Tara Reade, the woman who falsely accused then-Senator Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her while she worked as an aide in her office, exploded back into the headlines earlier this week when she announced she was defecting to Russia. In the absence of something I haven’t heard or seen, there has been radio silence from those on both sides of the aisle who were willing to platform her. There has been nary a word on Twitter from the Bernie-or-busters who first championed her cause in 2020. Also remaining silent have been MAGA elements like Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who invited Reade to testify before Congress in March.
It says a lot, though, that it took a defection to shut these tailenders up. After all, in the wake of her time in the spotlight, we found out Reade did something even more heinous than her false accusations against Biden. And yes, we can call them false, since they didn’t hold up under minimal scrutiny. As I note at my Substack, Reade testified in a number of trials in Monterey County, California as an expert witness on domestic violence—but was only able to do so after lying about her credentials under oath.
Let’s review. When CNN profiled Reade in May 2020, it revealed that she claimed to have a bachelor’s degree from Antioch University Seattle, and had served as a visiting professor at that institution for parts of the last five years. As Reade tells it, she got that degree under the alias Alexandra McCabe while taking part in a “protected program” to keep her identity protected while she completed her coursework. But there was one problem. According to an Antioch spokeswoman, Reade attended Antioch but never graduated. She was also not a faculty member—facts reiterated by The New York Times in its own investigation. I diaried this here.
This development set off alarm bells in Monterey County, since Reade had used these supposed credentials to testify as an expert witness on domestic violence. According to the Monterey County Weekly, the Sixth District Appellate Program, which handles appeals for indigent clients in Silicon Valley and the Central Coast, asked Monterey County defense attorneys to look for any cases in which Reade lied about her credentials.
The program’s executive director, Patrick McKenna, told Politico that within a few days, his team had found at least six cases where Reade testified as an expert witness. By then, Antioch Seattle had confirmed that Reade did not have a degree from the institution. She had only attended for three quarters in 2000 and 2001, and never graduated.
Within a week, the Monterey County district attorney’s office announced it would investigate Reade’s testimony to see if it rose to the level of perjury. Even if it didn’t rise to that level, it was possible that it would still be enough to reverse convictions in most, if not all, of the cases in which she testified. That raised the prospect that innocent people were wrongfully convicted. At least as alarming was the prospect that manifestly guilty people would go free—a particularly disturbing prospect given the nature of domestic violence cases. I diaried this here.
However, just a month after Biden’s victory, prosecutors concluded that they didn’t have enough to charge Reade with perjury. They claimed that it would be difficult to prove that her lies directly affected the outcome of the 10 cases in which they found she testified. But one of those cases involved Victoria Ramirez and Jennifer Vasquez, who were charged with attempted murder for setting fire to the home of Ramirez’ boyfriend after they caught him cheating. The boyfriend had recanted his original claim that he’d seen two women fleeing the scene, and said he’d seen two men on the run. However, Reade—who was still calling herself Alexandra McCabe at the time—testified that the intricacies of intimate partner violence accounted for the boyfriend changing his story. That was a major reason why both women were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. How in the world could that not have risen to the level of perjury?
Almost 10 months later, Ramirez and Vasquez had their sentences significantly reduced in a deal with prosecutors. Ramirez had her sentence cut back to nine years and eight months; Vasquez had hers reduced to 10 years. You don’t make a deal like that unless you have reason to think a judge would throw the sentences out altogether.
This still doesn’t feel like justice. When this story broke in May 2020, I was of the mind that the fact Reade knowingly lied in a case where two women were facing the rest of their lives in prison meant a heavy fine wasn’t nearly enough. She should have been haled before a judge, and sentenced to prison if convicted. Even without that to consider, she had to have known she was potentially denying survivors closure if her lies resulted in people having their sentences thrown out despite being clearly guilty. That fact makes Reade’s lies about her credentials many times more heinous than her false accusations against Biden. If there is any justice, that ought to be her legacy—one she will have to face in full before the Supreme Judge.
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