Maybe if the New York Times’s Charles Blow read a book or The New American once in a while, he wouldn’t be five months behind the news.
On Twitter yesterday, Blow demanded that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden refute new claims that he did not believe Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Hill’s unproven accusations became the focus of Thomas’ confirmation hearings in 1991, and during last year’s ugly fight to confirm Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Biden claimed he believed Hill. He also said he regrets not giving her a fair hearing as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which handles court nominees.
Biden lied on both counts. He didn’t believe Hill, and he did give her a fair hearing.
But Blow apparently didn’t know the truth until black activist Armstrong Williams and retired Senator Orrin Hatch recently confirmed what Senator Arlen Specter wrote in his memoir 19 years ago, Passion for Truth: From Finding JFK’s Single Bullet to Questioning Anita Hill to Impeaching Clinton.
The Tweet
Blow tweeted a Fox News Story about Williams’ and Hatch’s claims with this demand: “WTH is this?! Team Biden, please come out and shut this down immediately if it’s not true. Otherwise …”
Williams appeared on Fox’s Deep Dive, while Hatch spoke for a network documentary, The Confirmation Chronicles Vol. 2: High-tech Lynching.
“Justice Thomas has always held this very deep affection and respect for Joe Biden, because they would talk often off-the-record during the confirmation hearings,” Williams said. “And Biden did express to the Justice at the time that he did not believe Ms. Hill.”
Biden also told his committee colleagues he didn’t believe Hill. “He was clearly saying that he spoke with Metzenbaum, Simon and Kennedy and expressed to them that he did not believe it,” Williams said. “They expressed the same, because whatever evidence they examined, it did not convince them that any of this was true.”
Senators Paul Simon, Ted Kennedy, and Howard Metzenbaum are all dead and can’t confirm the story. But Hatch, a Republican who served on the committee, can and did.
“Biden told me personally that he didn’t believe her,” Hatch said for the documentary. “He said, ‘I don’t know why she did this.’ I don’t mean to malign Joe, but Joe told me he didn’t believe her and there were some others that told me that, too.”
Biden’s Lies
Of course, that truth contradicts what Biden has been saying since leftists resurrected the Hill narrative during last year’s smear campaign against Kavanaugh. In 2017, Biden claimed he believed Hill, and in April, he said the same thing on The View: “I believed her from the beginning. I was against Clarence Thomas. I did everything in my power to defeat Clarence Thomas.”
Specter’s memoir, published in 2000, explained what Biden thought and did, as TNA reported: “Biden told me in November 1998, ‘It was clear to me from the way she was answering the questions, she was lying.’”
Yet Biden’s falsehood that he believed Hill meshes with another revision to history. “To this day I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to give her the kind of hearing she deserved,” he said. “I wish I could have done something.”
But Biden did do something. He gave Hill a fair hearing. She was heard. Problem was, two of Hill’s witnesses were caught in falsehoods, and another declined to testify because she knew her own credibility wouldn’t stand the committee’s scrutiny.
Meanwhile 13 women testified for Thomas. All were Hill’s colleagues who would have been in a position to corroborate her account.
Why Smear Thomas?
That raises the question of why Hill smeared Thomas. Williams provided a likely motive that confirms what another witness at the time told Blow’s newspaper. Hill was jealous and angry not only because Thomas married another woman but also because that woman was white.
“Thomas had always indicated that he would never marry interracially,” Williams said. But when he “fell in love with Jenny … I will tell you that’s when Anita Hill began to change.”
Phyllis Barry, who worked with Hill and Thomas, told the Times that Hill’s claims “were the result of Ms. Hill’s disappointment and frustration that Mr. Thomas did not show any sexual interest in her.”
Photo: AP Images
