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CNN: Anita Hill says she's voting for Biden and will help him with gender issues

05 September 2020
 Dan Ackermann

Anita Hill told CNN Saturday that she will vote for Joe Biden in November and is willing to work with him if he becomes president on issues of sexual harassment, gender violence and discrimination.

Why it matters: Biden was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 and oversaw the confirmation hearings of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Hill testified in those hearings that Thomas sexually harassed her when they worked together. Thomas denied Hill's allegations.

  • Biden has since expressed regret that he didn't ensure that Hill got “the hearing she deserved."

What she's saying: "Notwithstanding all of his limitations in the past, and the mistakes that he made in the past — notwithstanding those — at this point, between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I think Joe Biden is the person who should be elected in November," Hill told CNN

  • But it's not just because he's running against Trump, she noted. "It's more about the survivors of gender violence. That's really what it's about. ...My commitment is to finding solutions, and I am more than willing to work with" Biden.

Biden, in a CNN interview in July, said he "believed [Hill's] story from the very beginning" and wished he "protected her more" during the hearings.

  • Biden also said he apologized to Hill in a 2019 phone call, but Hill told The New York Times that she was left feeling unsatisfied. "I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose," she said at the time.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.