May 25, 2020 | 11:21am | Updated May 25, 2020 | 12:37pm
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar said she believes the sexual assault claims leveled at former Vice President Joe Biden by former Senate staffer Tara Reade.
“I do believe Reade,” Omar told the Sunday Times of London newspaper. “Justice can be delayed, but should never be denied.”
The report added that Omar said if it were up to her, Biden wouldn’t be the presidential candidate.
The first-term Minnesota lawmaker endorsed and campaigned for Sen. Bernie Sanders for president during the Democratic primary.
Reade alleged in an interview with Megyn Kelly earlier this month that Biden pinned her against a wall and told her, “I want to f— you,” when she was a staffer in his Senate office in 1993.
Biden has denied the claims and said Americans should “vote their heart.”
“If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn’t vote for me,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said on MSNBC.
“I wouldn’t vote for me if I believed Tara Reade,” he added.
Addressing her own controversies in the Sunday Times interview, Omar said she has “moved past” tweets accusing pro-Israel American Jews of “pushing for allegiance to a foreign country.”
“My expression of those things was hurtful to people, that has really broken my heart,” she said. “I talk about Saudi blood money and them being bloodsuckers and no one says ‘This is Islamophobic’, but I know if I use those terms for another country, that could be [a problem]. And so you learn what history is tied to words. As someone who didn’t have an understanding, I now do.”
