'It never happened': Joe Biden denies allegation he sexually assaulted former staffer Tara Reade

• Former Vice President Joe Biden vehemently denied an allegation that he sexually assaulted a former Senate staffer, Tara Reade, during a Friday interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
• "No, it is not true," Biden said. "I'm saying unequivocally: it never happened."
• In a statement released shortly before the interview, Biden called for the Secretary of the Senate to ask the National Archives to release the complaint Reade says she filed back in 1993.
• Earlier this week, Insider was the first to report an account from Reade's former neighbor corroborating details of her allegation against Biden that she shared at the time.
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In his first interview addressing the subject, former Vice President Joe Biden denied an allegation from a former Senate staffer, Tara Reade, that he sexually assaulted her in 1993.

"No, it is not true. I'm saying unequivocally: it never happened," Biden said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe".

Just before the interview, Biden called on the National Archives to release the complaint Reade says she filed back in 1993.

"I'm confident there is nothing, no one that I'm aware of filed a complaint, no one in my office at the time is aware of any such request or complaint," Biden said on Morning Joe. "I'm not worried about it at all. If there's a complaint, that's [the National Archives] where it would be."

Reade alleged that there could be records of her complaint in the documents from Biden's decades in the Senate that he archived at the University of Delaware, but Biden said those papers contained no personnel files.

Biden also denied having any non-disclosure agreements with anyone.

"Look, from the very beginning, believing women means taking claims seriously, look into it, vet it," Biden said. "Women should always be heard and have their claims vigorously investigated.

In the interview, Mika Brzezinski of "Morning Joe" pressed Biden on whether he stood by his comments during the 2018 confirmation battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, that if a woman comes into the public eye with a serious allegation, the "essence" of it is likely true.

"Look, women are to be believed given the benefit of the doubt, if they come forward and say something that happened to them, they should start the presumption that they're telling the truth," he responded. "Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts. And the facts of this case do not add up. And there's so many inconsistencies in what's been said in this case, just look at the facts. I assure you, this did not happen."

Earlier this week, Insider was the first to report an account from Reade's former neighbor corroborating details of her allegation against Biden that she shared at the time.

Reade's ex-neighbor Lynda LaCasse told Insider that in the mid-90s, Reade told her Biden assaulted her while the two lived in the same apartment complex.

Read the original article on Business Insider