Hand it to The New York Times to take up the question of Tara Reade’s sexual-abuse accusations against Joe Biden … on Easter weekend, with its reduced holiday readership, in an article that does its best to minimize her charges.

It’s in stark contrast to the way The Times and its fellows treated the even thinner claims against Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. And it underlines the hypocrisy of the “believe all women” double standard.

Ms. Reade was a Senate staffer for Mr. Biden in 1993 when, she says, he pinned her to a wall, reached beneath her clothing and penetrated her with his fingers. One friend from back then recalls Ms. Reade telling her of the assault soon after, and another says she got the story a few years later, as does Ms. ­Reade’s brother.

But she only went public with this account late last month — having leveled lesser charges of inappropriate touching against him last year along with seven other women telling similar tales.

The Times “explains” that it took the intervening weeks to check out her story before reporting it. High up in the story, reporters Lisa Lerer and Sydney Ember note that no other Biden ex-staffers confirm Ms. Reade’s claims, no other sex-assault charges have turned up against him and “The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.”

Just hours after that story went online Sunday, the paper cut the second half of that sentence — “beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.” It also deleted a tweet that included the passage.

The piece also makes a point of recounting how Ms. Reade has in recent months tweeted support for Bernie Sanders and, before that, praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Do you recall The Times searching the Twitter feed of Justice Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford? Or spending weeks digging up dirt that could make her seem a flake, as the Lerer-Ember story does with Ms. Reade?

Ms. Reade is making charges about events in 1993, when she was in her 20s and Mr. Biden was 51. Ms. Ford’s claims were even older, about events in 1982, when all involved were in high school.

Unlike Ms. Reade, Ms. Ford had no one confirming she’d told the same story at the time — indeed, everyone she cited as a witness said that nothing like the party she described had ever happened.

Yet The Times (and ideological allies at other publications as well as in politics) played up every allegation against Justice Kavanaugh, pumping up their apparent credibility exactly as it seeks to undermine Ms. Reade’s credibility now. Even months after he won confirmation, it ran a column presenting yet another “accusation” — without mentioning that the “accuser” didn’t remember it happening, and in fact wouldn’t even be interviewed.

The Gray Lady is hardly alone in this hypocrisy: The actress and #MeToo leader Alyssa Milano, for example, has suddenly discovered due process now that a candidate she favors stands accused. “We have to societally change that mindset to believing women, but that does not mean at the expense of not giving men their due process and investigating situations,” Ms. Milano said in an interview. “It’s got to be fair in both directions.”

It isn’t hard to come to the conclusion that for Republicans, it’s “guilty when accused.” Only Democrats deserve the benefit of the doubt.

First Published: April 14, 2020, 7:45 a.m.