Pressure growing on Biden to respond to sexual assault allegation

Pressure is mounting on Joe Biden, the presumptive US Democratic presidential nominee, to respond to a sexual assault allegation made by a former Senate aide in the 1990s.

Tara Reade, 56, claims that the sexual assault occurred in 1993, when she was a 29-year-old staff assistant for Biden, then a US senator from Delaware.

"His hands were on me and underneath my clothes and, yeah, he went, he went down my skirt but then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers," Reade said in a late March interview on the Katie Halper Show podcast.

"He was kissing me at the same time," she said.

Kate Bedingfield, the deputy manager and communications director of Biden’s election campaign, issued a statement rejecting the allegation. However, there has been no comment so far from Biden himself.

The denial has not eased media coverage of the claims, which have overshadowed other news about the 77-year-old former vice-president.

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign increasingly has tried to capitalize on the allegations against Biden.

On Wednesday, the Republican president’s  campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, told media outlets that  Biden was seeking to shield himself from criticism by avoiding personally addressing Reade’s allegation.

Biden has not been asked directly about the allegation in the online events and interviews conducted from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he has been confined due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Other women have accused Biden of touching or embracing them inappropriately in the past.

The allegations have led some Democratic voters to call on the former vice president to end his White House campaign.

"There is simply no moral justification for Biden to continue as the presumptive nominee," said Claire Sandberg, the former national organizing director of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

"Out of respect for survivors and for the good of the country, he should withdraw from the race," she added.

Sanders, a onetime front-runner in the Democratic race for the White House, ended his election campaign last month and endorsed Biden.

A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted this week about a general election matchup showed 44 percent of Americans would vote for Biden in the election, while 40 percent would vote for Trump.

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