Lynda LaCasse, a former neighbor to Tara Reade, says she and Reade discussed her alleged sexual assault allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden between 1995 and 1996, telling
Business Insider : “This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it.”
In an interview with the AP, Reade detailed a 1993 encounter that she says occurred when she was asked by a supervisor to bring Biden his gym bag, as he was on his way down to the Senate gymnasium. She says Biden pushed her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building, groped her, and penetrated her with his fingers.
“He was whispering to me and trying to kiss me at the same time, and he was saying, ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’” she said. “I remember wanting to say stop, but I don’t know if I said it out loud or if I just thought it. I was kind of frozen up.”
Reade said that she pulled away and Biden looked “shocked and surprised,” and replied, “Come on, man, I heard you liked me.”
Reade, who was a staff assistant in Biden’s office at the time, said she wasn’t aware of any direct witnesses to the encounter.
Speaking to Business Insider, LaCasse said she recalls Reade becoming emotional as she recounted the alleged incident with Biden.
“I remember her saying, here was this person that she was working for and she idolized him,” said LaCasse. “And he kind of put her up against a wall. And he put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her. She felt like she was assaulted, and she really didn’t feel there was anything she could do.”
“She was crying,” LaCasse continued . “She was upset. And the more she talked about it, the more she started crying. I remember saying that she needed to file a police report.”
“I don’t remember all the details,” she added . “I remember the skirt. I remember the fingers. I remember she was devastated.”
LaCasse, a Biden supporter, is the first individual to corroborate Reade’s allegation.
“I personally am a Democrat, a very strong Democrat,” LaCasse said . “And I’m for Biden, regardless. But still I have to come out and say this.”
In addition to LaCasse, Lorraine Sanchez, a former legislative staffer to California State Senator Jack O’Connell, told Business Insider that Reade lamented about being “sexually harassed by her former boss while she was in DC.”
“What I do remember,” Sanchez explained “is reassuring her that nothing like that would ever happen to her here in our office, that she was in a safe place, free from any sexual harassment.”
Sanchez recounts that Reade was talking about Biden.
Sanchez lauded Reade’s resolve to speak out about her allegation, telling Business Insider: “It takes great courage and strength to come forward.”
“It’s much easier to keep silent. However, I also understand the duty we have as women to share our story regardless of who the perpetrator may be,” she added .
Sanchez reportedly worked with Reade between 1994 and 1996.
The development comes after fresh evidence supporting Reade’s assault claim resurfaced Friday. A video segment, dug up by NewsBusters, appears to show Reade’s mother talking about her daughter’s “problems” with a “prominent senator” on CNN’s Larry King Live in 1993.
“I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? 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,” the caller who Reade identifies as her mother is heard saying.
The call was first reported by The Intercept .
Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, issued a statement earlier this month denying the allegation.
“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women. He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: it is untrue. This absolutely did not happen,” said Bedingfield.
Biden has yet to personally respond to the allegation.
The AP contributed to this report.
DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS NEED TO COVER EACH OTHERS ASSES AS THEY ALL BELONG IN PRISON!
Nancy Pelosi Endorses Joe Biden: ‘The Personification of Integrity’
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
3:37
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president , calling him “a leader who is the personification of hope and courage, values, authenticity, and integrity,” as the presumptive Democrat nominee faces a sexual assault allegation from his former Senate staffer, Tara Reade.
Pelosi, in a prerecorded video shared Monday to social media, praised Biden as a “voice of reason” with experience in helping enact legislation like the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus program.
“I am proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States because he will be an extraordinary president,” Pelosi said. “He knows how to get the job done.”
She added: “When our nation faced the Great Recession, it was Joe Biden who led the implementation – and the accountability – of the Recovery Act, helping create and save millions of jobs. When the Democratic Congress was passing the Affordable Care Act, Joe Biden was a partner for progress in the White House and also championed the Cancer Moonshot.”
Pelosi’s endorsement follows former President Barack Obama, who waited until Biden all but wrapped up the nomination to announce his support for his former vice president.
The House Speaker’s endorsement also comes as new evidence supporting Reade’s assault claim has resurfaced. A 1993 video, dug up by NewsBusters, appears to show Reade’s mother discussing her daughter’s “problems” with a “prominent senator” on CNN’s Larry King Live .
“I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? 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,” a woman whom Reade identifies as her mother is heard saying.
The call was first reported by
The Intercept . The Biden campaign denies Reade’s allegations.
In an interview with the AP, she detailed a 1993 encounter that she says occurred when she was asked by a supervisor to bring Biden his gym bag, as he was on his way down to the Senate gymnasium. She says Biden pushed her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building, groped her, and penetrated her with his fingers.
“He was whispering to me and trying to kiss me at the same time, and he was saying, ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’” she said. “I remember wanting to say stop, but I don’t know if I said it out loud or if I just thought it. I was kind of frozen up.”
Reade said that she pulled away and Biden looked “shocked and surprised,” and replied, “Come on, man, I heard you liked me.”
Reade, who was a staff assistant in Biden’s office at the time, said she wasn’t aware of any direct witnesses to the encounter. She told the AP she did raise accusations of sexual harassment, but not assault, against Biden in multiple meetings with her supervisors, including Marianne Baker, Biden’s executive assistant; Dennis Toner, Biden’s deputy chief of staff; and Ted Kaufman, the senator’s chief of staff.
In a statement provided by the campaign, Baker said that in the nearly two decades she worked for Biden, “I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BLOG: DURING THE EIGHT YEARS OF THE OBAMA-BIDEN BANKSTER REGIME WE NEVER HEARD GROPER JOE COMPLAINT ABOUT THE LOOT HANDED OVER TO THEIR BANKSTER DONORS OR A COMMENT ON SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (ENDORSED BIDEN) AND HER CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO!
Biden repeatedly unloaded on big business and big banks, noting that “this is the second time we’ve bailed their asses out,” accusing the Trump administration of managing the stimulus for their benefit. He railed about banks like Wells Fargo that are “only alive because of the American taxpayer” giving their large corporate clients the first shot at CARES Act aid intended for small businesses.
Biden wants a new stimulus 'a hell of a lot bigger' than $2 trillion
By Michael Grunwald
Joe Biden wants a more progressive approach to economic stimulus legislation than Washington has taken so far, including much stricter oversight of the Trump Administration, much tougher conditions on business bailouts and long-term investments in infrastructure and climate that have so far been largely absent from congressional debates.
In a fiery half-hour interview with POLITICO, the presumptive Democratic nominee sounded a bit like his angrier and less moderate primary rivals, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, though in unexpurgated Biden style. The former vice president said that the next round of coronavirus stimulus needs to be “a hell of a lot bigger” than last month’s $2 trillion CARES Act, that it needs to include massive aid to states and cities to prevent them from “laying off a hell of a lot of teachers and cops and firefighters,” and that the administration is already “wasting a hell of a lot of money.”
Biden has been running a low-profile campaign during the pandemic, tweeting, filming videos and appearing on Sunday shows from his Delaware home while President Donald Trump has briefed the nation daily from the White House. Biden has let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speak for the Democratic Party during the debates over economic relief, offering supportive public statements that have faded into the background.
But stimulus is a subject close to his heart, and he passionately contrasted his own management of President Barack Obama’s $800 billion Recovery Act in 2009 with President Donald Trump’s approach to the trillions of dollars flowing out of Capitol Hill.
The Obama stimulus was wildly controversial, but it won bipartisan praise for its strict oversight and unusually low levels of fraud. In the interview, Biden was at his most indignant when he recounted how he recruited a gruff law enforcement veteran and government watchdog named Earl Devaney to oversee the Recovery Act in 2009, and how President Donald Trump fired the Pentagon inspector general who had been selected to oversee the CARES Act almost immediately after he signed it.
“I wanted to bring in the toughest son-of-a-b***h in the country—I really mean it, I’m not joking—because we wanted to make sure we did it by the numbers with genuine oversight,” Biden said. “Right now, there’s no oversight. [Trump] made it real clear he doesn’t have any damn interest in being checked. The last thing he wants is anyone watching that $500 billion going to corporate America, for God’s sake.”
The Trump campaign said it would not comment on the firing of Pentagon inspector general Michael Atkinson beyond the president’s public comments on April 4, when he attacked Atkinson for giving Congress the original whistleblower report about his call with the Ukrainian president that eventually led to his impeachment. “I thought he did a terrible job. Absolutely terrible,” the president said at the time. “He took a fake report and brought it to Congress, with an emergency. Okay? Not a big Trump fan—that, I can tell you.”
Biden repeatedly unloaded on big business and big banks, noting that “this is the second time we’ve bailed their asses out,” accusing the Trump administration of managing the stimulus for their benefit. He railed about banks like Wells Fargo that are “only alive because of the American taxpayer” giving their large corporate clients the first shot at CARES Act aid intended for small businesses. Over the last month, 26 million Americans have lost their jobs, and Biden said many of those jobs could be gone for good if mom-and-pop operations get left behind.
“We knew from the beginning that the big banks don’t like lending to small businesses,” Biden said. “I’m telling you, though, if Main Street businesses don’t get help, they’re gone.”
The CARES Act and three smaller coronavirus relief bills have all passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, and Biden was careful to avoid criticizing Pelosi and Schumer even as he criticized the results of the compromises they negotiated. He said he’s “in constant conservation” with both Democratic leaders, letting them know his priorities without interfering with their negotiations; he credited them with securing major increases in unemployment benefits and other improvements to Republican proposals that were initially skewed even further towards big business.
He was clearly disappointed that Pelosi and Schumer failed to secure any new aid to states in this week’s $484 billion package, but he suggested that could work out politically, because in the next round they’ll be able to blame Trump and other Republicans for looming state budget cuts and layoffs of first responders.
“They got what they could get,” Biden said. “I’ve been in too many negotiations to second-guess anybody else’s.”
Still, Biden suggested that after four rounds of legislation designed primarily to stanch the economic bleeding, the next round should include more forward-looking investments that could help the economy start to recover and grow once the virus is contained. He suggested a “trillion-dollar infrastructure program that can be implemented really rapidly,” as well as “dealing with environmental things that create good-paying jobs.”
Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have suggested that “green stimulus” would be a non-starter with Republicans, but Biden said investments in light rail, clean drinking water, and half a million electric vehicle chargers on the nation’s highways could help retool the economy for the future.
Biden also argued that long-term growth initiatives are America’s only hope to rein in a budget deficit that has suddenly ballooned to an unprecedented $4 trillion, and is sure to continue to expand as Washington continues to spend. He said that repealing the bulk of Trump’s $2 trillion tax cut would help limit the red ink—“It wasn’t worth the powder it will take to blow it to hell”—but ultimately, restoring jobs and investing in the future is “the only thing that grows the economy back so the deficit doesn’t eat you alive.”
Biden has loved talking about stimulus ever since he ran the Recovery Act, and he sounded comfortable returning to the topic from his Delaware home, although there were a couple of typically hard-to-follow tangents, and one brief coughing interruption that he attributed to swallowing a peanut the wrong way.
His main theme was the contrast between his legendary harassment of the Cabinet secretaries, governors and mayors in charge of spending Recovery Act dollars—he reminded me that he spoke with every governor except Alaska’s Sarah Palin, most of them repeatedly—and “the malpractice of this administration.”
“There’s no coordination. There’s no accountability. Come on, the guy waits to hold up money because he wants to make sure his name is on the checks!” Biden said.
Biden has been firing off a steady stream of tweets attacking Trump for failing to make sure America has enough tests and protective equipment, for complaining about his media coverage, and most recently for suggesting that drinking bleach might help cure the virus. But while Biden clearly hopes to persuade some 2016 Trump voters to back him in November, he also needs to make sure that progressive Sanders and Warren supporters don’t stay home.
BLOG: HERE’S GROPER JOE’S NEW PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK. THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY IS NOW A ‘POPULIST’
This week, Biden has taken flak from the left for including the corporate-friendly Democratic economist Lawrence Summers on internal calls. But on Friday night, he denounced corporate America as “greedy as hell,” echoing the structural critiques of the modern economy that fueled the Sanders and Warren campaigns.
He called for stronger assurances that small-business loans will go to small businesses, and that aid to larger corporations will come with strings prohibiting stock buybacks, executive bonuses or worker layoffs. But he also went beyond policy prescriptions, saying the pandemic might convince Americans that grocery clerks “and all the other folks out there saving our rear ends and risking their lives for eight bucks an hour” deserve a better deal. He thinks there could be a backlash against big corporations who have poured their profits into buybacks and dividends rather than worker training and research and development. He thinks the virus could deal a blow to short-term economic thinking and anti-government political thinking.
“I think there’s going to be a willingness to fix some of the institutional inequities that have existed for a long time,” Biden said. “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”
BLOG: DURING THE EIGHT YEARS OF THE
OBAMA-BIDEN BANKSTER REGIME WE NEVER
HEARD GROPER JOE COMPLAINT ABOUT THE
LOOT HANDED OVER TO THEIR BANKSTER
DONORS OR A COMMENT ON SEN. DIANNE
FEINSTEIN (ENDORSED BIDEN) AND HER
CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO!
Biden repeatedly unloaded on big business and big banks, noting that “this is the second time we’ve bailed their asses out,” accusing the Trump administration of managing the stimulus for their benefit. He railed about banks like Wells Fargo that are “only alive because of the American taxpayer” giving their large corporate clients the first shot at CARES Act aid intended for small businesses.
Biden wants a new stimulus 'a hell of a lot bigger' than $2 trillion
By Michael Grunwald
Joe Biden wants a more progressive approach to economic stimulus legislation than Washington has taken so far, including much stricter oversight of the Trump Administration, much tougher conditions on business bailouts and long-term investments in infrastructure and climate that have so far been largely absent from congressional debates.
In a fiery half-hour interview with POLITICO, the presumptive Democratic nominee sounded a bit like his angrier and less moderate primary rivals, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, though in unexpurgated Biden style. The former vice president said that the next round of coronavirus stimulus needs to be “a hell of a lot bigger” than last month’s $2 trillion CARES Act, that it needs to include massive aid to states and cities to prevent them from “laying off a hell of a lot of teachers and cops and firefighters,” and that the administration is already “wasting a hell of a lot of money.”
Biden has been running a low-profile campaign during the pandemic, tweeting, filming videos and appearing on Sunday shows from his Delaware home while President Donald Trump has briefed the nation daily from the White House. Biden has let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speak for the Democratic Party during the debates over economic relief, offering supportive public statements that have faded into the background.
But stimulus is a subject close to his heart, and he passionately contrasted his own management of President Barack Obama’s $800 billion Recovery Act in 2009 with President Donald Trump’s approach to the trillions of dollars flowing out of Capitol Hill.
The Obama stimulus was wildly controversial, but it won bipartisan praise for its strict oversight and unusually low levels of fraud. In the interview, Biden was at his most indignant when he recounted how he recruited a gruff law enforcement veteran and government watchdog named Earl Devaney to oversee the Recovery Act in 2009, and how President Donald Trump fired the Pentagon inspector general who had been selected to oversee the CARES Act almost immediately after he signed it.
“I wanted to bring in the toughest son-of-a-b***h in the country—I really mean it, I’m not joking—because we wanted to make sure we did it by the numbers with genuine oversight,” Biden said. “Right now, there’s no oversight. [Trump] made it real clear he doesn’t have any damn interest in being checked. The last thing he wants is anyone watching that $500 billion going to corporate America, for God’s sake.”
The Trump campaign said it would not comment on the firing of Pentagon inspector general Michael Atkinson beyond the president’s public comments on April 4, when he attacked Atkinson for giving Congress the original whistleblower report about his call with the Ukrainian president that eventually led to his impeachment. “I thought he did a terrible job. Absolutely terrible,” the president said at the time. “He took a fake report and brought it to Congress, with an emergency. Okay? Not a big Trump fan—that, I can tell you.”
Biden repeatedly unloaded on big business and big banks, noting that “this is the second time we’ve bailed their asses out,” accusing the Trump administration of managing the stimulus for their benefit. He railed about banks like Wells Fargo that are “only alive because of the American taxpayer” giving their large corporate clients the first shot at CARES Act aid intended for small businesses. Over the last month, 26 million Americans have lost their jobs, and Biden said many of those jobs could be gone for good if mom-and-pop operations get left behind.
“We knew from the beginning that the big banks don’t like lending to small businesses,” Biden said. “I’m telling you, though, if Main Street businesses don’t get help, they’re gone.”
The CARES Act and three smaller coronavirus relief bills have all passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, and Biden was careful to avoid criticizing Pelosi and Schumer even as he criticized the results of the compromises they negotiated. He said he’s “in constant conservation” with both Democratic leaders, letting them know his priorities without interfering with their negotiations; he credited them with securing major increases in unemployment benefits and other improvements to Republican proposals that were initially skewed even further towards big business.
He was clearly disappointed that Pelosi and Schumer failed to secure any new aid to states in this week’s $484 billion package, but he suggested that could work out politically, because in the next round they’ll be able to blame Trump and other Republicans for looming state budget cuts and layoffs of first responders.
“They got what they could get,” Biden said. “I’ve been in too many negotiations to second-guess anybody else’s.”
Still, Biden suggested that after four rounds of legislation designed primarily to stanch the economic bleeding, the next round should include more forward-looking investments that could help the economy start to recover and grow once the virus is contained. He suggested a “trillion-dollar infrastructure program that can be implemented really rapidly,” as well as “dealing with environmental things that create good-paying jobs.”
Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have suggested that “green stimulus” would be a non-starter with Republicans, but Biden said investments in light rail, clean drinking water, and half a million electric vehicle chargers on the nation’s highways could help retool the economy for the future.
Biden also argued that long-term growth initiatives are America’s only hope to rein in a budget deficit that has suddenly ballooned to an unprecedented $4 trillion, and is sure to continue to expand as Washington continues to spend. He said that repealing the bulk of Trump’s $2 trillion tax cut would help limit the red ink—“It wasn’t worth the powder it will take to blow it to hell”—but ultimately, restoring jobs and investing in the future is “the only thing that grows the economy back so the deficit doesn’t eat you alive.”
Biden has loved talking about stimulus ever since he ran the Recovery Act, and he sounded comfortable returning to the topic from his Delaware home, although there were a couple of typically hard-to-follow tangents, and one brief coughing interruption that he attributed to swallowing a peanut the wrong way.
His main theme was the contrast between his legendary harassment of the Cabinet secretaries, governors and mayors in charge of spending Recovery Act dollars—he reminded me that he spoke with every governor except Alaska’s Sarah Palin, most of them repeatedly—and “the malpractice of this administration.”
“There’s no coordination. There’s no accountability. Come on, the guy waits to hold up money because he wants to make sure his name is on the checks!” Biden said.
Biden has been firing off a steady stream of tweets attacking Trump for failing to make sure America has enough tests and protective equipment, for complaining about his media coverage, and most recently for suggesting that drinking bleach might help cure the virus. But while Biden clearly hopes to persuade some 2016 Trump voters to back him in November, he also needs to make sure that progressive Sanders and Warren supporters don’t stay home.
BLOG: HERE’S GROPER JOE’S NEW PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK. THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY IS NOW A ‘POPULIST’
This week, Biden has taken flak from the left for including the corporate-friendly Democratic economist Lawrence Summers on internal calls. But on Friday night, he denounced corporate America as “greedy as hell,” echoing the structural critiques of the modern economy that fueled the Sanders and Warren campaigns.
He called for stronger assurances that small-business loans will go to small businesses, and that aid to larger corporations will come with strings prohibiting stock buybacks, executive bonuses or worker layoffs. But he also went beyond policy prescriptions, saying the pandemic might convince Americans that grocery clerks “and all the other folks out there saving our rear ends and risking their lives for eight bucks an hour” deserve a better deal. He thinks there could be a backlash against big corporations who have poured their profits into buybacks and dividends rather than worker training and research and development. He thinks the virus could deal a blow to short-term economic thinking and anti-government political thinking.
“I think there’s going to be a willingness to fix some of the institutional inequities that have existed for a long time,” Biden said. “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”
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