Joe Biden, the former US vice-president who is considering a 2020 run against Donald Trump, denied on Sunday that he had made inappropriate sexual advances to a female state lawmaker at a 2014 political campaign stop in Nevada. 

Lucy Flores, who was 35 years old at the time and running for lieutenant-governor, wrote that Mr Biden planted a “big slow kiss” on the back of her head after putting his hands on her shoulders, leaning in and smelling her hair. “I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused,” Ms Flores wrote in a lengthy article published in The Cut. “I wanted nothing more than to get Biden away from me,” she wrote about the episode five years ago. 

Mr Biden, who is 76 and considered to be a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he did not remember acting improperly.