Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who in 2020 accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, said on Tuesday she had defected to Russia.

“I’m still kind of in a daze a bit but I feel very good,” Reade told Sputnik, a Russian press outlet supportive of President Vladimir Putin while sitting with Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent jailed in the US but now a member of parliament in Russia.

“I feel very surrounded by protection and safety,” Reade said.

Now 59, Reade was a staffer for Biden when he was a US senator from Delaware.

In 2020, as Biden ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, she claimed that in 1993, in a Senate corridor, he pushed her against a wall and assaulted her. Biden repeatedly denied the accusation.

At her press appearance in Russia, Reade was described as a “writer and publicist and former aide to Joe Biden”.

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