WASHINGTON -- Tara Reade, a former Senate aide who alleged Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, is being represented by a prominent lawyer and political donor to President Donald Trump's 2016 Republican campaign, as well as local and state Democrat candidates in New York.
Attorney Douglas Wigdor told The Associated Press that he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was a political motivation for his decision to represent Reade.
"We have decided to take this matter on because every survivor has the right to competent counsel," the firm said in a statement.
Meanwhile, court records show that Reade complained to her ex-husband during the 1990s that she had been a victim of sexual harassment while working in Biden's Senate office, providing the first contemporaneous record supporting her claims that sexual misconduct occurred when she worked for Biden.
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Reade has said for weeks that she was struggling to find a lawyer willing to represent her. She's accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she worked on his Senate staff. He has denied her allegation.
On Thursday, Reade said she wanted Biden to be "held accountable" and called on him to drop out of the presidential race. Her comments came in her first on-camera interview, conducted by former Fox News and NBC News journalist Megyn Kelly.
Pressed by a Florida television station about Reade's comment, Biden reiterated his denial of the allegation.
"The truth is what matters," he told Bay News 9. "In this case, the truth is these claims are flat-out false."
Wigdor is well known for his work on prominent cases related to sexual harassment and assault. He represented six women who accused Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct.
He has also represented a number of Fox News employees in cases alleging gender and racial discrimination at the network, including Juliette Huddy, one of the women who accused Bill O'Reilly of pursuing a sexual relationship with her and retaliating when she refused.
In 2018, he spoke out in the media defending Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.
Wigdor provided about $55,000 in campaign contributions in 2016 to Trump, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has also given tens of thousands of dollars to state and local Democratic politicians in New York, including New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
He has not donated to either Trump's or Biden's 2020 campaign.
Wigdor said he plans to help Reade in her dealings with the media and any independent investigations into her allegations that might occur. He said the two have not discussed bringing a lawsuit based on her claims, but he did not rule that out.
Wigdor suggested Reade's earlier struggles to find a lawyer to represent her were the result of "politics."
"I think highly of a lot of these people," he said. "These are my friends and colleagues, people who I respect, but they tend to be Democrats or liberals, and they were not interested, because of that, in representing Tara Reade."
Court records outlining her complaint to her ex-husband, part of more than 500 pages filed in connection with Reade's 1996 divorce in California, do not specifically say that Biden, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was the perpetrator, nor do they allege that she was sexually assaulted, her most recent claim.
"On several occasions petitioner related a problem that she was having at work regarding sexual harassment in U.S. Senator Joe Biden's office," Reade's ex-husband, Theodore Dronen, said in a court declaration in which he responded to her request for a temporary restraining order against him.
The existence of the document was first reported by The San Luis Obispo Tribune. In it, Dronen said he believed the events disturbed Reade and led to her departure in 1993 from Biden's office when he served in the Senate.
Reade has accused Biden of assaulting her in the Senate complex in 1993, placing his hand under her dress and penetrating her with his fingers.
The Biden campaign Friday cited news articles that it said showed inconsistencies in Reade's account and said in a statement: "The truth is that these allegations are false and that the material that has been presented to back them up, under scrutiny, keeps proving their falsity."
Information for this article was contributed by Alexandra Jaffe, Julie Pace and Brian Slodysko of The Associated Press; and by Stephanie Saul and Lisa Lerer of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/09/2020