5. The fundraiser claim sounds shaky. Reade has said she was told to serve drinks at a fundraiser in Washington. However, several former staffers recalled Biden avoided events in Washington and rushed to catch a train back to Delaware every night (a fact about Biden that is widely known). Others recalled an office policy forbidding his Senate staff from doing campaign work.
And two male staffers said Biden specifically did not want young staffers to be seen doing menial tasks such as serving drinks. He didnt want an image of a young woman staffer serving him, one said.
None of these sources could conclusively state that Reade was never assigned to serve drinks at a Washington fundraiser. But that claim is deeply at odds with the general practices they observed.
6. One colleague recalls she was fired for cause. The most explosive detail in NewsHours report comes from Ben Savage, a former co-worker who sat next to Reade in the mailroom:
Savage, who worked as the offices systems administrator, overseeing computers and information processing, told the NewsHour that Reade was fired for her poor performance on the job, which he witnessed not as retaliation for her complaints about sexual harassment.
But according to Savage, Reade had been mishandling a key part of her job and an essential office task processing constituent mail, something they worked on together. Savage said he recalls reporting these issues to his boss, deputy chief of staff Dennis Toner. After that, Savage said he began diminishing Reades duties, taking over some of her tasks and rerouting parts of the process to exclude her.