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DJL

Should Biden Get the Nomination in Light of an Apparent Sexual Assault

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14 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

Well, the diaper has to be changed. What're you going to do -- hand the baby off to the other parent, and say "take him -  he's yours now"

Wendy P.

That is what a lot of the Bernie-ists are doing.

Personally, I will do like I did last election and vote my conscience.

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34 minutes ago, airdvr said:

DNC Chair, Who Once Called GOP 'Afraid' of Kavanaugh Investigation, Claims He Doesn't Need To See Biden Docs

Apparently Republicans don't have the hypocritical market cornered just yet.

The Western Journal, previously known as Western Journalism, is an American conservative and far-right news and political website based in Phoenix, Arizona. The site was founded by political consultant Floyd Brown.

 

Everything I've seen so far, in response to Biden's request to release any documents with her mentioned, was responded with "no documents exist".

Hard to be hypocritical when one side has documented information while the other has none.

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(edited)

Reade's resume claims that she received a bachelor of arts degree from Antioch University in Seattle under a "protected program," personally working with the former president of the school to ensure her identity was protected while she obtained credits for her degree. She also said that she was a visiting professor at the school, on and off for five years.

Karen Hamilton, an Antioch University spokesperson, told CNN that "Alexandra McCabe** attended but did not graduate from Antioch University. She was never a faculty member. She did provide several hours of administrative work."

An Antioch University official told CNN that such a "protected program" does not exist and never has.

** Alexandra McCabe is a name formerly used by Reade.

Edited by kallend

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39 minutes ago, kallend said:

It seems that Ms. Reade may not be a totally credible witness:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/politics/tara-reade-credentials.html

Text from the article because there's a firewall:
 
As Tara Reade’s Expert Witness Credentials Are Questioned, So Are Verdicts
 
  • Published May 21, 2020Updated May 22, 2020, 9:24 a.m. ET

Defense lawyers in California are reviewing criminal cases in which Tara Reade, the former Senate aide who has accused Joseph R. Biden Jr. of sexual assault, served as an expert witness on domestic violence, concerned that she misrepresented her educational credentials in court.

Then known as Alexandra McCabe, Ms. Reade testified as a government witness in Monterey County courts for nearly a decade, describing herself as an expert in the dynamics of domestic violence who had counseled hundreds of victims.

But lawyers who had faced off against her in court began raising questions about the legitimacy of her testimony, and the verdicts that followed, after news reports this week that Antioch University had disputed her claim of receiving a bachelor’s degree from its Seattle campus.

The public defender’s office in Monterey County has begun scrutinizing cases involving Ms. Reade and compiling a list of clients who may have been affected by her testimony, according to Jeremy Dzubay, an assistant public defender in the office.

Roland Soltesz, a criminal defense lawyer, says he believes Ms. Reade’s testimony made a significant difference in the outcome of the 2018 trial of his client Victoria Ramirez. Both Ms. Ramirez and her co-defendant, Jennifer Vasquez, received life sentences for attempted murder, arson and armed robbery.

“People have been convicted based upon this, and that’s wrong,” said Mr. Soltesz, adding that he “could care less about the politics of this whole thing.”

Ms. Reade has accused Mr. Biden of assaulting her in the Senate complex in 1993, placing his hand under her dress and penetrating her with his fingers. Mr. Biden flatly denies her accusation.

Questions about Ms. Reade’s education background were first reported by CNN.

Ms. Reade told The New York Times that she had obtained her degree through a “protected program” for victims of spousal abuse, which, court records show, she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband in the mid-1990s. That history, she said, caused her to change her name, leading to confusion about her status at the school. She later received a law degree from Seattle University.

But an Antioch spokeswoman, Karen Hamilton, told The Times that while Ms. Reade had attended classes, she was certain Ms. Reade had not received a degree.

In her testimony in the 2018 trial, Ms. Reade was questioned about her degree by Mr. Soltesz. She testified that she received a liberal arts degree, as was stated on her résumé provided by the district attorney’s office. “The focus was political science,” she said, according to a trial transcript.

Ms. Reade also told the court that she was currently a substitute teacher but had worked in domestic violence prevention for more than two decades and testified in more than 20 cases. Her career began, she said, in Mr. Biden’s office.

“I was a legislative assistant,” she said, according to the testimony. “He worked on the Violence Against Women Act, the federal act.”

Staff lists published in 1993 show Ms. Reade listed as a staff assistant, a different position from the legislative assistant job she cited in her testimony. Both titles are common in congressional offices, with legislative assistant indicating a slightly more senior post that involves working on policy. In multiple interviews, Ms. Reade described her duties as managing the interns, never mentioning any direct work on the Violence Against Women Act.

In an interview, Mr. Soltesz described Ms. Reade as “well spoken” and “a good witness on the stand,” and said he was impressed by her experience with Mr. Biden.

But both Mr. Soltesz and Scott Erdbacher, the lawyer for Ms. Vasquez, raised objections to Ms. Reade’s testimony, according to the transcript, saying they were skeptical that her work experience qualified her as an expert. The judge overruled them.

Now, Mr. Soltesz says he is exploring whether he can reopen his case. On Wednesday evening, he emailed a network of more than 100 public defenders, alerting them to questions about Ms. Reade’s background and credibility.

Monique S. Hill, a lawyer in another domestic violence case in which Ms. Reade served as an expert witness, said she also saw grounds to challenge the conviction.

“Had I had the information that I have now, this case, in my mind, would have gone differently,” said Ms. Hill, who served as a public defender.

The Monterey County chief assistant district attorney, Berkley Brannon, said that if Ms. Reade had misrepresented her academic credentials, the office would alert all defense lawyers involved in cases that featured her as an expert.

 

 

“That would absolutely be of concern to us, and it’s something that the defense attorneys would need to know about,” he said. “We don’t want people that we call lying about anything.”

He said the office would not make any move to contact defense lawyers until it was satisfied that she indeed had not obtained her bachelor’s degree. And, speaking hypothetically, he said that the extent to which a false academic claim would affect the cases she participated in would depend on how material her testimony was to the outcome.

The Sixth District Appellate Program, a state-funded public interest law firm that represents low-income clients in the region, is also reviewing all the cases involving Ms. Reade.

Ms. Reade maintains that she has an undergraduate degree, saying the school has no record of her graduating because of special arrangements put in place to protect her from her ex-husband. She sent The Times a screenshot of a transcript showing her with 35 course credits, her department as “BA Completion” and nothing listed under “date conferred” or “degree conferred.” According to the photo, she entered school on Oct. 2, 2000.

Credits from her earlier studies at Pasadena City College were linked to her old social security number and name — the same one she now uses — making her worried that her ex-husband could find her and her daughter, she says. To protect her identity as a survivor of domestic abuse, Ms. Reade says she received her degree through the private assistance of the school’s then-president, Tullisse Murdock. She says she never received a diploma or requested one since she was “fast-tracked” to law school.

“The president took it from the registrar and did it herself for complete confidentiality,” she said in an interview.

But Ms. Hamilton, the Antioch spokeswoman, told The Times that it had spoken with Ms. Murdock, and that there was no such special arrangement with Ms. Reade. It takes 180 credits to graduate, and students earn up to a maximum of 45 for life experience or prior studies, according to the school’s website.

Seattle University School of Law confirmed that Ms. Reade graduated with a J.D. degree in 2004. The school only considers accepting students with bachelor’s degrees, according to its website. But it would not share what degree Ms. Reade presented with her initial application, citing federal privacy standards.

Lying in court is generally considered to be a crime, though one that can be hard to prosecute. To be considered perjury, usually the false statement has to be a knowing lie.

Even if Ms. Reade was not found to have perjured herself, exaggerating qualifications as an expert witness could be grounds for reversal of a verdict.

“An expert can only testify in certain circumstances,” said Mark J. Reichel, a criminal defense lawyer based in Sacramento who formerly worked as a federal public defender. “One of them is that they have expertise above the regular person. The jury is entitled to hear your qualifications.”

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48 minutes ago, kallend said:

It seems that Ms. Reade may not be a totally credible witness:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/politics/tara-reade-credentials.html

So, this is worth looking at but it may be part of an attack on her character.  Just because she has lied about her credentials doesn't mean she didn't get assaulted.  HOWEVER, this does remind me of the point in the Kavanaugh investigations when it was found that the second accuser (Swetnick) had very clearly been making things up.  That was when I changed my opinion about Kavanaugh and agreed he was not someone involved in serial sexual assaults.

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1 hour ago, DJL said:

So, this is worth looking at but it may be part of an attack on her character.  Just because she has lied about her credentials doesn't mean she didn't get assaulted. 

True, but  these are credentials she claimed in order to testify under oath as an expert witness.  If she did indeed lie about that, it's a pretty serious matter and certainly impeaches any testimony she might give in the future.

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On 5/2/2020 at 1:53 AM, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi 434,

If he were being pushed around in a wheelchair ala Strom Thurmond I would vote for him over Trump.

If he raped 47 women in the bedroom of the Blue House, I would vote for him over Trump.

Anything else?

Jerry Baumchen

What's so sacred about the Blue House?

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2 hours ago, kallend said:

True, but  these are credentials she claimed in order to testify under oath as an expert witness.  If she did indeed lie about that, it's a pretty serious matter and certainly impeaches any testimony she might give in the future.

Got it.  My perspective is "court of public opinion" as if I were going to hire him for a job and someone came forward with this information.  I don't think this would ever see the inside of a courtroom so that didn't even cross my mind.  In my opinion, one accusation is something to keep in mind but if I did not know the accuser personally then I would still give the person the job.  It is simply not fair to allow a one person accusation to stand over someone's career and that's said in full knowledge that sexual assaults typically have no witnesses other than the accuser.  When a second person comes forward that's when I say it's a pattern.  With Kavanaugh that second person was Swetnick, however she turned out to be a complete nut and recanted her own accusations.  As far as Reade goes she's still person number 1 and now her word is shown to be very compromised.

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4 hours ago, kallend said:

Hi John,

The first shoe to drop ( from the link ):  'Reade’s attorney, Douglas Wigdor, announced Friday he was no longer representing her.'

Jerry Baumchen

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