Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Sunday that she has no reason not to believe Lucy Flores, the woman who has accused Joe Biden of kissing her head without consent in 2014.
“I have no reason not to believe her,” Klobuchar, who is running for president in 2020, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“I think we know from campaigns and politics that people raise issues and they have to address them, and that’s what he will have to do with the voters if he gets into the race,” she said of Biden, who is likely to soon put in his bid for the 2020 nomination.
Flores, a former Nevada state assemblywoman, wrote in an op-ed on Friday that at a campaign rally supporting her bid for lieutenant governor while Biden was vice president, he came up to her from behind, put his hands on her shoulders, sniffed her hair and kissed her on the back of her head.
{mosads}”The vice-president of the United States of America had just touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it,” she wrote.
Biden said Sunday that in his “many” years in public life, “I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once – never – did I believe I acted inappropriately.”
“If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention,” he said.
Klobuchar said that while she had not read Flores’s recounting yet, she knew Biden released a statement and stressed that he will have to continue to address the situation if he runs.
“I have not read her interview, but I know the vice president addressed it there in that statement and he will continue to address it if he decides to get into this race,” the Minnesota lawmaker said.
2020 Democratic candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Julián Castro have also said they “believe” Flores.