Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a prominent civil rights icon, endorsed Joe Biden on Tuesday, despite the former vice president’s record of inflating his role in the push for desegregation.

“I have stared down the deepest, and darkest forces in this nation. Vice President Joe Biden and I both believe that we are in a fight to redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said in a statement announcing his backing.

The congressman, who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. at Selma, lauded the former vice president as a someone who “will not rest when he sees injustice in our American home.”

“Joe Biden has no delusions about this nation’s past,” Lewis added. “But he knows who we can be at our best. A nation of love, freedom and equality. And, I will fight with him for that future.”

The endorsement comes as Biden has all but locked up the Democrat presidential nomination. It is not, however, totally unexpected. Although Lewis had refrained from making an endorsement in the 2020 race up until now, the congressman has long expressed an affinity for Biden.

Last year, when the former vice president came under fire for praising the “civility” of two segregationists, Lewis was one of his rare defenders.

“I don’t think the remarks are offensive,” Lewis said during the controversy. “During the height of the civil rights movement, we worked with people … who beat us, and arrested us and jailed us.”

Biden has shown a long held penchant for inflating his role in the civil rights movement. As Breitbart News has previously reported, Biden has a long record of inflating his civil rights activism. During his run for the 1988 Democrat nomination, Biden falsely claimed to have “marched” in the civil rights movement when presenting himself as candidate of generational change.

“When I marched in the Civil Rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program,” Biden told a group of school children in during a visit to New Hampshire in 1987. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes, and we changed attitudes.”

The only issue, however, was that Biden had in fact never marched, according to the New York Times. 

“More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement,” the Times. “And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.”

Lewis, though, did not mention any of that on Tuesday when making his endorsement.

“I know Joe Biden as a man of character and dignity,” the congressman said.