Getty Joe Biden, and Eva Murry with her aunt, Christine O'Donnell.
A claim in a Law&Crime story by a woman named Eva Murry — who alleged that former Vice President Joe Biden complimented her breasts when she was only 14 years old at a political event — has been countered by the event’s organizer, newspaper articles from the time and Biden’s own calendar.
It now turns out that Biden wasn’t at the event in question, according to an event organizer. However, Murry’s aunt — Biden’s former political opponent Christine O’Donnell — alleges it might have happened in a different year.
The Law&Crime story was originally headlined “Woman Claims Biden Sexually Harassed Her When She Was 14 Years Old by Complimenting Her.” It was later deleted, and then an updated version was posted in which Biden’s campaign called the claim “absolutely false” and provided documents to back that up.
Murry, who is now 26 years old, told Law&Crime, “When it was Biden and my aunt’s turn to say hello he quickly turned to me and asked how old I was. I replied with my age and he replied with the comment, ‘Fourteen? You’re very well endowed for 14!’”
Law&Crime‘s updated story now says the Biden campaign provided the site with “two news articles which strongly suggest Biden would not have been able to attend the event in question as well as a copy of then-senator Biden’s schedule which also supports the claim that he did not attend the dinner. Finally, the Biden campaign also provided a letter from a man who identified himself as the former vice-president of the Gridiron Dinner which categorically denied Biden’s attendance that year.” You can see an article with that documentary evidence here. Heavy has also contacted the Biden campaign to obtain it directly. See Biden’s schedule here.
O’Donnell claimed on Facebook that the incident might have happened in 2007 or 2009 instead. O’Donnell is the former U.S. Senate tea party-associated candidate who controversially declared she had “dabbled into witchcraft.” She later insisted, “I’m not a witch.”
Evidence then emerged that Biden was in Iowa in 2007:
Christine O’Donnell says this might have occurred another year now, says specifically 2007. Though it’s unclear to me if Biden attended this year either. His calendar on his campaign website on the Web Archive and it indicate he was in Iowa this whole day.
t.co/XyzrP7Hl7T
May 5, 2007. All his events that day are in Iowa.
news article matching the schedule showing Biden being in Iowa that evening.
It’s not clear whether Biden was at the 2009 Gridiron dinner. (He did attend one in D.C. that year, but that’s a different event. Biden became Vice President on January 20, 2009.) A May 3, 2009, article in the Wilmington, Delaware, News Journal discussed that year’s 18th annual First State Gridiron Dinner & Show, which occurred that May 2 in Delaware. It focuses on a former state Democratic Party chairman getting an award and doesn’t mention Biden at all. The story describes the event as an “annual roast.” Newspaper articles from May 3, 2009, show that Biden, as vice president, was dealing with the swine flu outbreak at that time, and he had recently made controversial comments on The Today Show about avoiding public transportation as a result of it.
Gridiron Dinner Secretary Cathy Klocko told Heavy in a short phone interview that she didn’t remember whether Biden was there because it was so long ago and she didn’t have records.
Brooke Singman, a reporter for Fox News Digital, also reported, “NEW: Fox has obtained a letter from former VP of the First State Gridiron Dinner saying @JoeBiden did not attend the event on May 3, 2008. I have also obtained Biden’s personal schedule for the day, which shows that an aide went in his place. Biden had a minor surgery that week.”
The Fox News story quotes J. Brian Murphy, the former vice president of the dinner, as saying that he can “conclusively say” Biden “was not at the dinner.” Heavy has reached out to Murphy for an interview. A 2005 article on a different Gridiron dinner described Murphy as “a Wilmington economic development consultant.”
“The year 2008 is particularly noteworthy because it is the only year where the Senator agreed to appear in a video, which was a spoof of Meet the Press,” he told Fox News. “It was taped earlier that week. It was our hope the Senator would attend the dinner to see the video, but he sent regrets. Had he been there, myself as well as others would have known and in fact, I would have acknowledged him from the stage. Senator Biden was not at the Gridiron Dinner in May of 2008.”
Murry first made the claim on Facebook. The post was deleted, but you can read an archived version of it here. She was explicit about the date in that post, writing, “In 2008 my aunt Christine O’Donnell ran for senator against Joe Biden (yes, she did run AGAINST Joe Biden In 2008, in 2010 she ran against Chris Coons for the seat Joe Biden left vacant when he became Vice President)…I was 14 years old, I even got credit in school when I would miss for big political events.”
O’Donnell, who ran unsuccessfully against Biden for Senate, has been associated with unproven accusations against Biden before. A Vanity Fair article in 2010 alleged that “a former O’Donnell aide revealed that during O’Donnell’s 2008 attempt to depose the five-term senator, O’Donnell suspected Biden of tapping her phone lines.”
The Eva Murry story on Law&Crime, by Colin Kalmbacher, came on the heels of a former Biden Senate staffer, Tara Reade, accusing the former vice president of sexually assaulting her years ago. Biden adamantly denies that accusation. Online records show that Murry lives in New Jersey with a date of birth of March 1994.
Kalmbacher’s story reported:
A woman says she was sexually harassed by presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden when she was 14 years old. The woman, Eva Murry, told Law&Crime that Biden complimented her on the size of her breasts at the First State Gridiron Dinner & Show in 2008, a long-running roast of and party for politicians, journalists and prominent business figures held each year in Delaware. Murry says she remembers the event occurring sometime around May of that year.
Screenshots of Murry’s now-deleted Facebook post show she included a copy of this photo from 2010, saying she was in it with O’Donnell, wearing the black dress with flowers:
U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell greets her supporters after she won the Delaware U.S. Senate primary against Rep. Mike Castle on September 14, 2010, in Dover, Delaware.
Sasha Pezenik, an ABC News reporter, also tweeted that the event organizer said Biden wasn’t there, but she deleted the tweet. The liberal blog Daily Kos has posted a cache of the tweet, which read, “And, then-V.P. of the First State Gridiron Dinner wrote a letter today provided by the campaign, ‘to whom it may concern’ saying, ‘After reviewing my files of the dinner which included attendees and the show itself, I can conclusively say, Senator Biden was not at the dinner.'”
An old newspaper article has also emerged that says Biden was back home after surgery.
Heavy found the Wilmington, Delaware, News Journal article, dated May 4, 2008, in Newspaper.com archives. It reads:
When Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., quit the presidential race back in January, he said he would head home and get back to important matters in Delaware and the Senate. Most thought that meant things like the Iraq war, funding for added police on the streets, fighting domestic violence – things that Biden made signature issues in his four debates in politics. Little did we know that one of the priority matters was simply – breathing. Biden, 65, is back home after having surgery Tuesday in Philadelphia to deal with significant sinus issues including a deviated septum. ‘We anticipate that he’ll be out for the remainder of the week recovering at his home in Wilmington,’ his spokeswoman, Annie Tomasini, said before the surgery.
Screengrab/Newspapers.comThe article in the May 2008 issue of the Wilmington News Journal.
Here’s what you need to know:
Eva Murry Is the Niece of Former Republican Senate Candidate O’Donnell, Who Has Written a Lengthy Facebook Post Defending Her
FacebookEva Murry
Murry is O’Donnell’s niece. “Murry is the niece of former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell and said she occasionally received school credit for attending such political events,” the now-deleted Law&Crime story reported. O’Donnell has five siblings.
The Law&Crime story had claimed there was corroboration for Murry’s story from friends and her sister:
One friend and her sister said that Murry told her details of the alleged incident more or less immediately after it happened. Four other friends of Murry’s said they were told about the incident, with the same details, between two and three years after it originally occurred.
“She was telling me about the event and explained what happened,” Murry’s friend Victoria Anstey told Law&Crime. “I remember being so shocked. I didn’t know who Biden was or anything. Just [that] she said he was an ‘older man’ was enough for me to not like the situation.”
On May 1, Antsey shared the story to her Facebook page and wrote, “For anyone who knows me they know I’m a Democrat. I don’t hid that at all. I’m not starting an argument I’m here to share an article and to advise to not to vote blindly for any party. Voting solely based of your candidate being blue or red is no way to vote. I don’t like Trump. But before you vote for Biden please read this article and demand proper representation for the Democratic Party. One you can be proud of.”
Her friend Katielynn Weaver also spoke to Law&Crime and said: “The incident happened before I met Eva but she told me about it prior to our first time arriving in Delaware.”
Weaver wrote on her Facebook page:
Talking about bad things that happen to you are hard, embarrassing, and scary.
Talking about something bad that happened to you at the hands of (at one point and now maybe again) one of the most powerful people in the country, that’s something else entirely, that’s an ineffable strength.
I am so proud of you geeeeva, you amaze me more and more everyday with your growth.
You and your family were on my side through my entire assault, I’ll be damned if we won’t do the same for you.
I love you so much, thank you for trusting me since the beginning and for never making me regret trusting you back ❤️
Another friend who spoke to Law&Crime, Aileen Callaghan, wrote on Facebook: “There are no charges you can file for somebody doing what Joe Biden did to Eva.”
O’Donnell has spoken out in defense of her niece on Facebook.
She wrote:
Please let me set the record straight about my niece’s brave comments. Don’t let them silence other women by shaming Eva. I can guarantee Eva is not the only one Biden said creepy things to. That is why the Biden camp is trying to flip this around on Eva, to deter others from speaking up.
Blind Biden supporters will attack Eva even if a video recording of the entire exchange came out. They would claim it was doctored, so why should Eva jump through their harassing hoops? Further, if pictures came out, the narrative would switch to whether or not she was well-endowed at 14. I want to protect my niece from further harassment. She told her story. You can believe her or not. Hopefully others will be inspired to speak up too. She told her story privately on FB because her fellow liberal friends were blinding praising Biden, and she wanted them to know what he is really like. People supported Clinton even though he was a known scoundrel. They can do the same with Biden. Eva spoke up so that he would not get a free pass for being such a creeper.
Second, Biden creeped on her when she was a teenager, end of discussion. I was right there. Would it change anything if she got the year wrong? Would it make it okay for Biden, a much older man, to creep on a teenager if he called her well-endowed in 2007 or 2009 rather than 2008,? Eva’s liberal friends corroborated that over 10 years ago she told them what Biden said to her, and that it made her uncomfortable. Why would she do that … just in case 12 years later he ran for President and she wanted to have this in her pocket? It doesn’t make sense, but Blind Biden followers will not think rationally.
Has Biden submitted proof that he was not at the Gridiron in 2008? Did he take DE’s support for granted and skip the biggest political event of the year? In a re-election year?! How arrogant. After attending every year for decades, he skips a re-election year, and the year he was running for VP? He is confident his followers will just blindly support him. Again, it wouldn’t change anything if Eva mixed up the years. But still, if Biden was having surgery that day, it should be easy enough to produce medical records to show it was on the exact date of the Gridiron.
For years, Eva was too disturbed by this event to discuss it even in private. Neither one of us thought to “document” that she was there because she just wanted to put it behind her and move on. Again… why would she tell her friends about it so many years ago? The year proves nothing.
And lastly, I can promise you that Eva is not the only young woman Biden made creepy remarks to. The way Eva is treated now will determine whether more people come forward or not. This is exactly why the Biden camp is attacking her… to send a message to anyone else thinking about coming forward. Please don’t let the Biden camp silence more women.
Eva told her story. People can choose to believe her or not. She nor I will take their bait by putting her on the defensive. My challenge to all of you – especially the media – is this … Show Eva respect, then see if others come forward. God bless you.
A person asked O’Donnell on the comment thread why she didn’t report the allegation to authorities at the time. She responded:
My niece asked me not to. I had to respect her wishes. Like many victims, they feel ashamed when something like this happens. For years it was difficult for her to talk about even privately. She told a handful of friends and family and wanted to leave it at that and move on. But then, when Bernie dropped out, she saw her liberal friends blindly praising him as if Biden walked on water. She felt compelled to share her experience so that Biden would not get a free pass on being such a perv. She posted it to her friends on FB, and it been thrown back on her. What a disgrace. They do that to silence other women from speaking up. That is what is truly sad.
A man wrote on the comment thread, “He was at the hospital having surgery. Maybe he got there by witchcraft,” to which O’Donnell responded, “Did you see the proof? And would if she got her years mixed up? Would it matter if it was 2007 not 2008? It’s okay for him to creep on a 13 year old? Ppor (sic) guy. Get your head out of the sand. Be honest about what kind of man you are supporting.”
To another person who said Biden wasn’t there, she wrote, “So she was either 13 or 15 if she mixed up her years. That makes it any better?!! Also, I ran in 2006 and in 2010, so it is highly likely she came with in either 2007 or 2009.. or all three until he made his creepy remarks. Has Biden submitting medical records to prove he had surgery that day? Don’t you find it odd that he’d miss the biggest political event of the year for DE during a re-election year, and the year he ran for VP? Did he just take DE’s support for granted?!!”
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