Ahead of former vice-president Joe Biden’s expected 2020 presidential bid, women are speaking out about their personal interactions with him — alleging he physically touched them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. ..., the Cut published an essay by Lucy Flores, a former Nevada lieutenant governor nominee, who wrote that Biden smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head at a campaign event in 2014. In the week since, several more women have come forward.

Below, here’s a running list of the allegations against Biden.

Lucy Flores
On March 29, in the aforementioned essay published on the Cut, former Nevada lieutenant governor nominee Lucy Flores alleged that Biden smelled her hair and gave her “a big slow kiss” on the back of her head at an event for her 2014 campaign. In that moment, she wrote, she felt “embarrassed” and “shocked.”

“I wanted nothing more than to get Biden away from me,” she continued. In response to the essay, Biden claimed that he had no memory of having “acted inappropriately,” but added that if he was in the wrong, he would “listen respectfully.”

Read more amd see the full list:

https://www.thecut.com/2020/04/joe-biden-accuser-accusations-allegations...

WALL STREET TITANS are financing a direct challenge to firebrand progressive lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the New York primary on June 23.

Disclosures show that at least two dozen finance industry professionals, including several prominent private equity executives and investment bankers, made early donations to Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC contributor who is challenging Ocasio-Cortez. Caruso-Cabrera was a registered Republican until a few years ago and authored a 2010 book advocating for several conservative positions, including an end to Medicare and Social Security, which she called “pyramid schemes.”

The donors include Glenn Hutchins, the billionaire co-founder of Silver Lake Partners; James Passin of Firebird Capital; Bruce Schnitzer of Wand Partners; Jeffrey Rosen of Lazard; and Bradley Seaman, managing partner of Parallel49 Equity.

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https://theintercept.com/2020/04/15/aoc-primary-challenger-cabruso-cabre...

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The harassment Reade first went public with last year involves stroking her neck and running his fingers through the curls in her hair, as well as asking her to effectively serve as a cocktail waitress at an event.

Reade’s assault allegation, which became public last month, involves an interaction in the spring of 1993. She said that she was sent by her manager to bring a gym bag to Biden, and they met in a hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building, in a tucked away corner. Before she knew it, he pressed her up against the wall, forcibly kissed her, and put a hand each up her blouse and skirt, penetrating her with his fingers. She had what she recalls now as an “absurd” thought. “I remember thinking, where’s the gym bag? Because he had taken it in his hand, but all of a sudden it wasn’t in his hands and his hands were where they weren’t supposed to be,” she said.

Reade said that her impression was that Biden believed he had consent, and was surprised at the rejection, but that she had done nothing to give him that impression. “There was no flirtation, he had no consent. He was by my ears when he said, ‘Do you wanna go somewhere else?’” She pushed him off and he stepped back, looking surprised, she recalled, and flashing a huge smile.

“‘Come on, man,’” she said he told her. “‘I heard you liked me.’”

“He had that smile he gets, but his eyes were not smiling,” she said.

“You’re fine,” she recalled he said, grabbing her by her shoulders. As he walked away, he pointed back, “You’re fine.”

Update: April 24, 2020, 6:55 p.m.
The piece has been updated to add video that surfaced of the caller on the Larry King show, and Reade’s confirmation to The Intercept that the voice on the call was her mother’s.

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https://theintercept.com/2020/04/24/new-evidence-tara-reade-joe-biden/

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“Believe All Women” is dead. Let’s dance on its grave. Thanks to Joe Biden, the mantra of the MeToo movement has collapsed under its own rotten contradictions.

Along the way, it did more to silence genuine victims of sexual assault and to poison relations between the sexes than any supposed sin of the patriarchy.

And the bumbling fool who helped create this toxic culture was Biden himself, the sanctimonious architect of the Title IX redefinition of sexual consent on campus that demonized a generation of young men, and the repulsively condescending chair of the House Judiciary Committee who led the “high-tech lynching” against Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991.

Fast forward three decades and “Believe All Women” had reached its apogee in the Justice Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Christine Blasey Ford’s baseless testimony rang with insincerity, and activists casually suspended all judgment to brand a family man with a spotless reputation a “rapist.”

So confident was Biden by this stage in his mantle as “America’s champion of women” that he called for an FBI investigation of Kavanaugh and praised Blasey Ford’s “enormous courage. [She] should be given the benefit of the doubt.”

As KC Johnson, Brooklyn College history professor and author of “The Campus Rape Frenzy,” wrote last year of Biden: “Perhaps no major American political figure has so consistently championed the erosion of due process for those accused of sexual misconduct.”

But as you sow, so shall you reap. Karma is a bitch.

Biden today stands accused by his former staffer Tara Reade of sexually assaulting her 27 years ago, and his response is: “Don’t believe her! I’m innocent!”

Biden is hoist with his own petard. The irony is delicious.

Of course, Reade deserves a respectful hearing and for her police complaint against Biden to be properly investigated.

But now that “Believe All Women” is inconvenient for the feminist left, it’s remarkable how quickly they have abandoned it. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Alyssa Milano, Kirsten Gillibrand and the rest of the MeToo firebrands, by their own logic, have become the evil “rape apologists” they accused fair-minded Kavanaugh defenders of being.

Everyone with eyes can see the hypocrisy as clearly as they can see something is not quite right in all the video clips of Biden inappropriately touching, kissing, hugging and sniffing women and young girls in public.

You have to wonder if something troubles the conscience of a man with such a questionable public persona that he would zealously pursue the sexual misconduct of others.

In any case, it was inevitable that insincerity would collide with reality one day. With their presidential nominee hobbled, the Democrats’ current predicament was prophesied by Kavanaugh in his Senate testimony in 2018.

“The consequences will extend long past my nomination … And as we all know, in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around … You sowed the wind. For decades to come, I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.”

But this is the moment, a moment in time in which we can right the wrongs of the past. For everyone to see with a blinding flash just how wrong was the demonization of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh and all those falsely accused young men on campuses now scarred for life. All of us are scarred, really, because any injustice unresolved ultimately corrodes justice for all.

We can stop the whirlwind now by asserting that men are not by default rapists. No man, not even the reprehensible Biden, should have to prove his innocence.

Not all women should be believed. Some are liars, just as some men are.

Women don’t have a monopoly on honesty and integrity. We are equally imperfectly human, all as capable of great goodness as we are of great wickedness.

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https://nypost.com/2020/05/03/joe-biden-helped-bring-metoo-movement-is-c...

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When Devine makes sense, and doesn't talk shit, can make a cynical satirist feel uneasy... But so be it, Miranda recognises the pitfalls of the “Believe All Women” mantra. Like a lot of what we do, this statement is relative... Now, will she come to papa on global warming?

Senator Rand Paul called for acting Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell to testify about a list of Obama administration officials, including Obama and Biden, involved in the "unmasking" of then-incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's communications after the 2016 election.

Speaking to members of the press, Paul also said he wanted testimony from the officials on the list, including James Comey and James Clapper.

"These rumors have been going around for years that Obama's administration was abusing the power of unmasking, and this sounds like they were using it to go after a political opponent, which is a serious offense and should be investigated," Paul said. "The fact that Vice President Biden is directly involved in the unmasking of a political opponent -- think about it. You remember impeachment? They said the president was using the government to go after a political opponent? This is Vice President Biden using the spying powers of the U.S. to go after a political opponent and he is caught red-handed here... eavesdropping on a political opponent's phone calls."

"Every reporter in the country needs to ask this legitimate question. They need to come out of hibernation and ask Vice President Biden, do we think it is a legitimate function of government to eavesdrop on political opponents, illegally unmask them and listen to their private conversation?"

"This is exactly what they were accusing President Trump of -- he was acquitted on those charges. They have now found that Vice President Biden is guilty of using government to go after a political opponent."

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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/05/13/

MEANWHILE:

In another strange turn of events, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan has invited Michael Flynn’s former defense counsel to appear as interested parties in their former clients ongoing case. Sullivan, who did not agree to drop the charges against Flynn as requested by the Department of Justice, did not specify the purpose for inviting the former lawyers to appear in court.

John Hall electronically filed the notice on Thursday, as the legal representative for Covington and Burling, Flynn’s former defense counsel.

Sidney Powell, Flynn’s defense counsel, didn’t comment on Sullivan’s invitation to Covington and Burling but she noted in previous filings reported on this news site that the previous counsel provided her client ineffectual representation and unrepresented him in his guilty plea, which was in violation of his 6th Amendment rights.

This turn of events has been just one in a series of bizarre decisions unleashed on Flynn and his defense team by Sullivan. Critics of Sullivan’s strange behavior have accused the judge of acting as a prosecutor and crossing the line of his judicial mandate.

“Since Sullivan appears to be so invested in trying to force the government to prosecute Flynn, he should step off the bench and apply for a job as an AUSA,” said Jenna Ellis, a constitutional lawyer and Senior legal advisor to the Trump 2020 campaign. “He clearly wants to be a prosecutor, not a judge, so he’s in the wrong branch of government.”

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https://saraacarter.com/another-bizarre-twist-in-flynns-case-covington-and-burling-will-enter-case-at-judges-invitation/

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As members of the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces” put the final touches on their policy recommendations, there were smiles and gushing compliments all round. The task forces were established earlier this year to unify the Democratic Party behind a range of policies acceptable to Sanders and Biden supporters. In theory, their recommendations will shape the policies of a Biden presidency.

But beyond the inner sanctum of Democrats and the journalists they speak to, it was a bit of a non-event. The proposed policies mostly range from anodyne to right wing. Even policies that have some progressive content are undermined by the fact that they are merely recommendations, to be reviewed by the ultra-neoliberal Democratic National Committee and Biden’s campaign team.

The real significance of the task forces is that they represent the ever stronger unity between the Sanders camp and the Biden camp. Sanders became popular because he was viewed as a challenge to the neoliberal, right wing establishment that Biden embodies. But Sanders himself, and the “Squad” of left Democratic politicians who support him, have always advocated party unity. When Sanders withdrew from the presidential primary race, he gave his full-throated endorsement to Biden and has pushed for greater collaboration with the right ever since.

Team Biden is keen for this collaboration, not because they find Sanders’ program compelling, but because it offers a way of neutralising a challenge. Biden first proposed the task forces when Sanders was still in the race, as an incentive for him to withdraw. The idea could just as easily have come from a political skit show. It’s a classic mechanism to allow a political rival to retreat while saving face: plonking them onto a time-consuming, toothless committee with a fancy name. In this case, they went above and beyond, establishing not one but six mini-task forces that all come together within one mega-task force. The skit show writers would likely have found it slightly crude and overdone.

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https://redflag.org.au/index.php/node/7297

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez only got a minute to speak at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night but she made it count as a warning that Joe Biden should not ignore the party’s far-left wing, nominating socialist Bernie Sanders and making no mention of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

“I hereby second the nomination for Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America,” the New York Democratic socialist said at the end of her 96-second address.

In her socialist rhetoric-heavy address, she spoke about Sanders’ movement to “repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia” and not once addressed Biden, 77, who will be crowned the party’s nominee.

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https://nypost.com/2020/08/18/aoc-nominates-bernie-sanders-and-snubs-joe-biden-in-dnc-address/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing dissent in her caucus ahead of Tuesday’s vote to confirm the passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill.

With the Democrats’ slim 221-211 House advantage, Pelosi can afford no more than four defections in the vote scheduled for Tuesday.

But two members of her caucus, Reps. Marcia Fudge of Ohio and Deb Haaland of New Mexico, could be confirmed to Biden administration posts as soon as Wednesday.

That could further amplify gripes coming from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other left-leaning House comrades after some of their major initiatives were stripped out of the American Rescue Plan Act — and test Pelosi’s ability to keep her troops in line.

AOC retweeted a message from her fellow Democrat, New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Friday night.

“What are we doing here?” Watson Coleman complained in a tweet that bemoaned the elimination of a federal minimum-wage increase and a cut to unemployment benefits. “I’m frankly disgusted with some of my colleagues and question whether I can support this bill,” she added.

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https://nypost.com/2021/03/06/house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-facing-dissent-aoc-ire-on-1-9t-covid-aid-bill/

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