President Joe Biden's Sexual Assault Accuser Tara Reade Defects to Russia: 'The Kremlin is Accommodating'
May 31 2023, Published 12:18 p.m. ET
The ex-Senate staffer who accused Joe Biden of sexual assault ahead of the 2020 presidential election has defected to Russia, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Tara Reade, who worked for Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s, appeared in Moscow on Tuesday and gave an interview in which she confirmed she has moved to Russia amid safety concerns in the United States.
“I’m still kind of in a daze a bit but I feel very good,” Reade told the Russian state media outlet Sputnik News this week, according to the New York Post. “I feel very surrounded by protection and safety.”
“And I just really so appreciate Maria and everyone who’s been giving me that at a time when it’s been very difficult to know if I’m safe or not,” she added.
Reade first made headlines in 2020 when she accused then-presidential candidate Biden of sexual misconduct when she worked as his staffer in the early 1990s.
Although Biden unequivocally denied Reade’s allegations, and no other ex-Senate staffers came forward to corroborate Reade’s accusations, the 59-year-old accuser stood by her claims.
Also surprising was the revelation that Reade appeared in Moscow on Tuesday alongside convicted Russian spy Maria Butina.
Butina was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in a U.S. prison in 2019 after she was found guilty of conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent. She now serves in the Russian parliament in Vladimir Putin’s party.
Meanwhile, Reade told Sputnik News that she fled the U.S. for Russia after receiving alleged death threats connected to her accusations against Biden.
“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 I felt respected,” Biden’s accuser said. “That has not happened in my own country.”
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Reade reportedly applied for Russian citizenship this week, and Butina said she would speak directly to Putin in an effort to “fast-track [Reade’s] citizenship request.”
“And luckily, the Kremlin is accommodating,” Reade said. “So we’re lucky.”
Biden’s accuser also slammed Washington and defended Moscow during her interview on Tuesday. She said that “this illusion of Russia as an enemy is propagated by a few Washington elites who are determined to cause problems.”
