During the 2020 election, former Joe Biden staffer Tara Reade claimed that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993.
Unsurprisingly, Reade's allegations were met with hostility and suspicion by pretty much all of the mainstream media. In an era when every #MeToo accusation is supposed to be taken seriously, Reade was dismissed as a crank and a crackpot.
The efforts to discredit Reade are so pervasive that, in its article about the assault allegations, Wikipedia slanders her character after just three paragraphs.
It's a weird, sad, indeterminate story. But I gotta say, I wasn't expecting, well, this:
A former staffer who accused Joe Biden of sexual assault has defected to Moscow and spoken to Russian state media in a news conference that lasted several hours. ...
After being out of the headlines for years, Reade turned up in Moscow on Tuesday, where she sat alongside convicted Kremlin spy Maria Butina and answered questions from Russian state media.
Everyone right now:
Reade claimed that she defected to Russia "following death threats she received this year after she reiterated her accusations regarding Biden." That's, I mean, well, it's an explanation. It's kind of an unbelievable one. You get death threats and you flee to Russia? Why not just, you know, Canada? Or even England? Why Russia?
Reade, meanwhile, said during the press conference that "this illusion of Russia as an enemy is propagated by a few Washington elites who are determined to cause problems."
Yikes.
