More than a month after being publicly accused of sexual assault by a former Senate staffer in the 1990s, former Vice President Joe Biden says the allegations "aren't true. This never happened."

Biden's campaign released a statement Friday morning from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee shortly before a live television interview with MSNBC. The statement and interview are the candidate's first direct response to the allegations by former Biden Senate staff assistant Tara Reade.

After weeks of prominent women's groups remaining quiet about a sexual assault claim against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Planned Parenthood issued a statement addressing the issue — and Donald Trump Jr praised them for having the "courage" to do what others did not.

Some members of the University of Delaware Board of Trustees, which has sole authority over Joe Biden’s Senate archive, have close ties to the former vice president, Fox News reported.

Calls to make the archive public have grown over the past week as former Biden staffer Tara Reade’s allegations of sexual assault, which Reade says occurred in 1993 when Biden was a senator for Delaware, have garnered increasing media coverage. The Biden campaign has denied the allegations.

Despite an obstacle-strewn ascension similar to a “Game of Thrones” episode, former Vice President Joe Biden managed to slay every metaphorical dragon he faced in becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, from old policy specters to campaign trail gaffes to a primary opponent who was stubborn to concede.

But there are more gauntlets to run. Biden wants to defeat President Trump by drawing strong contrasts on competence and character.

While Joe Biden has remained publicly silent about a sexual assault allegation made against him, his presidential campaign has sought to coordinate and unify Democratic messaging on the matter, advising surrogates earlier this month to say that the allegation “did not happen.”

The Biden campaign circulated talking points among top Democratic supporters shortly after the New York Times published a story earlier this month about the allegation by Tara Reade, a former staff assistant in Biden’s Senate office who says he assaulted her in 1993.

On Tuesday, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whom President Donald Trump defeated in 2016, endorsed Joe Biden in his 2020 White House bid despite the lingering sexual assault allegation against him.

“Just think of what a difference it would make right now if we had a president who not only listened to the science … but brought us together,” said Clinton. “Think of what it would mean if we had a real president.”

This Abridge News topic aggregates four unique arguments on different sides of the debate. Here are the quick facts to get you started:

THE QUICK FACTS

In March, when a former aide to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused the candidate of sexually assaulting her in 1993, two people came forward to say that the woman, Tara Reade, had told them of the incident shortly after it allegedly occurred — her brother, Collin Moulton, and a friend who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Senator Bernie Sanders’ fiercest backers are furious at senior officials and supporters of the Democratic Party over their silence in the face of sexual assault allegations made against the presumptive nominee Joe Biden by a former Senate staffer.

Biden, the former vice president, is being accused by Tara Reade of forcibly kissing her, groping her, and digitally penetrating her when she served as an aide to the then-senator from Delaware in 1993.

A NEW PIECE of evidence has emerged buttressing the credibility of Tara Reade’s claim that she told her mother about allegations of sexual harassment and assault related to her former boss, then-Sen. Joe Biden. Biden, through a spokesperson, has denied the allegations. Reade has claimed to various media outlets, including The Intercept, that she told her mother, a close friend, and her brother about both the harassment and, to varying degrees of detail, the assault at the time.