Biden's 'Delaware records' are going to be the 'Clinton's missing emails' of 2020

• Joe Biden's "Delaware records" are poised to become the 2020 presidential campaign's version of what Hillary Clinton's missing emails were in 2016.
• That is to say, they represent a genuinely serious issue unlikely to be concluded to anyone's total satisfaction, but which will suck up a great deal of campaign oxygen from now until November.
• The public has the right to know if Biden had a sexual harassment complaint filed against him, and if opening up his records could put the issue to bed, he'd be wise to authorize it.
• Anything short of total transparency will have Biden running defense about those archives from now until Election Day.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Joe Biden's "Delaware records" are poised to become the 2020 presidential campaign's version of what Hillary Clinton's missing emails were in 2016. That is to say, they represent a genuinely serious issue that will almost certainly never be concluded to anyone's total satisfaction, and which will suck up a great deal of campaign oxygen from now until November.

The former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee is facing serious accusations from former staffer Tara Reade, who claims she was sexually assaulted by Biden in a Senate hallway in the early 1990s. Over the past week, a former colleague and a former neighbor of Reade's told Insider they recall her telling them of the alleged assault in the mid-90s.

Reade says she filed a complaint with the Senate in 1993, but has no hard copy to prove it. But if she did, there's a chance it's in Biden's Senate records.

Biden categorically denied the allegations on MSNBC on Friday, and a number of prominent Democrats have said they believe him. The former VP also said that while he's "confident there is nothing," if there were a complaint filed against him, it would be in the National Archives, and not his senatorial records held at the University of Delaware.

And while Biden later instructed the National Archives records to be released, he has so far not done the same with the documents at the University of Delaware.

New York Times columnist Ben Smith tweeted that the media should "ask Biden to open his personal papers to inspection."

"Unsealing the Biden papers could spare Democrats far more pain this fall. It's also the right thing to do," Peter Beinart wrote in The Atlantic.

It's becoming clear that this is a burgeoning crisis for Biden, and for Democrats' chances in November.

The 'Delaware records'

Delaware's most famous son, Biden graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965 and later represented the state in the Senate for 36 years. While serving as vice president in 2012, he donated 1,875 boxes and 415 gigabytes of electronic records of senatorial materials to his alma mater.

"The papers are expected to be available to the public two years after Biden's last day in elected public office," the university wrote in 2012. Biden's been out of office since January 20, 2017.

But after Biden announced his run for president in April 2019, the university changed course.

The curator in charge of the records, L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin, told HuffPost that the school has an agreement with Biden that the papers would not be released until they were fully processed, which was still ongoing.

The school also amended its earlier terms, and now wouldn't release the papers before December 31, 2019 or two years after Biden had retired from "public life." The specific distinction between what constitutes "public office" and "public life" is unclear.

But what does seem clear is UD is in no rush to release anything, and per its agreement with Biden to hold off until "processing" is complete, a firm date on the documents' release is indefinite.

Those records were already of great interest over the past year as the press and Biden's opponents sought to vet his views and actions during a long career in government.

They were also apparently of interest to Biden's own campaign, which Insider reported had accessed the files at least once in the past year, but not since the coronavirus pandemic caused the UD library to close in mid-March. Reade's accusation started to pick up steam in the media in late-March after her appearance on Katie Halper's podcast.

The new 'But her emails'

The newfound visibility surrounding Biden's records has echoes of Hillary Clinton's notorious private email server, which became one of the primary issues upon which the 2016 election turned.

Clinton's use of the private server while she was secretary of state was a genuinely serious issue.

If the Democratic nominee, widely expected to be elected president, had compromised government secrets through carelessness or was trying to get around transparency laws, the public had a right to know.

The issue dogged Clinton throughout the campaign, but no issue more so than the so-called "deleted emails," which Clinton claimed were of a personal nature and not relevant to her work as secretary of state.

Less than two weeks before the election, then-FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress to announce he was reviving the investigation into Clinton's email server. After her stunning loss to Donald Trump, Clinton would reportedly go on to blame Comey's letter for "raising doubts that were groundless, baseless" and which "stopped our momentum."

In October 2019, a State Department investigation found that while Clinton's use of a private server created "an increased degree of risk of compromise," it concluded "There was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information."

The report was widely seen as an exoneration of Clinton, but that doesn't change what happened in 2016.

The parallels here are obvious.

Like Clinton's emails, Biden's Delaware records have suddenly become the biggest mystery of the campaign. And they'll remain so until they've been independently and thoroughly parsed.

The public has the right to know if Biden had a sexual harassment complaint filed against him, and if opening up his records could put the issue to bed, he'd be wise to authorize it.

But even in the unlikely event he opens up the archives, it might not be the end of the issue. The absence of evidence of a complaint in the UD archives wouldn't convince everyone that Reade's allegation is without factual basis.

Still, total transparency would help Biden make his case and demonstrate that he's got nothing to hide. Tearing up his agreement with the university to keep the files sealed until he's permanently on the public sidelines would be a strong gesture.

Without it, Biden's going to be running defense about those archives from now until Election Day.

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