Joe Biden's handling of Anita Hill hearing re-emerges with latest controversy

Former Vice President Joe Biden's efforts to fend off criticism about his touchy, intimate style with women has renewed scrutiny of his leadership in 1991 when the Senate heard law professor Anita Hill's sexual harassment claims against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

That episode could ultimately present more of a problem for Biden as he considers a 2020 presidential run. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, he has long had to defend himself against complaints that he did not take Hill's allegations seriously and, after being pressured to hold a hearing on her claims, presided over a circus-like forum in which Hill was humiliated.
Hill, then a law professor at the University of Oklahoma and now at Brandeis University, alleged that Thomas harassed her with talk of pornography when she worked for him in the 1980s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Department of Education.
In Biden's most recent statements on the episode, he described the senators who took Hill's testimony as "a bunch of white guys ... a committee that didn't fully understand what the hell it was all about."