Tucker Carlson - Ep. 103 Former Senate aide Tara Reade credibly accused Joe Biden of sexual assault. Now the DOJ is after her and she’s moved to Russia seeking political asylum. We spoke to her in Moscow.
Tara Reade details her $10M tort claim against the DOJ/FBI for sealed investigations and harassment after accusing Joe Biden of sexual assault in 2019, alleging her Twitter/Gmail were subpoenaed under warrants. Labelled a "Russian asset" by media and Democrats, she fled to Moscow after warnings of FARA indictment, citing cases like Maria Butina’s prosecution, and now lives in asylum, separated from her doxxed daughter. She calls out media hypocrisy for ignoring her while amplifying smears, demanding accountability as Biden’s legal war cost her years. [Automatically generated summary]
So your lawyers have sued the Biden Department of Justice for misconduct.
Tell us about the suit, why you filed it, what you hope to achieve by it.
unidentified
Yeah, well, my attorney actually had filed a complaint with the Inspector General.
About the way I was treated by the FBI and DOJ and how they were harassing me.
And they didn't receive a response.
Surprise, surprise.
So after we waited, there was no response.
He filed a tort claim and it's for $10 million.
And basically what the outcome will be, hopefully, is that they will open my FBI files and then expunge them.
And the criminal case that has been opened against me in Northern California, the one that's sealed.
Will be revealed.
Because that was opened by DOJ and FBI, where they took all my Twitter communications, now X, it's called, but Gmail, you name it, all my social media was taken under sealed warrants.
The only reason I know about the sealed warrants and it was publicized is because a Twitter lawyer had called.
And told me that this has happened, and they had made a motion in court to tell me.
And so this case had impaneled a grand jury, so it went pretty far.
So it's just like shy of indictment.
But what are they going to indict me for?
Well, they won't tell me.
Now, as an American citizen, that's infuriating, right?
I think a lot of people watching this are confused.
You, of course, are most famous for...
I'm recounting in public your experience of sexual assault, and I think it was a sexual assault, by then-Senator Joe Biden in an elevator when you worked for him.
And unlike a lot of people who make these claims, you have contemporaneous evidence in your mother's call to Larry King Live, which came out years later.
It's an amazing story.
And I think it's a credible story.
But what did you do wrong?
How did you wind up the subject?
Of a sealed potential indictment of a criminal investigation by the U.S. government.
What was your crime?
unidentified
I think not shutting up.
I think because I just wouldn't stop talking.
I kept trying to push for an investigation.
If you recall, Jen Psaki, she was asked one question one time.
Peter Juicy, I think, asked the question and said, you know, about me, about Tara Reade.
And she said, oh, that's been litigated.
It was never litigated.
She lied outright.
It's never been litigated.
It's never been investigated.
You know, and I was asking for an investigative.
All they did was pay money to have media hit pieces done on me.
And I posted the sealed warrant, and that's been in the media.
So the sealed warrant is visible.
You can see the case number.
Journalists have tried to look it up.
My attorneys tried to look it up.
No one will tell them what it is.
Then they started coming at me in more subvert ways, which was, you know, basically harassment, death threats, particularly it amped up when Marjorie Taylor Greene and Representative Matt Gaetz asked me to testify in the whistleblowers panel.
Like, I was going to talk about how difficult it is to be a whistleblower because I had been so targeted.
And then when I was about to testify, you know, I'll get to that part.
But when I was about to testify, things really amped up as far as threats and undermining me.
And it was hard to get a job.
People thought I was a security threat.
There were innuendos.
My reputation was destroyed.
And we've talked about this.
So my attorney basically said, okay, that's that.
We're going to file this complaint.
And this came after...
When I was here in Moscow, Russia, I came here to publicize my book and to oversee the translation of it.
And apparently I was here for vacation, so I had packed literally for seven days, five days.
Didn't have much with me.
And then about midway through, I started getting...
You know, messages that I was, from former intelligence, they were trying to get me messages, whistleblowers, like, look, you know, you're in danger of being indicted if you go back.
But wait, just to be clear, you're an American who has accused the sitting president of sexually assaulting you while you worked for him as a young woman.
And all of a sudden, you're the criminal because you wind up in a foreign city and you do a TV interview.
Am I missing something?
unidentified
Well, they, in 2019, if you recall, one of the smears that they made against me was that I was a Russian asset, even though I had no ties to Russia.
Immediately out the gate.
That was the Biden campaign told that to the New York Times.
They said that was their first response.
Not a denial.
Not, you know, anything else.
They said, oh, she's a Russian asset.
And that started in 2019 and got spread around.
And then it continued on and had a life of its own because it was spread by former Obama staff, Edward Isaac Dovere, people like that, who have some clout on social media and people listen.
So unfortunately, there was that kind of overhanging it.
It's someone like me that just had a claim against my former employer that should have been investigated properly and should have been adjudicated in a proper way.
And I should have been treated with some dignity instead of having my life torn to pieces.
You're in Moscow, where we are now, and you hear that you could be indicted or punished under the Foreign Agent Registration Act for giving this interview with a local TV station.
And what do you do?
How do you respond?
U.S. Congressman's Concern00:09:53
unidentified
Well, I wanted to look at all the data points.
I'm not an impulsive person.
I like to think, and I didn't have a lot of time.
I mean, we're talking, I had to make this in a 48-hour window, right?
And so this was a lot of pressure.
But I did.
I took the time.
I talked to my daughter for hours.
I talked to my lawyer.
I got more data points of other people who had opinions that were educated.
And then I talked to Matt Gaetz.
And I am forever grateful that he took my call.
And he was, you know, I want to give him some credit here.
Because he could have easily just said, oh, sure, it'll be fine.
And I did ask him, I said, please, you know, congressman, can you help me?
Can you get me off these charges?
And he said, no, I can't.
I'm sorry.
I can't.
My hands are tied.
I don't even know what they are.
And sometimes some of this intelligence isn't shared.
But what I can tell you is just that...
I understand how these people operate.
And yeah, I'm really worried about your personal safety.
Because I had received death threats at that point.
And you think about it, I'm not that well known.
I would have been in the news maybe a day or two.
Maybe you or someone else might have talked about me for a couple of times, but it would have been considered a conspiracy theory, like Adam Rich, right?
So I reached out, and I'm forever grateful to Maria Butina, because Masha helped me, and she helped me with the process of just the how-to of applying for political asylum, which I did.
And it took a few weeks.
Only 10% of those cases get accepted, but they do their due diligence, and they felt that there was enough of a problem where they had to give me asylum.
It was a big decision, but it wasn't just what he said, and I don't want to put this all on Matt Gaetz's shoulders.
Of course not.
It was several people's, and one, I can't really say who it was, but went to great risk to send me a message to say, if you get off that plane, they're going to take you into custody.
For what?
And violation of the FAR Act, probably.
They were talking about violation of sanctions.
There was talk that I had read notices, which are...
What's so interesting to me is we have supposedly free media in the United States as a backstop against a check against government overreach.
Too much power in the hands of too few.
And so it's supposed to be a self-correcting system.
If something truly crazy and totalitarian happens to an American citizen, our media is supposed to take an interest and alert the rest of the country so they know what's going on.
So they can say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I may not like Tara Reade.
I don't agree with her or whatever.
But you can't do that.
You can't arrest someone for no crime or for complaining about the president.
Has anyone from the New York Times called you?
No.
Politico?
unidentified
No, no.
The Daily Beast to say, "Tell us what's happened with you." Those, no, of course not.
They only do hit pieces.
And they're working for the empire.
There's no question.
They're just working for the, you know, as proxies to the U.S. government.
I mean, I think, you know, some of the reporting that Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger have been doing has been really valuable.
Where does it, I just can't get past this question, and I don't want to upset you, but of your daughter.
I mean, you have a child in the United States.
unidentified
Yeah.
That's been hard.
You know, I missed her graduation.
She got her masters.
They went after her, actually, while I was here in Russia.
The first month I was here, A bunch of Democratic troll farms or whatever doxed her photo, her work address, tried to get her fired.
She was interning as a therapist.
She's a therapist with children.
She works with play therapy with children who've been traumatized.
And they tried to get her fired.
Face Plastered Everywhere00:01:42
unidentified
And they were saying it out loud and calling the work.
But luckily, you know, my daughter's work is, you know, not interested in those kinds of, you know, smears.
So my daughter's fine.
But, like, you know, having her face plastered everywhere because she's associated with me.
My horse was almost kidnapped.
They literally came and took him almost on a trailer, and luckily the owners of the stable were there.
So I'm getting these calls at 3 in the morning in Moscow that my horse is being loaded on a trailer by someone I don't know who's going to take him for Joe Biden.
That was what they were saying.
They were taking him for Joe.
So luckily he's safe.
But, I mean, it's been sort of relentless.
It's been, you know, and I know public figures, you know, I don't consider myself a public figure, but other public figures do get harassed like that.
But when you're a regular citizen like I am, it's really daunting.
Especially if we don't have the resources to protect yourself, right?