A woman who accused US President Joe Biden during the 2020 US presidential race of sexual assault appeared on Tuesday in Moscow, where she said she was asking US President Vladimir Putin for Russian citizenship.
Tara Reade, who worked in Biden’s congressional office for a short period in 1993, said she wanted to stay in Russia after a Republican lawmaker told her she was in physical danger.
Reade, 59, said in a streamed interview with the Sputnik media group that she had arrived in Russia as a vacationer.
Photo: Reuters
However, she said: “When I got off the plane in Moscow, for the first time in a very long time I felt safe, and I felt heard and felt respected.”
Reade sparked headlines in early 2020 by claiming that then-US senator Biden sexually assaulted her in a Capitol Hill corridor in August 1993, when she was 29.
Her accusation came just as Biden was ramping up his campaign against then-US president Donald Trump, who himself has faced accusations of sexual abuse and rape.
Biden categorically denied her claim.
“It is not true. I’m saying unequivocally it never, never happened,” he said.
Reade said she filed a complaint after the alleged incident, but no record of it has been found.
However, a 1996 court document records her ex-husband mentioning that she had complained of sexual harassment while working in Biden’s office.
It is not clear if her allegations have ever been formally investigated.
Reade, who called herself a geopolitical analyst, said in the Sputnik interview that after making her allegations public in 2020, she was threatened with prison, her life was threatened and she was called a Russian agent.
Sitting alongside Maria Butina, a Russian lawmaker who was arrested and imprisoned in Washington in 2018 as an alleged spy, Reade told the interviewer she has “always loved Russia.”
“I do not see Russia as an enemy nor do many of my fellow American citizens,” she said.
She had one “large” request.
“I’d like to apply for citizenship in Russia, from the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin,” she said.
“I do promise to be a good citizen,” she said, adding that she also wants to hold onto her US citizenship.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS