The wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said on Friday that a recent telephone call to Anita Hill, the woman at the center of a 1991 furor at Thomas' confirmation hearing, was probably a mistake.
In October, Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist, left an unexpected voicemail suggesting Hill consider apologizing "for what you did with my husband" at the hearing 19 years earlier.
Hill is now a professor of social policy, law and women's studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The message was left on her office answering machine.
The message "was probably a mistake on my part," Thomas said in an interview with The Daily Caller, a political website. She added that the incident was "a private matter."
During Clarence Thomas' 1991 confirmation hearings, Hill accused him, under oath, of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him at the Department of Education and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
"I certainly thought the call was inappropriate," Hill said after the October incident. "I have no intention of apologizing because I testified truthfully about my experience and I stand by that testimony."
On Friday Virginia Thomas announced she was resigning as head of Liberty Central, a non-profit conservative advocacy group that she founded in 2009. She said she will remain a consultant to the group.