I have received permission from a longtime colleague and a professional source — who has become a friend now that we’re “civilians” — to share some thoughts about the sexual assault allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden.

My friend is Elaine Lang Cornett, who served as press secretary for the late U.S. Rep. Charles Wilson, an East Texas Democrat and arguably one of the more colorful and effective members of Congress in the past 100 years.

Elaine is casting doubt on the allegation leveled by Tara Reade that Biden sexually assaulted her. Elaine writes:

I have two observations on this story based on my time working in a congressional office. In 1993 the Hill was deep into the sexual harassment allegations against Sen. Bob Packwood. This would include any and all HR departments to report problems. If there was any whisper of an allegation against Biden at that time, it would have surfaced. I can speak to this since I was the press secretary in my office, and fielded phone calls about this issue several times a week. Also, I walked (and sometime ran) through every hallway under the Capitol during the 15 years I worked there and there was no corridor in the basement catacombs where there would have been enough privacy for the events described. These were heavily trafficked passageways used to move from building to building and also were the location of many support offices. I have been skeptical since this story started to percolate. 

OK. I’ll take her word for it. My friend always shot straight with me while I worked for the Beaumont Enterprise and her boss was representing the Second Congressional District of East Texas.

It’s good to keep many aspects of this allegation — which Biden has denied categorically and emphatically — in its proper perspective.