Joe Biden says he regrets not getting Anita Hill 'the kind of hearing she deserved'
- Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke about his role in the Anita Hill hearings on Tuesday night, saying, "I wish I could've done something."
- Biden was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, when Anita Hill, a law professor, came forward with allegations of sexual harassment against then-federal judge Clarence Thomas, who was nominated for a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
- In recent years - especially in light of the #MeToo movement, and the allegations against now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which he denies - Biden has had to publicly reckon with how he handled the hearing.
- "To this day I regret I couldn't come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved, given the courage she showed by reaching out to us."
Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke about his role in the Anita Hill hearings on Tuesday night, saying, "I wish I could've done something."
Biden was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, when Anita Hill, a law professor, came forward with allegations of sexual harassment against then-federal judge Clarence Thomas, who was nominated for a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Thomas, who was confirmed, denies the allegations.
In recent years - especially in light of the #MeToo movement, and the allegations against now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which he denies - Biden has had to publicly reckon with how he handled the 1991 Anita Hill hearing. He has been criticized for not doing more to control the hearing where his colleagues railed against Hill and for declining to call witnesses to support her testimony.
"It certainly was not his best moment," former Rep. Pat Schroeder, a Democrat from Colorado, who was one of the few women in Congress at the time, told Politico last year. "To have railroaded that through and not listened to the other three women and let his colleagues absolutely tear her apart was absolutely horrible."
Schroeder, along with then-Reps. Barbara Boxer, Nita Lowey, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Pat Schroeder, Jolene Unsoeld, and the late Patsy Mink, famously stormed the Senate to demand that Hill be allowed to testify.
The Anita Hill hearings galvanized women, and have been partially credited for the 1992 "Year of the Woman" election, where the number of women in the Senate went from two to seven, and the number of women in the House rose to 57, according to Rutgers.
At the event in New York, which according to the Associated Press honored young people working to "combat sexual assault on college campuses," Biden, who is gearing up for a potential 2020 run for president, addressed the Anita Hill hearing.
"We knew a lot less about the extent of harassment back then - over 30 years ago - but she paid a terrible price," he said. "She was abused through the hearing; she was taken advantage of; her reputation was attacked. I wish I could have done something - and I opposed Clarence Thomas' nomination. I voted against him."
"They were a bunch of white guys - no, I mean this sincerely, there were a bunch of white guys hearing - hearing this testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee," he said later in his speech. "So when Anita Hill - when Anita Hill came to testify, she faced a committee that didn't fully understand what the hell it was all about. To this day I regret I couldn't come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved, given the courage she showed by reaching out to us."
If Biden decides to run, he'll have to contend with a long - and potentially damaging political record - stretching back to before 1973 when he was sworn into the US Senate. That record also includes championing the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (part of the broader, controversial crime bill), and working with former President Barack Obama on the It's On Us campaign to raise awareness of sexual assault on campus launched in 2014.
The Violence Against Women Act has yet to be reauthorized in 2019.