US Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden on Friday leveled fierce criticism at Donald Trump, with his campaign saying the president has resorted to “abhorrent” lies about Senator Kamala Harris’s eligibility to be vice president.

Biden named Harris, a woman of color who was born in the United States and is constitutionally eligible to be both vice president and president, as his running mate on Tuesday. She quickly faced attacks that Democrats deemed racist.

On Thursday, Trump said, “I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements”, citing an article by a conservative law professor that questioned the immigration status of Harris’s parents at the time of her birth.

Harris, 55, was born in Oakland, California to a mother from India and a father from Jamaica.

Trump “has sought to fuel racism and tear our nation apart,” Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

“So it’s unsurprising, but no less abhorrent, that as Trump makes a fool of himself straining to distract the American people from the horrific toll of his failed coronavirus response that his campaign and their allies would resort to wretched, demonstrably false lies in their pathetic desperation.”

During her speech along side Biden on Thursday, Harris said the case of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence is open and she has worked every day to hold the officials accountable to the American people.

She said it was due to the fault of the Trump administration that the US had to shut down various of its regions again while other countries were opening up.

Harris said that this is what happens when one elects a person who just isn’t up for the job”. “Our country ends up in tatters, and so does our reputation around the world. But let’s be clear.This election isn’t just about defeating Donald Trump or Mike Pence. It’s about building this country back better, and that’s exactly what Joe and I will do,” she said.

Trump grudgingly acknowledged late in his 2016 presidential campaign that Obama was American-born.

Since then, Trump has faced accusations of racism, and has embraced other conspiracies.

The 2020 US presidential election is scheduled for Tuesday, November 3.

(With inputs from agency)