Newt: Biden should release Delaware documents, sooner the better
Newt Gingrich discusses the pressure on Joe Biden to release archived documents at the University of Delaware and clear up sexual assault allegations
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In light of former aide Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Thursday that the former vice president would be better off releasing relevant documents and addressing the allegation.
“I think the pressure will come to have him go out and release the documents that are at the University of Delaware so people can look for themselves. The challenge with this kind of a charge is the sooner you can get it over, the better off you are. The longer you take, the worse off you are because then the story becomes about you rather than about the original problem,” Gingrich told “America’s Newsroom.”
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The documents at the University of Delaware suggest a significant conflict of interest as Biden faces increasing pressure to relinquish the information that could be relevant to his former staffer's sexual assault allegation against him.
Numerous top officials on the board of the University of Delaware, which is refusing to release Joe Biden's Senate records despite an earlier promise to do so, have close personal and financial ties to the former vice president, records reviewed by Fox News show -- and the chairman of the board even bought Biden's house in 1996 for $1.2 million, reportedly a "top dollar" price given its condition.
Biden dropped off 1,875 boxes of “photographs, documents, videotapes, and files” and 415 gigabytes of electronic records to the University of Delaware in 2012. The university initially said it expected to make the records “available to the public two years after Biden’s last day in elected public office.”
This week, both The Atlantic and The Washington Post argued that Biden should instruct the university to turn over the records, saying they "could contain confirmation of any complaint Ms. Reade made, either through official congressional channels or to the three other employees she claims she informed not specifically of the alleged assault but more generally of harassment."
The University of Delaware’s charter states that the Board of Trustees has “entire control and management of the affairs of the university," and notes that no university bylaws "shall diminish or reduce the Board’s plenary authority over all matters related to the control and management of the affairs of the University."
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Currently, Reade is accusing Biden of assault over an incident that allegedly occurred in March 1993. A former neighbor of Reade’s said she remembered Reade telling her about parts of the allegation, according to The National Review, and Reade told Fox News a resurfaced "Larry King Live" video involving a woman talking about her daughter who had “problems” while working for a “prominent senator” was her now-deceased mother, referring to the allegation.
When asked whether there is a double standard that exists between how Democrats went after Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and how they're treating the allegation against Biden, Gingrich said, "It's politics."
He said Democrats tried to ignore the issue, but are increasingly coming around to the idea that Biden must "clear it up" and release any relevant records pertaining to Reade's complaint.
"Even the liberal media is beginning to feel that they have to deal with it," Gingrich concluded.
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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