Anita Hill wants proof that 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden has learned from his mistakes in handling her sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
“I’m ready to move on, but I’m also ready to hold Joe Biden accountable,” Hill said in New York City on Thursday. “Accountability means acknowledging your role in the problem and the harm that was caused, that you have a part of it, giving me clear information that you have changed, and you are going to do something about gender discrimination. I expect that from every candidate, regardless of their gender.”
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Hill, speaking at CNN’s “Citizen” event, said it was unlikely she’d endorse a Democrat vying for the 2020 presidential nomination, although she indicated in June she would vote for the former vice president if he became the party’s standard-bearer. But on Thursday, she criticized reporters covering the race for not pressing the contenders more on their plans to counter gender inequality.
“Why aren’t there questions in the debates to address gender-based violence?” Hill asked. “We are talking about a public health crisis.”
As a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden presided over Hill’s testimony before the panel as it considered Thomas’s nomination to the bench in 1991. The lawyer and academic, 63, had accused Thomas, 71, of inappropriate sexual behavior when he was her superior at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He denied her claims, but Biden also came under scrutiny for failing to call witnesses to corroborate her story.
In 1991, Thomas called Hill’s hearing “a high-tech lynching,” a phrase similar to one President Trump used this week to describe the impeachment inquiry being conducted by House Democrats over the Ukraine affair. Hill said on Thursday both men evoked the term as “a tactic.”
Hill’s testimony has plagued Biden’s 2020 campaign for the White House, particularly after Christine Blasey Ford’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The 36-year Delaware senator admitted in 2018 he owed Hill an apology. She says she’s yet to receive it.
Over the summer, Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, a supporter of Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, urged the California senator to make the Biden-Hill controversy a bigger issue on the trail.
“She needs to remind African-American people of his role in assisting the appointment of Clarence Thomas,” Wilson said. “This is something that people probably don’t even think about. She needs to call that attention to the American people.”
[Also read: ‘He didn’t believe her’: Orrin Hatch recalls that Joe Biden did not trust Anita Hill]
