A man who worked in Joe Biden’s Senate office at the same time as Tara Reade in 1993 said that she was fired due to poor performance, not because she was retaliated against for complaining about experiencing sexual harassment in the office. Dozens of other staff members questioned other key aspects of her allegations, including that she was asked to serve drinks at a fundraiser.
Ben Savage, who was a systems administrator in the then-senator’s office from 1993 to 1996, told PBS NewsHour in an article published Friday that he witnessed Reade mishandling her job of processing constituent mail.
“Of all the people who held that position, she’s the only one during my time there who couldn’t necessarily keep up or who found it frustrating,” Savage said.
Savage said that he told deputy chief of staff Dennis Toner about Reade’s performance issues. Toner maintained that he does not remember Reade but said that he recalled Savage was a good worker.
Reade declined to be interviewed by PBS NewsHour, but her attorney Douglas Wigdor said that she does not remember Savage and disputed his assertion that her termination had nothing to do with complaints of sexual harassment.
“Ms. Reade recalls that there was a lot of nitpicking regarding her performance in the office,” Wigdor said. “She was also very nervous at that point and distracted, so it is possible that from time to time, there was a mistake made … but her performance had nothing to do with her termination.”
Reade, 56, alleges that when she worked in his Senate office in 1993, Biden sexually assaulted her and sexually harassed her by inappropriately touching her hair and neck and by forcibly kissing her and penetrating her with his fingers. She also said staff members once asked her to serve drinks at an event because they said Biden liked her legs. Reade says that she complained about the harassment, but not the assault, to top staff members, who deny hearing any complaint from her.
Several friends and Reade’s brother have told news outlets in recent weeks that Reade told them about sexual harassment or assault in Biden’s office, with varying degrees of detail. A 1996 court document shows that she complained about sexual harassment in Biden’s office to her ex-husband.
Biden has vigorously denied Reade’s allegations. On Thursday, Biden said that he does not remember Reade working in his office in 1993.
Dozens of former staff members who spoke to PBS NewsHour also refuted Reade’s telling of a tense meeting with top staff members in which she was told that Biden wanted her to serve drinks at a fundraiser because he liked her legs.
More than 50 former staff members said that they could not recall attending a fundraiser for Biden in D.C., and some noted that Biden rarely attended D.C. events in order to take the train home to his family in Delaware each night. Two men said that Biden specifically did not want women to serve drinks such as coffee.
“He didn’t want an image of a young woman staffer serving him,” said former staff member John Earnhardt, who took over for Reade after she left.
Former staff members did, however, recall Biden frequently touching women without warning but said that it was seen as an endearing, comforting quality rather than sexual in nature.
“There were times, as I now look back, that I think we messed up. We should have said something about that,” one former staffer said. “We probably should have recognized that made people uncomfortable.”
