Joe Biden spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate. He knows the rules of the institution. He also likely knew that when he made a request to release documents held by the Senate, the pertinent office could not comply due to privacy laws. But he made it anyway.
He did this to again try and impede the investigation into Tara Reade’s rape charges against him. He is running out of excuses, as even Democrat elected officials and leftist media pals are asking for a full inquiry. The party that roasted Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t want to go into November with an alleged rapist as their nominee. Especially one, as opposed to the Trump and Kavanaugh accusers of sexual misdeeds, who has several specifically supporting witnesses.
Biden tried this trick: “We had understood that the Senate stores records from this office, and from this period, in the National Archives. The Archives now states that the records would have remained under the control of the Senate,” he wrote.
He went on: “Accordingly, I request that you take or direct whatever steps are necessary to establish the location of the records of this Office, and once they have been located, to direct a search for the alleged complaint and to make public the results of this search. I would ask that the public release include not only a complaint if one exists, but any and all other documents in the records that relate to the allegation.”
When challenged on the legality of his request he brazened it out, saying, “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.”
However, he knew it wasn’t there and that this was coming from Julie Adams, the secretary of the Senate: “Based on the law’s strict confidentiality requirements (Section 313) and the Senate’s own direction that disclosure of Senate Records is not authorized if prohibited by law (Senate Resolution 474, 96th Congress, Section 3(a)), Senate Legal Counsel advises that the Secretary has no discretion to disclose any such information as requested in Vice President Biden’s letter of May 1.” The law lets senators cover their hindquarters in instances like this.
Thus Biden’s request was a set up from start to finish. But this only buys him a couple days and now everyone can see how transparently weak his dodge turned out. Which will also tell them how terribly Biden will flounder when the real answers start to come out.
This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on May 4, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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