If Biden hoped he was clearing up a key evidentiary question Friday related to his former Senate staffer‘s sexual assault allegations — he called for the identification and release of “any record of the complaint she alleges she filed“ — he was sorely mistaken.

Now there’s a focus on his refusal to commit to opening up his archived papers at the University of Delaware — a trove of documents that critics suspect might house Reade’s complaint. Rather than set the record straight Friday in his first remarks on the subject, Biden might have inadvertently opened a new line of attack on his campaign this fall and provided President Trump — who has famously refused to release his own tax records and has been accused of sexual assault multiple times — with a measure of cover.

Trump’s campaign promptly accused Biden of concealing the truth.

“The most transparent thing Joe Biden did this morning was admit that he is hiding documents so they can’t be used against him,” said Emma Vaughn, Florida press secretary for the Republican National Committee, in a statement.