MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Booker demands answers from AG Barr"

Interview

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HAYES: Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr reportedly overruled the recommendations of his own DOJ civil rights division, deciding not to prosecute the New York police officer who was responsible, or at least was around during the apprehension, of Eric Garner, an unarmed 43-year-old black man. As you may remember, the grand jury failed to indict that officer and can be seen here with his arms around Garner as he repeatedly gasped, I can`t breathe over and over shortly before he died. Today, Senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker of New Jersey wrote a letter to Attorney General Barr blasting that decision, demanding answers on how he came to that conclusion, quote, "many people, particularly people of color, feel as if the system is stacked against them without hope of accountability even when a violent and unnecessary homicide is captured on video for all the world to see. The public deserves to know how you reached such a stunning conclusion." And joining me now is Senator Cory Booker, Democrat from New Jersey and 2020 presidential candidate. Senator, is there anything that the attorney general could say, or any paper trail her could show you, that could convince you the decision was just or made in good faith?

SEN. CORY BOOKER, (D) NEW JERSEY: I think clearly the challenge we have, and I found this when I had conversations with Barr, when he didn`t even seem to understand how implicit racial biases deep within our system didn`t seem to have an agenda to try to address the profound what we know, statistically no, and are clear, which are problems when it comes to race and policing. And so we know in this nation that we capture occasionally these incidents -- horrific incidents on tape, but I think Americans also know for every one that we catch on tape -- remember Eric Garner`s case was filed on a police report that didn`t even speak to the use of force, this would have gone unnoticed if it wasn`t for the next day someone actually pulling out a videotape. So, for every Eric Garner or every name that we know, there are thousands of others that we don`t, because we don`t have a system yet that holds police officers to accountability. And we definitely don`t have a DOJ, an attorney general, who sees that there is even a problem with the kind of violence and lack of accountability that we often find in policing.

HAYES: You have a new piece of legislation that I thought was very interesting sort of looking at the criminal justice reform, particularly the federal prison population, and offering a possibility for an application for clemency those who served 10 years.

What the idea behind that?

BOOKER: Well, the idea is really the evidence and the data. We in America have about a quarter of a million people that are elder in prison that all the data shows pose little threat to us and most of them are there for egregiously long nonviolent drug terms. And, you know, you have 65, 75-year-old people who are very expensive to keep behind bars, pose very little threat, who were put into prison under draconian times and even the United States Senate, 87 of us, voted for the First Step Act, which I helped write to reduce sentences now, not to be made retroactive. So, I just believe that we should have judges start to take a second look, and many of these people that are over-incarcerated and if they find that there is no reason to keep them in jail -- this means including any victim statements or what have you, but take that look and have a presumption actually for release so that we can start saving billions of taxpayer dollars and getting folks who pose us no threats whatsoever, most of whom are there on sentences that don`t really add up under the scrutiny of the judicial system looking at it with an eye of compassion, and frankly an eye of what`s best for society.

HAYES: I`m not sure if you got to see tonight the president had a rally. And there were a crowd of people that after the president attacked your Democratic colleague in the House of Representatives, Ilhan Omar, again, a crowd of people chanting send her back. Send her back. And as someone who wants to be the nominee to run against that individual, against that individual who will be having those kind rallies, what`s your reaction to hearing that? Seeing that?

BOOKER: Well, it`s despicable in the sense of what he`s trying to do. And we know he is doing it now where there power dynamics have shifted. But remember, the things he has been saying about Ilhan Omar he`s been saying outrageous lies about most Muslims. Remember he said that during after 9/11 in Jersey City that there were, you know, thousands of people cheering the World Trade Center. That was patently a lie used to try to bolster his political power, using race, racism, bigotry as a weapon. He is preying upon fears and bigotry to try to propel himself forward. But now he is in the most powerful position in the land and this kind of politics, sadly, we have seen before. We had a entire political party called the Know Nothings that rose up using the same rhetoric we hear from Donald Trump now, but then they were against Irish and German immigrants. We heard my parents, my mom, watched in black and white on TV George Wallace with accusations of Communism, the same language, the same bigotry, the same hate that we see now. My mom watched it in black and white and today millions of Americans saw it in full color. And so I know there are a lot of policy issues to discuss, but to me this is an issue of values and it`s a referendum in our country, and it`s not a referendum on one guy in one office, really it`s a referendum on who we are and who we are going to be to each other. And this is a choice we have to make in this country. Are we going to find common ground and common cause or are we going to allow somebody to rip us apart using the vicious knife of racism and bigotry to cut at the fabric of this country?

HAYES: You know, you are a U.S. senator and so you represent millions of people in the United States Senate and they have -- they run the gambit in their political views, some of them like you, some of them hate you, some of them in between. I mean, I think about the project for the next American president trying to stitch the country back together after the Trump administration. I think -- what would you, Cory Booker, presidential candidate, maybe nominee, maybe the president of the United States, say to the people who were in that room chanting send her back? When, if you were there president, that you represent them. Like what do you want to tell them?

BOOKER: Well, I want you to know right now that one of the main reasons I`m running in this election, before even Donald Trump`s rallies, because I believe we are a nation that is more and more falling into tribalism, where we hate each other -- we have more animosity towards each other than we do to a lot of our foreign adversaries. And many believe are beginning to believe that the lines that divide us are stronger than the ties that bind us. And Lincoln said this a long time ago, a house divided cannot stand. And so I feel a sense of purpose in my life -- heck, years ago I wrote a book called United, that one of my purposes to see if we can create a new American majority in this country, not a political majority -- I`m talking about Democrats, I`m talking about the kind of majority needed to defeat Jim Crow, to unite this country, to do big things -- 50th anniversary of putting someone on the moon, because we can create American majorities that can move us ahead of all humanity. And I believe our generation should should try and aspire to defy gravity again. And we can`t do that if we don`t have presidents who know how to heal, have a revival of civic grace and to instigate a more courageous empathy. And so we have had hatred and fear mongering every generation, but we have overcome that by finding those leaders who can call to the moral imagination of a country, and that`s what I intend to do.

HAYES: Senator Cory Booker, 2020 presidential candidate, thanks for making time.

BOOKER: Thank you.

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