Tara Reade, shown last year, says Mr. Biden assaulted her when she worked in his Senate office in 1993.
Photo: Donald Thompson/Associated PressPresident Trump’s campaign and Republican allies are accusing Democrats of employing a double standard in sticking by Joe Biden following an allegation of sexual assault, after Democrats called for an FBI investigation and asked tough questions in a hearing about an assault claim against Mr. Trump’s 2018 Supreme Court pick.
Mr. Biden has repeatedly denied the allegation against him from Tara Reade, who says Mr. Biden assaulted her when she worked in his Senate office in 1993. Then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused during his confirmation process by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford of committing sexual assault years earlier, when they were teenagers, which he denied.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm, has put out news releases and tweets highlighting dozens of vulnerable Democrats and asking whether they believe Ms. Reade’s allegations. Mr. Trump’s campaign last week issued a digital ad titled “Exposed: Democrats’ double standard on believing women,” featuring clips of Mr. Biden, Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats discussing how to treat women making accusations against powerful men. Republicans have generally not sided with Ms. Reade but say that they are pointing out inconsistencies on the part of Democrats.
“It’s just a matter of drawing attention to the playbook that the Democrats tried running against Justice Kavanaugh, specifically that ‘we need to, no matter what, believe the victims,’ ” said NRCC spokesman Chris Pack.
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Democratic senators almost unanimously opposed Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court. Democratic leaders have largely responded to the claims against Mr. Biden by vouching for his character and praising his policy work. They have said that the presumptive Democratic nominee has fully addressed Ms. Reade’s allegation and that they accept his denials.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said she didn’t believe Ms. Reade because she’s known Mr. Biden for a long time and trusts his character.
“I have a great respect for his integrity, for his fidelity to his family, his friends,” she said, adding that she would view allegations against him as false “until I was shown otherwise.”
Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement that women “must be able to come forward and share their stories without fear of retribution or harm.” But she said Ms. Reade’s claims are false.
Ms. Reade, 56 years old, said last year that Mr. Biden had touched her shoulders and neck in ways that made her uncomfortable during her employment in his office. In March, she said on a podcast that Mr. Biden had also kissed her and reached under her skirt and put his fingers inside her vagina in a Senate hallway, an allegation she also made in media interviews, including with The Wall Street Journal. This past week, Ms. Reade said she wished Mr. Biden would drop out of the presidential race. In a television interview Thursday, he called her claims “flat out false.”
A Monmouth University poll on Wednesday found that half of Republicans say the allegation against Mr. Biden is probably true and 17% said it was likely false. Meanwhile 55% of Democrats said it was probably not true, compared with 20% who said it likely was.
Some Democrats point out they have held others in their party to high standards, such as when many called on former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken to resign in 2017 after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Mr. Franken declined to comment.
They also say it is disingenuous for Republicans to attack Mr. Biden when Mr. Trump faced allegations of misconduct from more than a dozen women during his 2016 presidential campaign. Last summer, E. Jean Carroll, a magazine writer, accused Mr. Trump of assault. Mr. Trump has largely avoided discussing Ms. Carroll’s allegations and denied others made against him, and congressional Democrats have declined to investigate.
Mr. Pack of the House Republican group said GOP candidates don’t need to answer such questions because the allegations against Mr. Trump were public when voters elected him in 2016.
Mr. Trump himself hasn’t criticized Mr. Biden over the allegations, saying: “You know, it could be false accusations. I know all about false accusations.”
One person close to the White House said, however, that it was helpful for Mr. Trump’s campaign to focus negative attention on Mr. Biden as the White House deals with scrutiny over its coronavirus response. The person said that while the story was unlikely to turn suburban women—a group that boosted Democrats in the 2018 midterms and is seen as a key voting bloc in November—against Mr. Biden, it could tarnish their enthusiasm for Democrats overall.
Meanwhile, women’s advocacy groups worry that the politicization of assault allegations is preventing people from speaking up or processing their own experiences, after a wave of accusations inspired by the #MeToo movement.
“I worry about the public coming to believe that any time there’s an allegation that it’s only about politics, that it’s only being made to hurt the person being accused, because that closes the door to legitimate allegations down the road,” said Scott Berkowitz, president of RAINN, a nonpartisan anti-sexual assault nonprofit.
—Lindsay Wise and Catherine Lucey contributed to this article.
Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com. and Natalie Andrews at Natalie.Andrews@wsj.com
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