Allegations of longstanding verbal sexual harassment and bullying by a senior White House official, Anthony Bernal, have been corroborated by a former top Biden aide who spoke to Fox News Digital.
The aide said the claims warrant an internal investigation.
According to reports, Bernal, a top aide to Jill Biden, has frequently speculated about staffers’ penis sizes and sexuality, made inappropriate remarks about their attractiveness, and questioned their personal lives, in an attempt to assert dominance and make people uncomfortable.
Multiple sources said this constituted “classic Me Too” behavior and “sexual harassment.”
“It lines up with everything I experienced working there,” the former aide said.
“I’m surprised it has taken this long for so many staffers to speak out,” they said. “I wouldn’t be shocked if this empowered current and past staff to move forward.”
“It is to make people uncomfortable and to have power over them,” one inside source said. “It is Me Too – classic Me Too.”
“It was a lot of inappropriate remarks — talking about other people’s attractiveness and speculating about their sex lives at very weird moments,” that source said. “That’s actually sexual harassment.”
“If the White House Counsel is investigating the behavior of a junior staffer in the scheduling and advance office, does that mean they’re investigating Anthony Bernal, an assistant to the president, too?” a former aide said. “A dozen sources seem like enough to trigger that type of internal investigation.”
They are coming forward because they want Bernal to be held accountable.
However, the White House chief of staff defended Bernal, dismissing the accusations from over a dozen sources as “unfounded attacks.”
The Bidens have “full confidence in Anthony’s character,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said.
“His many fans at the White House know him to be both gracious and tough, holding himself up to the highest standards, with a heart dedicated to public service,” Zients said. “It is disappointing that he is the target of unfounded attacks from unnamed sources.”
The former aide criticized this response, saying the White House should be furious over the situation and protecting the chief of staff, not a “serial abuser.”
“From a comms approach, I have no idea what the hell they were thinking by putting Jeff Zients’ name on a statement defending a guy accused by a dozen staffers of being a bully and worse,” the former aide said. “If I were Zients, I would be furious that I was left up the creek without a paddle. No one was protecting him in an effort to protect a serial abuser who has been a ticking time bomb for the Bidens for over a decade. If it weren’t for that book from a New York Times reporter, this would have continued to go unnoticed.”
“Aside from associating the White House chief of staff with a culture of abuse, bullying and harassment, they have elevated a story in an outlet they rarely treat with any credibility,” the former aide added. “They go out of their way to tell everyone to ignore the [New York] Post. But when you provide a statement from the White House chief of staff, you’re giving the story an avalanche of credibility and providing a permission structure for other outlets and journalists to advance the story.”
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