The Biden campaign has taken to using the recent New York Times investigation into the Tara Reade allegations as its talking points.
On Wednesday, the Times fired back a strong response, accusing the Biden campaign of “inaccurately” describing its reporting to make his case for innocence.
The Times Report
The report in the NYT itself came under scrutiny for a questionable edit that was made after the fact.
The initial conclusion referenced inappropriate and unwanted touching and kissing by Joe Biden.
However, after the Biden campaign reportedly objected to the phrasing, the New York Times removed that sentence.
Even so, the publication is saying that it never exonerated Biden for the allegations being made by Reade and any attempt by Joe Biden to cite the paper as proving him innocent is inaccurate.
A spokesperson for the Times stated, “Our investigation made no conclusion either way.
“As Buzzfeed correctly reported, our story found three former Senate aides whom Reade said she complained to contemporaneously, all of whom either did not remember the incident or said that it did not happen.
“The story also included former interns who remembered Reade suddenly changing roles and no longer overseeing them, which took place during the same time period that Reade said she was abruptly reassigned.
“The Times also spoke to a friend who said Reade told her the details of the allegation at the time; another friend and Reade’s brother say she told them of a traumatic sexual incident involving Biden.”
The Playbook
This is a massive blow to the Biden campaign as reports broke only over the last two days that the Biden campaign was telling its surrogates to specifically cite the New York Times piece in their defense of Biden regarding these allegations.
In fact, both Stacey Abrahams and Amy Klobuchar, both of whom are believed to be on the shortlist of Biden VP candidates, have already started to put this plan into play.
Abrahams recently stated, “I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here. The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.
“The New York Times conducted a thorough investigation, and nothing in the Times review or any other later reports suggests anything other than what I already know about Joe Biden: That he will make women proud as the next President of the United States.”
Klobuchar also recently referenced the NYT piece, stating, “He has said, and I agree with this, you’ve got to get to the bottom of every case and all allegations. I think The New York Times — I haven’t read all the stories. I read that one. Your viewers should read that.
“It was very thorough. They interviewed people. And I have done a lot of work on this. I actually led the effort to change the rules in the U.S. Senate so that it is easier to bring these cases forward and so that we have taxpayers not paying for bad conduct.
“I think this case has been investigated. I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse, I worked with him on that. And I think that, again, the viewers should read the article. It was very thorough.”
Over the last few days, more evidence has been presented to back Reade’s version of the story.
With the Larry King video, the neighbor’s corroboration, and the rebuke by the Times, Biden has no choice but to make a formal statement to get something on the record regarding this specific allegation and the new information that has come to light recently.
Biden and his campaign may also want to change their game plan regarding using NYT talking points because now every surrogate referencing that report is being made to look the fool.
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