Another shoe may have dropped in the Tara Reade affair. Her lies could potentially upend scads of domestic violence cases in California’s Central Coast.
On Monday, CNN reported extensively on Reade’s claims that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. CNN appeared to also unearth yet another Reade lie. She claims to have a BA from Antioch University Seattle, and also claimed to have been a visiting professor at the school for parts of five years. But according to an Antioch spokeswoman, Reade attended—but never graduated.
Fast forward to Thursday. The Monterey County Weekly reports that Reade has frequently testified as an expert witness on domestic violence. Now that testimony could potentially result in numerous convictions being overturned.
Like most expert witnesses, Reade was asked under oath about her credentials. If those credentials aren’t legitimate, defense attorneys are seriously considering filing writs to get those convictions thrown out.
Patrick McKenna, the executive director of the Sixth District Appellate Program, a law firm that represents indigent clients in appellate matters in the Bay Area, sent an email to Monterey County defense attorneys in which he asked them to review current or old cases in which Reade testified as a domestic violence expert.
“It has come to light that Ms. McCabe/Reade may have falsified some of her credentials and so we want to review any cases where she may have testified inaccurately about those credentials,” McKenna writes in the email, which was obtained by the Weekly. “Please contact me directly with any cases you know about. We will work with you to review them individually and determine if a habeas petition is appropriate.”
Reade has testified in at least 20 cases in the last decade. One of them involves Victoria Ramirez and Jennifer Vazquez, who were sent to prison for life in 2018 after they tried to burn down the home of Ramirez’ boyfriend after they caught him boinking another woman. Reade, then known as Alexandra McCabe, testified about the nature of intimate partner violence—specifically, why the boyfriend initially claimed he saw two women fleeing the scene, but later told police that he actually saw two men on the run.
Vazquez’ lawyer, Roland Soltesz, recalled that Reade’s testimony was critical to prosecutors making their case that Vazquez and Ramirez actually set the fire. His law partner, William Pernik, underscored just how serious this could potentially be if it turns out Reade lied about her credentials.
“Experts such as [Reade] are rarely brought in on easily provable cases. Their value increases as the case difficulty for the prosecution rises and the dots between the crime and the person on trial get harder and harder to connect,” Pernik says. “That means the risk of jury erroneously convicting the accused is astronomically higher. This impacts the integrity of convictions obtained, both through verdict and through settlement of cases, and requires a significant re-examination of past cases, with the brunt of the expense borne by taxpayers.”
If she perjured herself by lying about her credentials, she misled jurors, duped the District Attorney’s Office, perpetrated a fraud on the court and got paid for it, Pernik adds.
If that’s the case, then it’s possible that virtually every defendant who was convicted as a result of Reade’s testimony could go free—even if the defendants are clearly guilty. And Reade could potentially end up going to jail herself.
Asked for comment, Reade claimed that her degree was granted under special circumstances by Antioch Seattle’s then-chancellor, Toni Murdoch. She claims that she was in the process of changing her identity while separating from her abusive ex-husband, and had to present coursework completed prior to changing her identity. CNN earlier reported that Reade claimed Murdoch worked with her to make sure her identity was protected, but Antioch Seattle claimed such a program has never existed.
Odds are that Reade may have to explain this under oath. And if there’s anything at all to this, it should silence once and for all any calls by Rose Twitter and the Bernie or Busters for an investigation into Reade’s claims. After all, in what world can you even potentially blow up a presidential bid on the word of an exposed perjurer?
At risk of sounding like a broken record, if this is half true, Reade is finished. It’s a travesty that it may have taken this to finish her, though. After all, we already know that there is no way her claim of being assaulted in the Russell Senate Office Building could possibly hold up. The area where she claims it happened is a very high-traffic area, and there’s no way it could have happened without a lot of people seeing it—especially that soon after Anita Hill.
Looks like Reade may have told one lie too many.
