Former Vice President Joe Biden said he owes Anita Hill an apology for not doing more to shield her from Republican attacks during the contentious Clarence Thomas hearings back in 1991.

“I believed Anita Hill. I voted against Clarence Thomas,” Biden told Teen Vogue.

“And my one regret is that I wasn’t able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends. I mean, they really went after her. As much as I tried to intervene, I did not have the power to gavel them out of order.”

Hill had accused Thomas of sexually harassing her while he was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the civil rights division of the Department of Education. Republicans vigorously defended Thomas, nominated to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush.

“I wish I had been able to do more for Anita Hill,” Biden told the magazine. “I owe her an apology.”

Biden has apologized before to Hill — and she hasn’t accepted.

“I still don’t think it takes ownership of his role in what happened,” Hill told the Washington Post last month, recalling the grilling she took from an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee.

“And he also doesn’t understand that it wasn’t just that I felt it was not fair. It was that women were looking to the Senate Judiciary Committee and his leadership to really open the way to have these kinds of hearings. They should have been using best practices to show leadership on this issue on behalf of women’s equality. And they did just the opposite.”

Thomas was confirmed by the Senate, 52-48, to take the seat vacated by Thurgood Marshall.