Pelosi says she believes Biden’s denial of assault claim: ‘I’m not going to answer this question again’

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she believes presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s denial of sexual assault allegations and backed his recent call for releasing any records of a complaint.

Biden last Friday directly denied the allegations made by a former Senate aide, Tara Reade, and asked the secretary of the Senate to make public any records of a claim she may have made while she worked for the then-senator in the 1990s.

When asked during an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber if she viewed it as a closed issue, Pelosi said, “It is for me.”

“I have said I am proud to support Joe Biden for president. I believe him when he says it didn’t happen. But I also believe that when he says let them look into the records. And that’s what they should do,” Pelosi said.

“But I’m not going to answer this question again. I will just say, I have every confidence that Joe Biden will be a great president of the United States,” she added.

The Office of the Secretary of the Senate said this week that it informed Biden it has “no discretion to disclose” the existence of Reade’s complaint of sexual assault against him in 1993.

Biden said during an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last Friday that “this never happened.”

“To the best of my knowledge, there’s been no complaints made against me in terms of my Senate career, in terms of my office and anything that has been run. Look, this is an open book. There’s nothing for me to hide. Nothing at all,” Biden said.

Pelosi previously said last week that she believed the denial of the allegations issued by Biden’s campaign, but that was before Biden addressed the issue directly in the MSNBC interview last Friday.

“I am impressed with the people who worked with him at the time saying that they absolutely never heard one iota of information about this. Nobody ever brought forth a claim or had anybody tell them about such a claim,” Pelosi said last week during an interview with CNN’s “New Day.”

Top Democrats, including other prominent female lawmakers such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), have also stood by Biden and his denial of the allegations.

Warren, a potential vice presidential pick, said on Monday that “the vice president’s answers were credible and convincing.”