Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee, has the right to defend himself, but Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who accused him of sexually assaulting her, has a "right to be heard" as well, Rep. Eric Swalwell said Friday, while trying to turn the conversation around to accusations that have been made in the past about President Donald Trump.
"She has a right to be heard and I'm not going to question her motives and the vice president didn't either," the California Democrat told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "He didn't say she was a liar or that she's not his type and those are all things President Trump said about 25 people who have accused him."
Earlier in the morning, Biden insisted, after issuing a statement denying Reade's claims that he assaulted her in 1993, that he is "saying unequivocally it never happened, and it didn't."
He also called on the Senate to search through the National Archives about any report Reade may have made, and insisted that the documentation would not be in his Senate records being held at the University of Delaware, which recently resealed them.
Meanwhile, Biden had said during the 2018 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was also being accused of sexual assault, that his accuser should be heard, and Swalwell agreed that "we should believe this woman and then we should also look to other facts that may exist."
Swalwell added that the arguments come as there are questions about leadership and character in the United States while it is fighting against the coronavirus pandemic.
"The vice president has the experience to bring us out of this," said Swalwell, who had also campaigned shortly for the 2020 nomination. "The president is the worst possible person to handle this crisis and I think that's what's on the ballot this November more than anything."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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