Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday that he believes Joe Biden is telling the truth regarding the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s claims that he never sexually assaulted his former staffer Tara Reade.

“It’s a difficult situation,” Cuomo told WAMC radio host Alan Chartock. “Everybody respects a woman’s right and responsibility to come forward and she did, and we encourage that all across the board. Joe Biden denies it, obviously he’s done that already.”

“I think it’s one of those issues that, it’s gonna’ be up to people to decide,” Cuomo said. “For myself I’ve known Joe Biden a number of years. He has always been straight forward and true to his word, so I accept his word.”

Cuomo pointed out that “just in general, it’s a political time, people make accusations. They don’t need any basis for it.”

“Anybody can say anything, and then if you’re in elected office you can defend it to the best you can,” the governor said. “But the ‘do you beat your wife? When did you stop beating your wife?’ You know those accusations, they’re just ugly, they can have no basis to them but you know people are free to make them.”

Biden on Friday vehemently denied all sex assault allegations from Reade, a former Senate staffer, saying “this never happened.”

“They aren’t true. This never happened,” the ex-vice president said in a statement of the allegations.

“News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former staffers have not found one — not one — who corroborated her allegations in any way,” Biden wrote in the statement.

Reade has accused Biden of pinning her against a wall in 1993 when she was a staff assistant at his Senate office.

She said Biden reached under her skirt and assaulted her.

Speaking Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Biden said, “It is not true. I’m saying it unequivocally – it never happened. It didn’t. It never happened.”