National Archives Debunks Biden's Claim, Says They Wouldn't Have Records of Allegations Against Him

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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Fans gather on the steps of the National Archives Building as they wait to watch the Washington Capitals NHL hockey Stanley Cup victory parade along the National Mall in Washington, Tuesday, June 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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During his interview on Friday on Morning Joe and in a separate statement, Joe Biden called on the National Archives to release any information they have about a complaint made by Tara Reade alleging he harassed her.

From Business Insider:

“There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be – the National Archives,” Biden said. “The National Archives is where the records are kept at what was then called the Office of Fair Employment Practices. I am requesting that the Secretary of the Senate ask the Archives to identify any record of the complaint she alleges she filed and make available to the press any such document. If there was ever any such complaint, the record will be there.”

But that’s not true.

As we observed earlier, this was basically ‘asking for show’ since the records aren’t in the National Archives as we explained.

Now the National Archives themselves is confirming that and saying Biden’s claim is false, according to the Daily Caller.

“Any records of Senate personnel complaints from 1993 would have remained under the control of the Senate,” the National Archives Public and Media Communications staff said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A National Archives spokesman also told Business Insider that the archives do not hold Office of Fair Employment Practices records.

Center for Legislative Archives spokeswoman Dorothy Alexander pointed the DCNF toward rules of access regarding House and Senate records held within the Center for Legislative Archives — rules that prohibit opening House records for 30 years and Senate records for 20 years. For both the House and the Senate, records that contain personal information closed by statute are closed for 50 years.

It remains unclear where Office of Fair Employment Practices records that involve Reade might have gone. Biden has not responded to a request for comment on the matter from the DCNF.

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But if they were able to find it that would confirm that the Biden staffers were lying about not knowing about any complaint.

Reade says she filed out a complaint and filed it with the appropriate Senate office at the time and that she also complained personally to Biden staffers including Ted Kaufman who is now in charge of the Biden ‘transition team.’ “He’s now denying that we ever had the meeting, and I watched him take notes,” she said. “Those notes would be in my personnel file, along with sick days or any kind of extra notes that I turned in.”
She believes that the Senate records held at the University of Delaware might not just hold the complaint but the attendant discussions she had with various staff members like Kaufman.

Meanwhile Biden is still refusing any request to to release or grant access to his University of Delaware records from the time period.

On top of all that when Biden announced that he would be running, he changed the nature of when those records would be unsealed and made available to the public. Initially the agreement said that it would be held until two years of him being out of public office. Now it’s two years from leaving “public life” (whatever that means). But the University of Delaware is saying that’s not now and they’re refusing to turn over the agreement under which the records are required to be sealed. “The gift agreement signed when the papers were donated is not a public document,” Tippett told the DCNF. That’s nonsense, Biden and the University with his permission, can change the agreement, and make it public, just as they changed the date before.

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Then it’s also disturbing that after Biden declared but before mid-March, he had operatives go into those records at least once to look through the records. If Biden has done nothing and has nothing to hide, what were they looking for? And did they remove anything? Why would he allow access to the records?

He claims that they could be fodder to be used against him in the election so he doesn’t want to release them. Um, that’s not much of a defense, that’s all the more reason to look at them, if he thinks there are concerning things in there.

“Joe Biden, I want you to release all the personnel records from 1973 to 2009 and be transparent about your office practices,” Reade told the DCNF. “I would like to hold you accountable for what happened to me, to how your staff protected you and enabled you, bullied me multiple times into silence.”

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