Former Joe Biden staffer Tara Reade told her husband at the time that she was sexually harassed while working for the senator, a court document from 1996 reveals.
The Tribune in San Luis Obispo, California, reports that the court document penned by Reade’s ex-husband does not name Biden as the person who harassed her, but discusses an incident she had at work.
Reade’s husband at the time, Theodore Dronen, wrote the court declaration filed on March 25, 1996. Dronen was contesting a restraining order Reade filed against him days after he filed for divorce, Superior Court records show.
The record states that Reade told Dronen about “a problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in U.S. Sen. Joe Biden’s office.”
“It was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on [Reade], and that she is still sensitive and effected by it today,” Dronen wrote.
Reade accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993 while she worked as an aide in his office. Biden has denied the allegations.
Dronen said he met Reade in the spring of 1993. The couple met while working for two different members of Congress on Capitol Hill.
Dronen wrote that Reade told him she “eventually struck a deal with the chief of staff of the Senator’s office and left her position.”
Reade’s attorney Douglas Wigdor told The Tribune on Thursday, “The affidavit from Ms. Reade’s ex-husband is further support that Ms. Reade was sexually assaulted and sexually harassed by then Senator Joe Biden.”
Biden’s chief of staff at the time, Ted Kaufman, defended Biden.
“I have consistently said what is the truth here — that she never came to me,” Kaufman told The Tribune. “I do not remember her, and had she come to me in any of these circumstances, I would remember her. But I do not, because she did not.”