The Patriot Post® · Team Biden Assaults Due Process

Tara Reade, call your office.

Last spring, Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault against Reade way back in the 1990s. The story made a small splash and was quickly swept under the rug by Biden’s Democrat handlers and his lapdogs in the Leftmedia. That didn’t stop him from hypocritically and self-servingly trashing the Trump administration for restoring due process on college campuses.

You know, the quaint notion that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. The idea that witnesses can be cross-examined. And that both accusers and accused have rights during proceedings.

These foundational blocks of American justice had been turned on their head on college campuses, spearheaded by none other than Joe Biden during the Obama administration.

And he’s planning to do it again.

Biden’s “White House Gender Policy Council” set to work this week “reviewing” the outstanding work of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos with the obvious aim of undoing it. And 115 House Democrats sent a letter to Miguel Cardona, DeVos’s newly confirmed replacement, demanding that he “prioritize replacing” Trump administration rules. Predictably, they claim DeVos’s work “turns back the clock and erodes hard-fought protections and rights for victims with a ‘boys will be boys’ approach to sexual assault on college campuses.”

Hogwash. Nevertheless, they want to … turn back the clock.

It’s worth reiterating the entire basis for the Left’s assault on due process is distorted, if not an outright lie. Biden is among the many Democrats who’ve falsely claimed over the years that “one in five” women on college campuses is the victim of sexual assault. The truth isn’t great, but it’s not even close to that bad.

The fundamental problem with that statistic is, to borrow Bill Clinton’s famous formulation, the definition of “is.” College campuses are hardly bastions of morality, because the Left wrecked them a long time ago. Promiscuous carousing happens all the time, and morality is not defined by consent. Sometimes, a drunk man takes advantage of a drunk woman — or worse. Other times, she wakes up the next morning full of regret. Are both of those incidents “sexual assault”? And regardless, shouldn’t the man have a chance to defend himself?

To the first question, Joe Biden and his handlers say yes, they’re the same. To the last question, they say no, a man is guilty as charged. Well, most men.

“It’s always worth reminding people,” writes David Harsanyi, “that if President Joe Biden were compelled to live by the standards he intends to institute for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would be presumed guilty of rape, denied any legitimate opportunity to refute Tara Reade’s charges, and tossed from office in disgrace.”