Court documents from 1996 now back the sexual assault charges against Joe Biden.
Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who accused Biden of digitally penetrating her in a secluded hallway in 1993, was involved in a contentious divorce in 1996.
According to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, her then-husband, Theodore Dronen, was fighting back against a restraining order she had filed agianst him.
In his court declaration, Dronen mentioned that Reade had told him she had been sexually harassed while working for Joe Biden–and that it had a “very traumatic” effect on her.
“I met Petitioner [Reade] in the spring of 1993 while working in Washington, D.C.,” Dronen wrote. “At the early stages of our dating, Petitioner felt comfortable confiding in me as we both worked for Members of Congress, and we shared many other common interests.
“On several occasions Petitioner related a problem that she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in U.S. Senator Joe Biden’s office,” he added.
“Petitioner told me that she eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senator’s office and left her position,” she continued. “I was sympathetic to her needs when she asked me for help, and assisted her financially, and allowed her to stay at my apartment with my roommate while she looked for work.
“It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on Petitioner, and that she is still sensitive and effected by it today.”
Dronen gives additional credibility to parts of Reade’s story. But he doesn’t specifically state that Biden himself harassed Reade–just she had dealt with workplace harassment while in his office. Nor does he specifically state that she was sexually assaulted.
But it does undercut a key point of Biden’s defense: his then-staffers have said they don’t remember Reade, and that nothing untoward happened.
Biden’s then-Chief of Staff, Ted Kaufman, had previously said: “She never came to me. I do not remember her, and had she come to me in any of these circumstances, I would remember her. But I do not, because she did not.”
If Dronen’s court declaration is true, it would mean Kaufman is likely mistaken–because Reade did, in fact, report harassment to her higher-ups and did work out a deal to leave his office.
Dronen’s claims give extra weight to Reade’s allegations. Already, Reade has been able to supply a long list of people she’s told over the years: her brother, a former coworker, a friend, and a former neighbor have all backed her story, telling the media that she told them about it more than two decades ago.
Most damningly, a 1993 video clip of Reade’s mother calling into CNN’s “Larry King Live” surfaced last month. In the clip, Reade’s mom asked about “going to the media” to report her daughter’s “problems” with a “prominent Senator.”