A Response to the USA Today Article on Tara Reade's Allegations

Former Biden staffer Tara Reade
(Max Whittaker/The New York Times)

After seeming to fly under the radar for a while, former Biden staffer Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against her ex-boss are finally a major point of focus. It's no surprise, then, that they're getting pushback—and, given that the target of the accusations is the presumptive Democratic nominee, that the pushback often takes a disgusting form. Michael Stern's recent USA Today article is a prime example of both the pushback itself and the vile form it takes. While its goal is to discredit Reade's allegations, all it ends up demonstrating is that prosecutors have no actual expertise when it comes to psychology or uncovering the truth, and that USA Today has editorial standards somewhat lower than the Mariana Trench.

After a brief introduction ("During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases...When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them..."), Stern delves into his reasons for doubting Reade's allegation, each laid out with its own subheading. I will attempt to go through all of them as concisely as possible and demonstrate why his arguments fall woefully short, and reveal him to be far from any sort of objective source on Reade's credibility.

Stern's first reason for skepticism is that Reade "Delayed reporting…twice." "[I]t is reasonable," he intones,

to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade’s decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable—but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.

We are already off to a poor start. Several of Reade's acquaintances have confirmed she told them her story long ago, and it is far from unheard of for sexual assault victims to wait decades before coming forward. The fact that this fact could be missed by a liberal like Stern after the Kavanaugh affair in 2018 is quite remarkable, if not indicative of willful blindness.

Next is Reade's "Implausible explanation for changing [her] story." Stern explains:

When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it in an interview with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter’s tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down” and didn't tell the whole story.

It is hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility.

That someone would struggle to talk about probably the most traumatic incident in their life is actually not at all hard to believe. Neither is it hard to imagine that, after the backlash she received due to her initial allegation, Reade would sit back and hope Biden's campaign would tank all on its own (as it almost did) rather than trying to find someone else to tell her full story to.

Next subheading: "People who contradict Reade’s claim." All three of these people are former Biden staffers who deny Reade made a complaint to them. Obviously, even if Reade made no such complaint her allegations about the sexual assault could still be true. It's also quite possible that people who worked for Biden have some loyalty to him and aren't being honest. As journalist Paul Blest notes, Biden aide Dennis Toner—one of the three people Stern mentions here—"not only called the allegation 'preposterous' but denied ever knowing Reade at all, something that’s much more far-fetched than anything Reade has said."

In the following section, Stern notes that Reade claims she filed a written complaint against Biden, but no copy could be found and she didn't keep a copy herself. "It is odd," he remarks, "that Reade kept a copy of her employment records but did not keep a copy of a complaint documenting criminal conduct by a man whose improprieties changed 'the trajectory' of her life." It is actually not odd that a woman wouldn't want to keep a memento of the time her boss sexually assaulted her—and the fact no other record could be found could have something to do with the fact that Biden's senate papers are sealed until two years after he leaves public life.

The next mark against Reade is her "Memory lapse":

Reade has said that she cannot remember the date, time or exact location of the alleged assault, except that it occurred in a "semiprivate" area in corridors connecting Senate buildings. After I left the Justice Department, I was appointed by the federal court in Los Angeles to represent indigent defendants. The first thing that comes to mind from my defense attorney perspective is that Reade’s amnesia about specifics makes it impossible for Biden to go through records and prove he could not have committed the assault, because he was somewhere else at the time.

For instance, if Reade alleged Biden assaulted her on the afternoon of June 3, 1993, Biden might be able to prove he was on the Senate floor or at the dentist. Her memory lapses could easily be perceived as bulletproofing a false allegation. 

It's actually quite common for victims of trauma to have fragmented and vague memories of the event in question—something it's hard to imagine Stern wasn't aware of.

Next up: the "The lie about losing her job." After originally claiming "she felt pushed out and left Biden's employ" after she refused to serve drinks at an event, according to The Union, Reade now says she was fired for filing her sexual harassment complaint. Again, the fact Reade was reluctant to tell her full story is not at all surprising, and feeling "pushed out" and leaving "Biden's employ" already sounds like a euphemism for being fired.

But, Stern, goes on, Reade had "Compliments for Biden" as recently as 2017: "It is bizarre that Reade would publicly laud Biden for combating the very thing she would later accuse him of doing to her." Is it? Survivors  of abuse and assault often defend and make excuses for their abuser, especially if it's someone they knew beforehand. Presumably Reade went to work for Biden because she agreed with his positions and thought he had some value as a political figure, and there were likely plenty of friendly interactions she had with him during her employ. Assuming she's telling the truth, it's not shocking she would rather emphasize (and remember) the good side of Joe Biden rather than focusing on the time he assaulted her.

The next three sections ("Rejecting Biden, embracing Sanders," "Love of Russia and Putin" and "Suspect timing") are where the article takes a turn for the truly disgusting. As the titles imply, here Stern focuses on Reade's support for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, a 2018 blog post she wrote praising Vladimir Putin, and the fact that she came forward with her allegations against Biden after he won a string of primary victories. At best, all of this offers a possible motive Reade would have to lie. Stern, however, uses it to insinuate Reade at least suffers from emotional instability (given she had previously criticized Putin, and has now disavowed her former praise) and possibly has a loyalty to a foreign despot. He even manages to work in smear against Sanders, claiming that he has "a long history of ties to Russia[.]" The source linked to in order to back up this claim is a Politico article about footage of Bernie and Jane Sanders' 1988 trip to the Soviet Union—hardly evidence of the sinister Russian ties Stern seems to be hinting at.

Reade's misguided, and now-disavowed, praise for Putin has no bearing on the truth of her accusations so I won't waste any time on it. Using Reade's support for Sanders as evidence against her allegation is just taking a page from the playbook conservatives relied on to try to discredit Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh's accusers—and it's obvious why she would support the Democratic candidate who didn't assault her over the one who, she alleges, did. Her "suspect timing" is not actually suspect, either: as noted earlier, she would have probably been hoping Biden would tank all on his own and retire into obscurity. Once his campaign had come back from the dead and he was well on his way to the Democratic nomination, it would have been obvious that her story was still relevant. Besides, if Reade's allegations were designed to inflict maximum damage on Biden, wouldn't it have made sense to attack before he had won "a string of March primary victories [that] threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination"?

After this despicable garbage, Stern addresses the recently unearthed call from Reade's mother to Larry King Live, in which she talks about how her daughter left "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." Because her call was anonymous, Stern thinks, Reade's mother should have been willing to go into graphic detail about what happened instead of only vaguely hinting at it. This is truly bizarre thinking. Is it really hard to believe that a mother calling into a live TV show—even anonymously—wouldn't want to discuss her daughter's sexual assault in detail? For a former prosecutor, perhaps it is. For the rest of us, it should be obvious why she would want to exercise some discretion when telling her daughter's story, apparently without that daughter's permission.

Stern also pooh-poohs this evidence on the grounds that "I’ve never met a woman who stayed silent out of 'respect' for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter’s sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice." Again, Stern betrays either deliberate obtuseness or a lack of even basic knowledge about human psychology. It is entirely conceivable that Reade might have rationalized her assault as being partly her fault (self-blaming being common among assault survivors) and not wanted to publicly embarrass—and potentially damage the career of—a man she had respected enough to go to work for. And the idea that the choice was between "painful silence" or "justice" reveals absolutely no understanding of the fate that befalls many survivors of assault if they come forward. Talk to Christine Blasey Ford or any of Donald Trump's victims about the "justice" they got by telling their stories.

Next, Stern tries discredit the corroboration offered by Reade's acquaintances (her brother, several friends, a former colleague) by implying that perhaps they, too, are lying. Or perhaps Reade simply lied to them: "Let’s say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, that’s all her friends would know and all they could repeat." The idea that a woman would lie to her friends about being sexually assaulted in order to "save face" seems rather unlikely at best, but that's the best explanation Stern apparently has for why Reade would have spent decades telling the same story.

Lastly, there is a "Lack of other sexual assault allegations" against Biden. Of course, there were those "several women" who spoke last year about how Biden had made them uncomfortable—one of whom, Stern lets us know, he wrote an article criticizing. But Reade is the only person to have publicly accused Biden of sexual assault. "It is possible that in his 77 years, Biden committed one sexual assault and it was against Reade," Stern admits. "But in my experience, men who commit a sexual assault are accused more than once...like Donald Trump, who has had more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault leveled against him and who was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia."

But, as it turns out, Biden may have been accused of sexual misconduct more than once. In a 2008 piece published in the left-wing magazine CounterPunch, political journalist Alexander Cockburn wrote the following:

Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like.  On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident.

As it stands, he has a well-documented problem respecting women's personal space. It may have once been easy to treat that as some innocent byproduct of his being of an older generation—as I once did—but now that there is a well-corroborated accusation of sexual assault against him, it should be harder to overlook.

Stern wraps up with a section titled "What remains," concluding with some theatrical hand-wringing ("I've dreaded writing this piece") and an anecdote about how, as a prosecutor, he questioned the credibility of a rape claim that later turned out to be false. Naturally, he also makes sure to clarify that he is actually the best friend the #MeToo movement, and sexual assault survivors, could ever have:

We can support the #MeToo movement and not support allegations of sexual assault that do not ring true. If these two positions cannot coexist, the movement is no more than a hit squad. That’s not how I see the #MeToo movement. It’s too important, for too many victims of sexual assault and their allies, to be no more than that. 

This is probably the worst article I've ever responded to on this blog, and absolutely one of the worst I've read from any outlet. Regardless of whether you believe Reade's allegation, it deserves to be discussed more seriously, and in better faith, than Stern appears capable of. I hope my point-by-point dissection makes that clear. But I thought it might also help to summarize my arguments once more, in a format more amenable to Michael J. Stern and USA Today. So here it is:

Why I'm skeptical about Michael Stern's skepticism about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden: Blogger

During my six years as a blogger, I've written responses to many articles. The vast majority of them have been dogshit. When media outlets publish an article, my default response is to give the writer a chance to make their points. But as I read Michael J. Stern's article in USA Today, I became increasingly disgusted. Here are some of the reasons why:

Poor understanding of human psychology. Throughout his article, Stern shows he understands very little about how sexual assault victims process trauma, or human psychology in general. We aren't talking the fine points here, he doesn't even have a Psych 101-level grasp of this stuff.

Blatantly political motivations. Between his defense of Biden, his focus on irrelevant Russia bullshit and his gratuitous smear of Bernie Sanders, it's pretty clear Stern falls somewhere in the insufferable "#Resist" Democrat camp. His Twitter bio confirms this, with phrases like "#Resisting all things Trump" and "#BlueNoMatterWho." Since he believes Tara Reade's political views should be treated as counterevidence against her sexual assault allegations, it's only fair to use his own political views as a reason to discount the sincerity of his article.

Full of irrelevant points. Stern's digressions about Bernie Sanders' supposed "long history of ties to Russia" and Tara Reade's Putin blog post show he's not able to focus on actual evidence, and raise questions about his emotional stability.

Former prosecutor. A prosecutor's job isn't to find the truth, it's to get a conviction. They don't deserve to be treated as experts on human psychology, or credibility, or truth, or anything. Many of them are also, frankly, freaks. If you don't believe that, just watch any true crime show about someone who was wrongly convicted and listen to what the prosecutor who put them behind bars has to say. I don't like to make blanket statements, but a lot of these people were born without souls. While Stern's political convictions put him in an odd spot for a former prosecutor—arguing for an acquittal in the court of public opinion, not a conviction—he marshals all the scummiest tricks of his trade to portray Tara Reade as a villainous harpy out to destroy good old Joe Biden.

What remains. The article is, once again, very bad.