The Tara Reade case

Sam Smith - A reader writes, "Has Tara Reade done some head-scratching things?  Without question.  Is she unreliable with respect to her business dealings (including tenancy) over the past few years?  It seems so.  But the degree to which any of that has a bearing on her accusation against Joe Biden is questionable at best.  Why should all of the inadvisable things a woman has said or done be used against her when she reports sexual assault?  Why does Biden's questionable record on his behavior with women not make it more imperative that this case be investigated?"

The Progressive Review doesn't always come up with answers. Lots of time it merely raises questions. In a case like this, one of the questions is: does one logically trust the accuser? I don't have the answer, but consider it fair and wise to bring up possible problems. In Reade's case these would include:

• Why did she wait 27 years to bring these charges? Why did she not bring them up when Biden was running for Senate or Vice President?
• Why did she misstate in court her undergraduate degree status and apparently exaggerated her role in Biden's office?
• Michael J. Stern, USA Today: -During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases. The vast majority came early in my career, when I was a young attorney at a prosecutor’s office outside Detroit...When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them. But as the news media have investigated Reade’s allegations, I’ve become increasingly skeptical. (His reasons follow)
• .In a now-deleted 2018 Medium post Reade called Putin “a compassionate, caring, visionary leader” and said, “To President Putin, I say keep your eyes to the beautiful future and maybe, just maybe America will come to see Russia as I do, with eyes of love.”
• While there is good reason why a victim of sexual violence would say nothing, Reade testified as a government witness in Monterey County courts for nearly a decade, describing herself as an expert in the dynamics of domestic violence who had counseled hundreds of victims. Does her handling of the Biden charges reflect such expertise?
• Politico reported:
  

  Six cases involving Reade’s testimony are already under review by the Sixth District Appellate Program, Executive Director Patrick McKenna told Politico. The review will determine whether the attorneys can petition a judge to review their clients’ conviction, and potentially order a new trial.

  .... He said the calls for a review came as news reports raised questions about her background and detailed her credentials, including the fact that she did not complete an undergraduate degree.“Last week, I was informed she testified as an expert. Last week I was also informed she lied about her credentials. I didn’t connect the dots on the significance of those two things until yesterday when I was contacted by an attorney,” McKenna said. 

   None of this proves anything except it is the sort of stuff that should be on the table as people make their decision of whether to believe Reade or not.  It is still an open question for me but these are some of things I am considering.