Posted on 04/30/2020 12:00:36 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
A 2008 column in the far-left magazine CounterPunch accusing Joe Biden of “loutish sexual advances” in the U.S. Senate has become a lightning rod in the debate over Biden and his former staffer Tara Reade’s allegation of sexual assault in 1993.
Biden, in the late Alexander Cockburn view, was an empty and worthless swamp creature, a D.C. insider chosen purely to improve Obama’s electoral odds.
Five paragraphs in, Cockburn made an aside about Biden’s character that accused him of harassing women who worked in the Senate, even while he was supposedly grieving over his wife’s death:
"Biden is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like. On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident."
These three sentences have gone viral as the former VP, now the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, is trying to discredit Tara Reade.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
A publication that would clearly have been rooting for Bernie.
Knives are coming out for Biden.
Erudite writing detected.
Cockburn’s column was printed more than a decade before this current scandal.
Were taxpayers’ forced to pay for settling staffers’ sexual assault charges against Biden?
Perhaps this was planned all along as a way of getting rid of the senile old goat. The establishment Democrats probably already have someone in mind to replace Biden. I don’t think these leftist groups are suddenly developing a conscience. If they thought Biden could beat Trump, they would defend him no matter what. The left is all about power and winning. They have no principles.
DEMOCRAT ALCEE HASTINGS ASKED A STAFFER WHAT KIND OF PANTIES SHE WAS WEARING
Hastings said: “I did not know until after the fact that such a settlement was made.”
Winsome Packer
Cong Hastings Record sexual harassment settlement exposes byzantine congressional process
by LEIGH ANN CALDWELL / NBC NEWS
WASHINGTON — With new harassment accusations being revealed on a nearly daily basis in Congress, documents obtained by NBC News from the Hastings case shed light on how taxpayer money ends up being used to essentially sweep such incidents under a bureaucratic rug with little accountability. On Capitol Hill, a sexual harassment complaint is a long process. The documents include drafts of a letter approving the settlement and a confidentiality agreement as well as an internal “lessons learned” memo written by a House employment lawyer. And while many of the accusations and details of the case remain in dispute, the eventual settlement is a case study of a process shrouded in secrecy despite being funded by taxpayers.
In 2011, Winsome Packer, a congressional staffer who worked for the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (known as the Helsinki Commission) filed a complaint against the commission, alleging that its chairman at the time, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., made unwanted sexual advances toward her and that she was threatened with retaliation. The details of Packer’s specific allegations are recorded in the complaint she also brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Publicly filed court documents in that lawsuit show that Packer alleged that she “was forced to endure” repeated “unwelcome sexual advances, crude sexual comments and unwelcome touching” by Hastings. In describing the incidents, Packer alleged that Hastings had hugged her multiple times, sometimes in front of witnesses at public events, pressing his whole body against her, and his face to her face. Packer also claimed that after she complained to the commission’s staff director, she was subject to threats of retaliation by both the director and Hastings himself, including “threats of termination.”
Hastings, who has been in Congress since 1993, has denied Packer’s allegations. He called them “malicious” and “absolutely false” in a letter obtained by NBC News. The Office of Congressional Ethics referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee in 2010. After reviewing more than one thousand pages of documents and interviewing eight witnesses, the committee closed the case after finding that while the congressman admitted to having made some unprofessional comments, it had found “no additional evidence supporting [Packer’s ] allegations.”
The federal court also dismissed the case, with prejudice, in June 2014. Both sides maintain they were wronged. But this case, which took four years to settle, shows the system is so flawed that even Hastings’ House-provided attorney issued a retrospective critical of the process. In an internal congressional document obtained by NBC News this week, Gloria Lett, an attorney for the Office of House Employment Counsel, offered some “lessons learned” from Packer’s case that recommended the adoption of new policies to handle such claims.
So how did Winsome Packer end up getting a $220,000 taxpayer-funded settlement in May 2014? And why was that payment, settling sexual harassment claims against a member of the House of Representatives, not included in a disclosure to the House Administration Committee of all such settlement payments in the last five years, provided by Congress’ Office of Compliance, the congressional office that approved the payment?
The puzzle of a byzantine process starts with what Packer says happened when she first made the complaint. Packer claims that from the outset she faced a system that was onerous and intimidating. In an interview, she told NBC News that the process “is designed to totally demolish you and convince you to drop it.” At the beginning, like any accuser who files a complaint with the Office of Compliance (OOC), Packer paid for her own legal representation while it’s the taxpayers who provide free legal counsel for the member of Congress or the office involved in the complaint. Packer completed an initial requirement of a 30-days-or-less, mandatory counseling period for accusers, and then proceeded to a second requirement of a 30-day mediation period. She called that process “worse than the harassment.” She and one of her lawyers describe an attempt to undermine her credibility and intimidate her. George Chuzi, who represented Packer in her first meeting regarding the complaint, said the House lawyers were “unbelievably aggressive.”
Two government-paid lawyers representing Hastings sat across the table, as did her immediate supervisor. According to Packer and Chuzi, among the first things the House counsel said is that Packer is a “liar and an extortionist.” Packer added that the House attorneys also made an initial demand: Packer had to quit. Chuzi said he was “in shock” about the treatment of the accuser. Packer continued to press her case in federal court for three years. How Congress is trying to expose sexual harassment payouts Packer eventually received a settlement payment of $220,000, an amount confirmed by documents reviewed by NBC News and the largest known about since the Congressional Accountability Act was passed in 1995.
One document obtained by NBC News details early draft terms of Packer’s settlement, and it is one of few such documents that have become public.
The others have not been released because confidentiality requirements, established by Congress and signed into federal law as the Congressional Accountability Act, bind accuser, accused and other legal entities from disclosing any terms or details. Despite these confidentiality requirements, Packer said she had decided to speak out because the environment has changed for accusers and she has little to lose. Packer, 60, who worked for the commission from 2007 until 2014, said she has not worked since the settlement was reached nearly four years ago, and is now living with her sister in Florida. Prior to her work as a policy adviser to the Helsinki Commission, Packer worked as a GOP staff member on the House Homeland Security Committee from 2003 through 2006. But when NBC News directed questions about the settlement and the payment to the two congressional entities the documents showed were involved in establishing and approving them — the Office of Compliance and the Senate Office of the Chief Counsel for Employment — neither provided answers. In an email, the Office of Compliance’s media representative wrote that “the Congressional Accountability Act requires that the OOC maintain the confidentially of contacts made with the office. The OOC cannot comment on whether matters have or have not been filed with the office.”
The Senate legal office did not respond to questions — including why it reached a settlement in this case even though Hastings is a member of the House. In the “lessons” memo written by Lett, the counsel representing Hastings’ side, she argued that “the manner in which the case was resolved was not ideal, and, going forward, we strongly recommend that the commission consider adopting regulations or policies to avoid this type of situation.” According to Lett’s memo, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who succeeded Hastings as chairman of the Helsinki Commission in 2011, did not favor moving forward with the settlement. Hastings sent letters to Smith and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who was the ranking member of the commission at the time, in 2012, saying, “I strongly oppose any settlement with Ms. Packer that would involve her receiving any money or things of value,” calling her allegations “absolutely false.”
According to the “lessons” memo, Packer contacted the Senate Chief Counsel for Employment’s office and “indicated her interest in settling the case.” A draft confidentiality agreement between Packer and the commission, obtained by NBC News, forced Packer to resign in order to accept the settlement. She also had to agree to never seek employment with the commission again. The agreement was also made with the commission, not Hastings, and required commission employees to attend a sexual harassment training session. Hastings was not required to attend. According to the settlement, the commission’s harassment politics also had to be redrafted and distributed them at the seminar.
The Senate office didn’t communicate with the House office that first opened the case on the terms and details of the settlement, according to Lett’s “lessons” memo. Other than a conversation between Hastings and Cardin in 2014 that a settlement had been reached, Hastings was never provided any details of the settlement until it was reported in the press last week.
“Until (last Friday) evening, I had not seen the settlement agreement between the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and Ms. Packer,” Hastings said. “At no time was I consulted, nor did I know until after the fact that such a settlement was made.”
Most of Biden’s voters would not be able to read these 3 sentences and understand what they read:
“Biden is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like. On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident.”
These three sentences have gone viral as the former VP, now the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, is trying to discredit Tara Reade.
I think they went all in on Biden as the only way to stop Bernie, in the hopes they could prop him up long enough to get to November. But now its obvious to everyone Joe is done. He’s declined so visibly that he’s no longer the empty suit figurehead he was in his prime.
It is interesting, though, that these allegations are being allowed traction so soon after a spate of endorsements.
It’s a long time to November, a lot can happen. But none of those things are good for Biden’s candidacy. It’s just a question of when he gets dumped. And for whom. Maybe that answer the DNC doesn’t know themselves.
Erudite writing detected.
Erudite definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary www.collinsdictionary.com › dictionary › erudite
If you describe someone as erudite, you mean that they have or show great academic knowledge.
Would .000000001 of Biden’s voters be considered, Erudite?
No surprises here. The northeast dims routinely harass and assault females. The west coast dims seem to like little boys better.
Anyone know what former president Obama thinks on the matter. Has he endorse Joe yet? Obama knows Joe is a disaster.
OK, OK.....
But strategically why now?
I would think the mortal blow to the Biden candidacy should be struck after the convention.
Is the sex stuff just prelude, just firing for the range?
Link to the entire reprinted 2008 CounterPunch article:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/28/biden-the-lout/
Better read this quick before it’s memory holed.
They have to make the change before the convention, and buy off Bernie (again) before then. They can’t burn the free media air time on Joe only to dump him later. They need the continuous free media exposure to “explain” the change, and get the new candidate out front with maximum exposure and positive spin.
Trying to change horses after everyone had to say glowing things about Gropey Joe would be a disaster. The die hard left have gone full 1984/Party of Lenin so they would swallow it without question. But they are far from a majority of the electorate, thank God. And that majority would never buy the bait and switch after the convention.
He’s very creepy ahole.....I wonder how many just didn’t say anything....or wouldn’t say anything for fear of retributions!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.