Byline: Paul Farhi

WASHINGTON - The past few weeks haven't been kind to Tara Reade, the woman who has accused former vice president Joe Biden of sexual assault. Several of Reade's former landlords and acquaintances say she manipulated and deceived them. Lawyers say she inflated her résumé as a prosecution witness in several criminal cases, and a district attorney in California is investigating whether she perjured herself. Her attorney quit on her after just two weeks.

Ryan Grim is unmoved.

Grim - a journalist whose work has given prominence and credence to Reade's allegations, which Biden has firmly denied - thinks the latest revelations don't really change the story's basic contours.

"It's messy and getting messier," he said last week. Those "who don't believe her, or don't want to believe her, have plenty to cling to. People who do believe her, or who want to believe her, do as well, though many people in the middle have shifted to the doubtful camp as more questions have arisen."

Amid the dust cloud of allegations and denials, Grim has become a controversial figure - at least among warring factions of Democrats.

As Washington bureau chief of the Intercept, he was among the first journalists to showcase Reade's latest allegations of abusive treatment when she worked in Biden's office. And when, shortly thereafter, she alleged on a podcast that Biden had sexually assaulted her in 1993, Grim was noisy in his efforts to call attention to the story - both on Twitter, where he has more than 150,000 followers, and in interviews discussing each twist and turn.

He also broke an important piece of the story last month when he uncovered a recording of Reade's late mother calling in to CNN in 1993 and telling host Larry King about unspecified "problems" her daughter had working for "a prominent senator." The call "isn't conclusive, but it buttresses [Reade's] credibility," Grim said in a webcast interview. "It adds to the pile of evidence" supporting Reade, who had previously said she told her mother about the alleged assault...