Cory Booker and Rand Paul were friends. Now, Paul's wife says that Booker has encouraged violence.



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As a speaker at a conference on homelessness last July, US Senator Cory Booker urged activists to lobby Congress for it's attack on the problem.

"It's my call for action here," said Booker, DN.J., at the hearing at the annual lobby day of the company's annual lobbying day. National Alliance to End Homelessness. "Please, do not come right here today, then go home. Go to the hill today. Please, face some congressists and tell them: "Look, I advocate easy things."

Now the wife of US Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has worked closely with Booker on criminal justice issues in an unusual couple, claims the Democrat's call to lobby for opponents of Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh attack Senators.

"Earlier this week, Rand was besieged at the airport by activists who" stood up in the face, "as you encouraged him to do, Senator Booker, a few months ago. , wrote Kelley Paul in an "open letter" to Booker. on the CNN website.

Booker regrets the comment & complicit of the evil & # 39;

In his speech, Booker spoke clearly about the need to push Congress to end homelessness and the way it costs taxpayers to cost more to have a family on the street than in a community. apartment.

"It's expensive to be homeless," Booker told the group. "We have this country that seems to want to pay more on the bottom of problems, than to make smart investments on the front."

The confrontation with Paul occurred at an airport in the Washington area by Kavanaugh opponents. The Center for People's Democracy has released a video of the event, featuring women who have reported being sexually assaulted.

"Prevent someone from moving forward, placing his middle finger on his face, shouting at vitriol – is this the way to express his concern or to adopt a change?" Kelley Paul wrote. "Or does it only incite people unstable to violence, giving them the feeling that aggression against a person is somehow politically justifiable?"

She also said that someone had published the home Internet address of the Pauls on the Internet and that the local police had stepped up patrols, which she also blamed on Booker.

"I would ask you to withdraw your statement," she wrote. "I would ask you to condemn the violence, the escape of personal addresses of elected (our address was leaked from a Senate directory reserved for senators), as well as intimidation and the threats against them and their families. "

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Booker spokesman Jeff Giertz did not comment immediately.

That is life in today's "hyper-partisan and supercharged environment," said Tobe Berkovitz, an advertising professor at Boston University and expert in political communication.

"Everyone takes everything out of context and uses the code snippet as he hears and what he wants," Berkovitz said.

Senator Paul is not the only Republican to be confronted with activists opposed to Kavanaugh and other GOP politicians.

Others, including White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, have recently been harassed in restaurants.

Last month, Booker admitted that his previous statement, calling Kavanaugh's supporters "accomplices of evil," may have been out of date.

"I know that I was not so precise and that I left my words misinterpreted," he said. "I do not blame those people who misinterpret my words, I take my responsibilities and have learned to be more specific."

Jonathan D. Salant can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

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