The lawyer representing Tara Reade, a former aide to Joe Biden who claims the former vice president sexually assaulted her, has dropped Reade as a client as of Friday.
Attorney Doug Wigdor said that his decision to no longer represent Reade is “by no means a reflection on whether then-Senator Biden sexually assaulted Ms. Reade,” adding that he believes his former client’s accusation against the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“On that point, our view … has not changed,” Wigdor said, citing a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll showing that a majority of voters believe Reade’s claims.
Reade went public with graphic details of her claim on March 25. She alleges that when she was working as a staff assistant for Biden in 1993, she was told by a top staffer to bring the Delaware senator a duffel bag in a Senate building. When she met with him, he pinned her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers while forcibly kissing her.
Wigdor, who represented Reade for only two weeks, shot to notoriety as the #MeToo movement picked up steam, taking on several discrimination cases against high-profile men, including movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
The attorney did not elaborate on his reasons for ending his representation of Reade but did offer words of support for her against what he said was a double standard in the media.
“We also believe that to a large extent Ms. Reade has been subjected to a double standard in terms of the media coverage she has received,” Wigdor said. “Much of what has been written about Ms. Reade is not probative of whether then-Senator Biden sexually assaulted her, but rather is intended to victim-shame and attack her credibility on unrelated and irrelevant matters.”
His departure comes as California defense attorneys scrutinize several criminal cases where Reade testified for the prosecution as an expert in domestic violence cases, saying they are concerned she misrepresented her credentials.
Send a tip to the news team at NR.
This is just a pretext. Her story was full of holes. When Biden categorically denied her allegations, he essentially called her a liar, giving her a cause of action to sue him for defamation of character, the same reason Summer Zervos sued Trump. By next month, Reade will be forgotten and Trump will have moved on to some other desperate ploy to discredit Biden.