Former vice president Joe Biden, who on Thursday launched a third bid for the Democratic nomination for president, has spoken with Anita Hill, the woman whose treatment during Justice Clarence Thomas’s Senate confirmation hearings Biden has said he regrets.
Kate Bedingfield, a Biden camp aide, confirmed that he had talked to Hill, who had accused Thomas of sexually harassing her. She and other Biden officials would not give detail about when that conversation took place, or what was said during it.
Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 when that then all-white, all-male panel took up Thomas’s nomination by then-President George H.W. Bush.
Hill told the committee that Thomas had harassed her when she worked under him in two separate jobs. Thomas denied her claims.
Hill has said that Biden “could have done more” to bolster her claims against Thomas, including by having people her supported her allegations testify at the hearings.
And last year, she said that while Biden has said he publicly apologized, “he hasn’t apologized to me.”
“The statute of limitations has run on an apology. I don’t need an apology,” Hill said during an event about sexual harassment at the University of Southern California.
“But sometimes when the doorbell rings, and I am not expecting anyone, I think, could that be Joe Biden?” she added, to laughter from the audience.
In late March, during a speech, Biden said, “I wish I could have done something — I opposed Clarence Thomas’ nomination, and I voted against him.”
But Biden also said, “To this day, I regret that I could not come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved, given the courage she showed by reaching out to us.”
Hill did not immediately return a request for comment from CNBC.