It would be easier to know what to do with Tara Reade’s accusation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her if her tale were more solid, or if it were less.

In the past few days, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press all reported on a story that’s been circulating through the left- and right-wing media for the last few weeks. Reade, a staff assistant in Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s, is one of the women who last year spoke out about Biden’s handsiness. When The A.P. interviewed Reade last April, she said that Biden “rubbed her shoulders and neck” and “played with her hair.”

She also told The Union, a California newspaper, last year that she didn’t feel sexualized. “She instead compared her experience to being a lamp,” the paper reported. She told the reporter, Alan Riquelmy: “‘It’s pretty. Set it over there.’ Then when it’s too bright, you throw it away.”

But last month, in an interview with the left-wing podcast host Katie Halper, Reade added new, more serious details to her story, claiming that Biden pushed her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers. (The Biden campaign has said, “This absolutely did not happen.”)