Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden dismissed Sen. Cory Booker's criticisms Wednesday. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo 2020 Elections Biden bats away Booker's criminal-justice criticism: 'Cory knows that's not true'

Former Vice President Joe Biden stepped up a feud with 2020 rival Cory Booker Wednesday, saying that it was false for the Democratic senator to call him an "architect of mass incarceration" and that Booker had a spotty criminal-justice record as the mayor of Newark, N.J.

"Cory knows that's not true," Biden told reporters in Detroit, following an NAACP presidential forum that both 2020 candidates attended. He said the 1994 crime bill, which presidential rivals like Booker have criticized Biden for supporting, was written after a "significant part of the incarceration had occurred."


Biden hit back, too, saying that when Booker was the mayor of Newark, his police department engaged in a "stop and frisk" program — a practice that involves searching civilians for contraband — that mostly targeted African American men.

Booker, when he served as mayor, initially objected to a Justice Department investigation of policing in Newark, which was prompted by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. Ultimately, the department found in a 2014 report that about 75 percent of pedestrian stops did not have sufficient legal basis, and black individuals were at least 2.5 times more likely than white individuals to be stopped or arrested.

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Biden told reporters Wednesday, "If he wants to go back and talk about records, I'm happy to do that. But I'd rather talk about the future."

Tension has been building for weeks between the two candidates after Booker criticized Biden for remarks about working with segregationist senators. The former Delaware senator had said there was more "civility" in Congress at the time. Booker has also recently criticized Biden for his record on busing and, on Tuesday, bashed the former vice president's plan to improve the criminal-justice system. "The proud architect of a failed system is not the right person to fix it," Booker said.

A comprehensive plan, Booker wrote, should include legalizing marijuana, overhauling policing practices, using the presidential clemency power and reinvesting in communities most affected by mass incarceration.

Booker and Biden —as well as Sen. Kamala Harris, who went after the former vice president at the first president debate last month — will face off on the second night of the debate round next week.

Biden dismissed Booker's criticisms Wednesday, and his deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield released a statement doubling down: "Since next week’s debate format will give Senator Booker twice as much time to make his attacks than it allows Vice President Biden to respond to them, we thought we would begin to respond now."

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She wrote that "the absurdity of this attack is obvious" and said Booker is the one who "has some hard questions to answer." President Barack Obama's administration, in which Biden served as the No. 2, reduced the federal prison population significantly, she said.

Booker's campaign manager Addisu Demissie responded in a short tweet, highlighting a line from Bedingfield's statement and implying there was nothing else to say: "'For decades, Joe Biden has been working on criminal justice reform.' That’s the problem. And that's the tweet."

The former vice president has acknowledged criticism that the federal prison population spiked in the years after the 1994 crime bill passed. But at the NAACP forum earlier Wednesday, Biden said Obama would not have picked him as a running mate "if this accusation of my being wrong on civil rights was correct."

