University of Delaware Board Members Refusing to Release Senate Records, Have ‘Close Ties’ to Biden

Article written by Elizabeth Vaughn in "RedState":

On Wednesday, former Biden staffer Tara Reade, who has accused the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee of sexually assaulting her in 1993, called on him to release his Senate personnel records. The Daily Caller reported Reade believes a copy of her 1993 complaint is included in those documents which are currently housed by the University of Delaware Library.

According to The Washington Post, at the time the documents were delivered in 2012, the university said they would remain sealed “for two years after Biden retires from public office.” Hours before Biden launched his campaign in April 2019, they indicated the documents would not be made available until after he departed public life.

The Atlantic and The Post have each called on Biden to give the okay to release the documents, saying they “could contain confirmation of any complaint Ms. Reade made, either through official congressional channels or to the three other employees she claims she informed not specifically of the alleged assault but more generally of harassment.”

According to Fox News, the reason why the university’s board members have refused to do so is because many of them have “close personal and financial ties” to Biden.

Fox reports they have reviewed records and discovered the following:

1. The current chairman of the university’s board, John Cochran, is a longtime Biden donor.
2. Cochran bought Biden’s house in 1996 for $1.2 million. At that time, he was the CEO of MBNA. In a January 2008 article entitled “The Senator from MBNA,” The Washington Examiner’s Byron York reported it was a “pretty darned good deal for Biden. Cochran simply paid Biden’s full asking price” despite the fact that the “house needed quite a bit of work; contractors and their trucks descended on the house for months after the purchase.” York wrote that “MBNA gave Cochran a lot of money—$330,000—to help with ‘expenses’ related to the move.”
3. In 2018, Cochran, who has supported each of Biden’s political campaigns, joined Biden in attending the naming ceremony of the Biden School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware.
4. Further, at least seven other members of the University of Delaware’s board of trustees have donated to Biden’s political campaigns — including a former Biden senior counsel from the Senate, as well as the state’s governor and other senior officials.
Terri Kelly, the former president and CEO Of W.L. Gore & Associates, has served on the university’s board of trustees since 2014 — and donated the maximum legal amount to Biden in 2019.
Carol Ammon, who has been on the board since 2013, has given more than $10,000 to Biden’s campaign and affiliated PACs, federal election records show.
John Paradee, a lawyer, joined the board in 2018. He has also donated heavily to Biden.
John Carney, the state’s governor and another board member, has also donated more than $1,000 to Biden.
Claire DeMatteis served as counsel to Biden. Since 2001, she has given over $16,000 to Democratic PACs, including Biden’s, called Unite our States.
Chai Gadde, a CEO, has donated thousands to Biden.
William Lafferty, a partner at a Delaware law firm who serves on the board as well, has also given more than $2,500 to Biden’s campaign.
4. Not long after the house sale, Biden’s son Hunter was hired on at MBNA. Rachel Mullen, a former senior personal banking officer at MBNA from 1994-2001 who later went into Republican politics, tweeted that managers referred to the younger Biden as “Senator MBNA” after he was hired into a lucrative management-prep track right after he graduated from Yale Law School.
An MBNA source who previously worked at the company told Fox News that other employees heard Biden boasting that his salary was unusually high, even for the management-prep track — which was widely seen in the company as a way to groom and pamper well-connected executive candidates with powerful family members.
The source said Biden’s “Senator MBNA” nickname was not politically motivated, but rather reflected a widely held belief among managers — who did not work directly with Biden — that he essentially was engaged in lobbying.
As Hunter cashed the checks, Biden was pushing successfully on the Senate floor for legislation that would make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection — benefiting companies like MBNA. In a contemporaneous interview, Tom Brokaw asked the elder Biden whether it was “inappropriate” for the then-senator to have his son “collecting money from this big credit card company while you were on the [Senate] floor protecting its interests.”

Personally, I would be surprised if, what may have been a very graphic report, survived the shredder all those years ago, especially because Biden has always had serious presidential aspirations.

Because the university is refusing to release the records, it is up to Biden to make the request. If he declines to do so or even if he agrees to unseal the documents and they are not found, this issue will never go away.

Tara Reade’s case has grown legs over the last week. The bombshell video of Reade’s late mother calling into “Larry King Live” was a game changer. And on Monday, Business Insider reported that two very credible witnesses have come forward to corroborate her story. Even Alyssa Milano, who just days ago refused to believe Reade, has come around.

Consider the case the Democrats tried to build around Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavaugh. Not one person, not even a family member, corroborated her story. Yet all of the Democrats believed her, because every woman must be believed. Except if the accused is a Democrat.

There were and are so many reasons why Joe Biden is a toxic candidate. Even before Reade’s accusations of sexual assault became an issue, there were numerous reasons not to vote for Slow Joe.

1. He is clearly in the early stages of cognitive decline.
2. He threatened to withhold $1 billion of badly needed U.S. aid if the Ukrainian president did not fire the investigator who was about to question his son.
3. His wastrel of a son, Hunter Biden, and his brothers have enriched themselves by riding on his coattails.
4. He never made it to the primaries in either of his two previous bids for the presidency.
5. His gaffes, even prior to the onset of his now-obvious dementia, have been numerous.
6. The hair sniffing and touching issues.
7. Difference between “enthusiasm gap” for Biden vs. Trump is stark.

It’s inconceivable to me that Democrats moved heaven and earth ahead of the South Carolina primary to resurrect Biden’s failing campaign. I suppose their alternatives were even less desirable, which is saying a lot. Even Andrew Cuomo, whose name was bandied about several weeks ago as a possible replacement for the former Vice President, has flamed out after a preliminary vetting.

But the Party knows, that were Biden actually able to win the presidency, he would be totally under their control. In effect, the DNC would be running the country. That, I suppose, is what they find so appealing about candidate Joe Biden.

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/04/30/university-of-delaware-board-members/