Tara Reade, a former staffer for then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), made the allegation during the 2020 election that Biden sexually assaulted and harassed her in 1993 -- a claim that transformed her into a target for vicious attacks by Democrats and the media.
Now, in a newly filed lawsuit, Reade is also accusing the FBI of violating various laws and her constitutional rights with a subversive "operation" against her in the wake of her allegations against the president, Fox News reported.
She is now demanding the Department of Justice pay her $10 million in damages "for infliction of emotional distress and anxiety" by way of the FBI actions that she claims were intended to intimidate and silence her from speaking out further against President Biden.
Fox News reported that Reade's lawsuit claims that the FBI was behind a secret grand jury subpoena approved in 2020 by a federal judge in California that forced the social media platform then known as Twitter to hand over all records related to Reade's account.
She further alleged in the suit that the FBI was responsible for "disruptions to her bank accounts" as well as the suspicious disappearance of a manuscript she'd written with additional details of her claims against President Biden that went missing while being shipped via FedEx.
Reade's attorney, Jonathan Levy, said in a statement, "The United States should not have a two-tiered justice system."
Referencing recent defamation trials against former President Donald Trump and former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, he explained, "If President Trump and Mr. Giuliani can be assessed tens of millions in damages for their words; a weaponized FBI that seeks to silence, intimidate, and eliminate Joe Biden’s victim, Tara Reade, must also be held accountable; failing to do so means our justice and legal system has become an instrument of political oppression and suppression."
"The FBI and DOJ has been weaponized by the Biden administration," Reade said in a statement to Newsweek on Wednesday about her lawsuit. "Instead of trying to get to the truth, and instead of helping me when I went to the FBI, I had death threats."
"I went to them like any normal citizen would do for help because they're law enforcement, not knowing that they were actually running an operation against me," she added. "And so rather than just deal with rumors and innuendos, my lawyer has filed this because it will expose the truth about what they're doing."
The lawsuit follows the reported filing in December of a formal complaint and request for investigation with the DOJ's inspector general regarding Reade's allegations of misconduct by the FBI against her after she made her public allegations of sexual assault against President Biden.
The goal of that IG complaint, in addition to spurring some internal accountability for the alleged violation of Reade's rights, was to force the FBI and DOJ to turn over all documents and records it had on file about her, including everything derived from secret subpoenas, surveillance, and warrants.
Reade's attorney Levy told Newsweek, "What we were hoping best-case scenario with the Inspector General complaint was that they would take that seriously and do what we asked, which would be an internal investigation and turn her files over so we can start the process of expunging her files."
"That's optional, of course. It's not what happened, so now we're starting with the tort claim," he noted as he vowed to continue making the demands for transparency and even threatened to file a Freedom of Privacy Act request and lawsuit to force the matter in the courts.
"They should turn them over based on a reasonable demand without having to go through the Freedom of Privacy Act and possibly the court," Levy added. "I'm not sure we're gonna get any cooperation at this point."
