Former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos says President Joe Biden sexually harassed her by placing his forehead on her forehead during a conversation before he became president.
She added that technically it could be considered “sexual harassment” under the administration’s proposed rule changes to Title IX, according to the American newspaper “New York Post”. .
The Biden government’s Department of Education began reviewing Title IX in March 2021 and is still collecting public comments on the proposed changes.
DeVos continued, “I only had one meeting with Joe Biden, and that was before he decided to run for president again. I was in a wheelchair.. I was behind the scenes after speaking to him.. He approached me, put his hands on my shoulder, his forehead on my forehead.” For a few seconds, he spoke to me.
“If Biden did so as a student on a college campus under his proposed ruling, I would file a sexual harassment lawsuit under Title IX for his conduct,” she said.
She stated that “Biden pressed his forehead against her forehead” for seconds while I was confined to a wheelchair.
DeVos did not specify when the incident occurred, but they were guest speakers at the 87th annual winter meeting of the US Conference of Mayors in January 2019.
She stated that Biden inquired about the nature of her injury, and said that he was “holding her shoulder and his forehead pressed against her face… He told me that he had nine nails in his shoulder, but everyone thought they were in his head.”
DeVos criticized the Biden administration’s plan to roll back Trump-era reforms that removed protections for those who claimed to have fallen victim to sexual harassment.
In 2020, DeVos introduced reforms “to combat sexual misconduct without abandoning the core values of justice, the presumption of innocence, and due process of law.”
She said that changing the rule proposed by the Biden administration to Title IX, would qualify the president’s behavior toward it as overstepping the mark.