept (and Tara Reade) as allegedly featuring her mother calling in and alluding to Reade’s sexual assault claims against @JoeBiden (blog here by @ScottJW) https://t.co/fCgEqBnX7n pic.twitter.com/V5FGHskv56
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 24, 2020
The Biden campaign continues not only to issue robust denials of the accusations—although Biden himself has yet to address them publicly—but it pressured the New York Times into making stealth edits on a recent “investigation” that was largely sympathetic to the former vice president.
“Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims,” said Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield in a statement earlier this month. “We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false.”
Democrats in Congress, along with other left-wing media—and even high-profile #MeToo activists, such as actress Alyssa Milano—all have circled the wagons around Biden.
That has put them in the awkward position of admitting to blaring hypocrisy following their previous demands that all rape accusations from women against men in power should be given due credibility, regardless of whether they are provable.
“#BelieveWomen does not mean everyone gets to accuse anyone of anything and that’s that,” Milano recently claimed on Twitter. “It means that our societal mindset and default reaction shouldn’t be that women are lying.”
The #BelieveWomen mantra crested during the contentious confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced a series of increasingly difficult-to-swallow accusations.
The most prominent of which was California professor Christine Blasey Ford‘s hazy claim of a drunken encounter with the future judge during a high school party in the 1980s.
However, a subsequent FBI investigation determined that Ford’s account could not be corroborated after her supposed witnesses offered varying accounts. Other accusations against Kavanaugh were later determined to be outright lies by partisan activists who admitted wanting to damage his reputation.
Despite the widespread cover-up attempt, some prominent left-wingers have scoffed at the double standard and have rallied behind Reade. Among them were several former high-level staffers from Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s rival primary campaign.
Dear @DNC, you have two options:
1. Pull Biden now and win with Bernie
2. Keep Biden, re-elect Trump, and admit that suppressing progressives is the true purpose of your party#DropOutBiden https://t.co/YmVSZDWeKW
— Nick Brana – #DemExit #PeoplesParty (@nick_brana) April 25, 2020
Progressives didn’t make this happen.
Corporate Democrats chose Biden. https://t.co/95xVE0TkOt
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 25, 2020
Gray added that it was worth noting that Sanders was still on the ballot, although the Vermont socialist recently dropped his campaign and endorsed Biden following a string of primary defeats.
Taking no chances with the possibility that the scandal could help revive Sanders’s erstwhile campaign, the state of New York abruptly cancelled its primary, citing as its supposed reason the coronavirus pandemic.
The growing traction behind Reade’s accusations continued to fuel speculation about possible ways the Democrats might be trying to rig the outcome while confronting the realities of a deeply flawed candidate.
Biden already has faced intense scrutiny over his declining cognitive abilities, frequent fabrications and uncomfortable violations of personal space, as well as scandals over a litany of corrupt family business dealings surrounding his siblings and children.
The involvement of Biden’s son Hunter on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, played a prominent role in House Democrats’ recent impeachment effort against President Donald Trump.
Some have long speculated that the party may seek to dispatch with Biden in one of two ways: either using a brokered-convention process to replace him on the ballot, or else allowing him to run and invoking the 25th Amendment to declare him “unfit” after taking his oath of office.
The latter option would allow his yet-to-be-announced vice-presidential successor to complete the remainder of his four-year term while qualifying the enfeebled Biden for a lucrative tax-funded pension to round out his sunset years.
Reade’s accusation could help bolster the party elite’s efforts or derail them, but only if the timing coincides with Democrats’ parallel efforts to neutralize the lingering threat from Sanders and bring into the fold his supporters.
Any effort to usurp Biden’s legitimacy also could backfire with the black voters who helped elevate him in the primaries, if it gives the appearance of disfranchising them.