Though it doesn’t happen often, sometimes CNN shocks us with random acts of journalism, and this is one of those occasions.
On Saturday, the network got around to covering new corroboration of Tara Reade’s allegations of sexual misconduct and assault by then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, probably because a portion of that corroboration came from the network itself.
Nothing like being forced into doing something you don’t really want to do, huh?
Newly surfaced video from 1993 appears to feature the mother of Tara Reade, a woman who accused presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of sexual assault, calling into a cable TV show to seek advice around the time of the alleged assault.
In a “Larry King Live” segment that aired on August 11, 1993, on CNN, an unnamed woman calls in to the show with her location identified on the screen as San Luis Obispo, California. The show was about the cutthroat nature of Washington, DC, politics and media.
“Yes, hello. I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington?” she asks. “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.”
“In other words, she had a story to tell but out of respect for the person she worked for, she didn’t tell it?” King responded.
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“That’s true,” the woman says.
Reade confirmed to CNN Friday night that the call-in voice was indeed her mother, Jeanette Altimus. She also confirmed that to The Intercept.
“I’ve been crying because I haven’t heard my mom’s voice in a few years. So it’s been a little emotional,” Reade said. “I miss her. I miss her voice.”
The former Senate aide had not agreed to discuss her allegations with CNN in the past, but she finally did on Friday. She recounted the same story she’s told now on several occasions to various media personalities and outlets:
She told CNN that in 1993, when she was working as an aide in Biden’s Senate office, she was asked to deliver a duffle bag to the then-Delaware senator. In a corridor somewhere in the Capitol Hill complex, Reade said Biden “had me up against the wall; he used his knee to spread open my legs,” and “put his fingers inside me.”
Reade said when she pulled away, Biden said to her, “Come on man. I heard — I thought you liked me.” Biden then looked angry, according to Reade, and said, “You are nothing to me. You are nothing.” She said that Biden eventually took her by the shoulders and said words to the effect of, “You’re OK. You’re fine,” before walking away.
Reade said she called her mother the evening of the alleged assault; her mom told her she should call the police, but she didn’t because, according her mother’s 1993 call-in to King, Reade had said she didn’t want to hurt Biden.
The Intercept reported that Reade’s brother and a friend who did not want to be identified also corroborated the story:
Her brother, Collin Moulton, and her friend, who has asked to remain anonymous, both confirmed that they heard about the allegations from Reade at the time. Reade’s mother died in 2016, but both her brother and friend also confirmed Reade had told her mother, and that her mother, a longtime feminist and activist, urged her to go to the police.
CNN also noted that The New York Times spoke to a friend of Reade’s who said Reade told her about the alleged assault at the time, while a second friend told the Times that Reade told her in 2008 — around the time Biden was being named as Barack Obama’s running mate — that he had touched her inappropriately.
The Washington Post interviewed Reade’s brother, who initially said that his sister had told him in 1993 that Biden had “behaved inappropriately by touching her neck and shoulders” but not about the alleged sexual assault.
But several days after that interview, the Post said, “he said in a text message that he recalled her telling him that Biden had put his hand ‘under her clothes.’”
Biden’s campaign is denying everything, of course. But even more telling than CNN’s random act of journalism and his denial is the silence from the hypocrites in the #MeToo movement who would be all over television lecturing us all about how we must “believe the accuser” if the alleged perp was a Republican.
Or Donald Trump.
