Not saying this is significant, but not saying it’s not, either.
It seems that back in the early 1990s, Sen. Joe Biden wasn’t very keen on the idea of a Senate office dedicated to handling sexual harassment complaints from staffers:
"Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden voted in favor of a motion that would have blocked the creation of the Senate office that receives sexual harassment complaints," via @CAndersonMO on the 1991 vote – https://t.co/1oKPJkPhVo
— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) May 5, 2020
Biden was one of just six Democrats who opposed @GrassleyPress's successful push to create the office in the wake of the Anita Hill hearings – https://t.co/1oKPJkPhVo
— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) May 5, 2020
The @nytimes had excellent contemporaneous coverage of the controversy. Opposition to the creation of the office led by then-Sen. Warren Rudman, whose point of order declaring it unconstitutional Biden supported – https://t.co/RpyaMUyBzb
— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) May 5, 2020
More from the Washington Free Beacon:
Biden was one of six Democrats who joined an effort to block the Office of Senate Fair Employment Practices in 1991 on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. The vote came less than two years before Tara Reade allegedly filed a complaint about her treatment as an employee in Biden’s Senate office.
Created as a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 in the shadow of Anita Hill’s testimony on Capitol Hill, the creation of the Office of Senate Fair Employment Practices was an attempt to remedy the fact that Congress was, at the time, exempt from workplace discrimination laws. An amendment to the civil rights law introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) chartered the office and provided “procedures to protect the right of Senate and other government employees … to be free from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability.”
Grassley’s amendment sparked fierce opposition from some of his colleagues, led by then-Republican senator Warren Rudman (N.H.), who argued that the office would become a “Son of Frankenstein” and warned that “everyone here will be in jeopardy and we will have done much violence to this body and the Constitution.”
Rudman raised a point of order aimed at declaring the amendment unconstitutional and striking it from the Civil Rights Act. The legislative maneuver failed by a 76-22 vote, with Biden joining Rudman, and then-senators William Cohen (R., Maine) and Strom Thurmond (R., S.C.), to eliminate the office.
????? https://t.co/YGNCOxz6e3
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) May 5, 2020
Again, none of this proves that Biden went on to sexually assault Tara Reade. But in a sea of bad optics, this certainly doesn’t do him any favors.
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