WASHINGTON: A former staffer who accused US President Joe Biden of sexual assault has defected to Moscow, telling state media that she felt “safe” in Russia and would seek citizenship there.
Tara Reade, who hit headlines during the 2020 presidential race by accusing then-candidate Biden of sexually harassing and assaulting her, said she has decided to go to Russia after receiving threats in the United States.
Biden has vehemently denied the allegations, and no ex-Biden staffer has come forward to say they ever heard or witnessed about any kind of sexual misconduct in his Senate office.
In an interview with MSNBC in 2020, President Biden said he is “saying unequivocally, it never happened. It did not. It never happened.” Reade later faced credibility questions of her own, including about her education and other credentials.
After being out of the headlines for years, Reade turned up in Moscow, where she sat alongside convicted Kremlin spy Maria Butina and answered questions from Russian state media over many hours.
During a press conference, Butina promised to discuss the possibility of granting Russian citizenship to Reade and ask Putin “to fast-track her citizenship request.”
Butina was sentenced to 18 months in a United States prison in 2019 for conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent and now serves in the Russian parliament in President Putin’s party.
Reade said she decided to come to Russia following serious death threats she received recently after reiterating her accusations regarding Biden and announcing on Twitter that she was willing “to testify under oath in Congress if asked.”
Reade said, “When I got off the plane in Moscow, for the first time in a very long time, I felt safe, heard, and respected. That hasn’t happened in my own country.”
