WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden denied on Friday that he sexually assaulted a former U.S. Senate aide in 1993, in his first public remarks on the subject after he faced intense pressure to personally address the accusation.
“No, it is not true. I’m saying unequivocally it never, never happened,” Biden told MSNBC in an interview when asked about the accusation, which his campaign had previously denied.
A California woman named Tara Reade, who worked as a staff assistant in Biden’s Senate office from December 1992 to August 1993, had accused Biden in media interviews of pinning her against a wall in 1993, reaching under her skirt and pushing his fingers inside her.
Biden, 77, who will be the Democratic nominee to face Republican President Donald Trump, 73, in the Nov. 3 U.S. election, had faced growing pressure from within and outside his party to directly address the accusation.
“This is an open book. There’s nothing for me to hide,” Biden said in the interview, conducted from his home in Delaware where he is self-isolating during the coronavirus outbreak.
In a statement before the interview, Biden called on the U.S. Senate to ask the National Archives to release any personnel records that could indicate whether the aide filed a complaint against Biden at the time.
In the interview Biden said personal papers from his Senate years, which were donated to the University of Delaware and have yet to be made avai