KINGSTON, New Hampshire — Joe Biden was “confused” as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings, vacillating on whether to give accuser Anita Hill a public hearing or not, said John Sununu, White House chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush.
Sununu recalled the episode in a Saturday interview, saying Biden, the future vice president under President Barack Obama and now a leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, was “relatively useless” during the October 1991 events. Thomas, nominated by Bush for an open Supreme Court seat, faced sexual harassment allegations against Thomas from University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill, who had worked with him at the Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Thomas denied the allegations when Hill brought them before the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling the lawmakers’ questions about him a “high tech lynching.”
The Democratic majority Senate eventually confirmed Thomas on a 52-48 vote, after days of contentious and often graphic hearings.
“Well, the Congress confirmations were interesting,” Sununu, 80, told the Washington Examiner, ahead of a state Republican party event with his son, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, 44. “One of the reasons it got so difficult is that the chairman of the committee was relatively useless.”
Biden, Sununu said, “was confused. He didn’t know whether he wanted to do the right thing or whether he wanted to cave into the liberals that were trying to really, in a very disgraceful way, ruin the reputation of a very good man, currently Justice Thomas.”
Biden in the nearly 28 years since the Thomas has taken heat from figures across the ideological spectrum over his handling of the hearings.
In April, Hill told the New York Times that Biden, 76, had called her ahead of his presidential campaign announcement to apologize for what she went through during the hearings. In an interview after Biden’s phone call, she told the Times, “I hold him responsible certainly for what happened in 1991, and to the extent that many of the same things that happened in 1991 followed in 2018, there is a connection.”
Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat and supporter of a 2020 presidential rival of Biden, California Sen. Kamala Harris, told the Washington Examiner she blamed Biden for Thomas’ confirmation. Wilson is urging Harris to make a bigger issue of it on the campaign trail.
“If Joe Biden had done what was fair, Clarence Thomas would not be on the Supreme Court,” Wilson said in late August. “Every time I see or hear Clarence Thomas’s name my mind goes back to Joe Biden. Everyone else’s mind goes to Anita Hill, but I think of Joe Biden.”
Wilson said that Thomas, the only black justice on the court, is the “worst Supreme Court Justice” for his conservative opinions on a range of issues.”
[Also read: GOP won’t cancel New Hampshire primary to help Trump, Gov. Chris Sununu says]
