Speaker 1: Just now, the Justice Department has filed emotion in the
Speaker 1: Southern District of Florida to conceal a search warrant and
Speaker 1: property receipt relating to a court approved search that the
Speaker 1: FBI conducted earlier this week. That search was of premises
Speaker 1: located in Florida belonging to the former president. Faithful adherence
Speaker 1: to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of
Speaker 1: the Justice Department and of our democracy. Upholding the rule
Speaker 1: of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor.
Speaker 1: Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department
Speaker 1: is doing. I personally approved the decision to seek a
Speaker 1: search warrant in this matter. Let me address recent unfounded
Speaker 1: attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department
Speaker 1: agents and prosecutors. I will not stand by silently when
Speaker 1: their integrity is unfairly attacked. This episode of Verdict with
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz is sponsored by American Hertford Gold. If you're
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Speaker 1: send the word cactus via text message to six five
Speaker 1: five three two. You'll be glad you did. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I am Michael Knowls. Be
Speaker 1: sure to like and subscribe to this podcast. If you
Speaker 1: have not done so already, you can find us over
Speaker 1: at Verdict plus at locals, and you can like and
Speaker 1: subscribe on any platform. Merritt Garland, the Attorney General will
Speaker 1: not stand for attacks on the integrity of Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: DOJ and FBI. I think that's going to be the
Speaker 1: title of my next blank book, The Integrity of Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's DOJ, A comprehensive guide. And speaking of books, Senator,
Speaker 1: no one has made this observation yet, but I have
Speaker 1: to call you out because right before your last book
Speaker 1: came out, One Vote Away. It was about how one
Speaker 1: vote can change Supreme Court rulings. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
Speaker 1: I think that was about one week before now, just
Speaker 1: weeks before your next book is coming out. Justice Corrupted.
Speaker 1: The Attorney General six the FEDS on Donald Trump's home
Speaker 1: at Mara Lago, Senator, I want a straight answer. Are
Speaker 1: you behind all of this? No, no, I'm not. But
Speaker 1: but I promise you right now, I've had several friends say, please, please,
Speaker 1: please don't write your next book on global thermonuclear war,
Speaker 1: because I will say it does seem to keep happening
Speaker 1: and and happening right right as the book next books
Speaker 1: about to come out, the Bankruptcy of Michael Knowles by
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz. I don't want to see it. That would
Speaker 1: be a very terrible thing. This, really, the timing is
Speaker 1: is bizarre. I'm sure it's great for the publicity of
Speaker 1: the book. It's really really bad for the country that
Speaker 1: your terrible have come true. Here, this to me seems unprecedented.
Speaker 1: You've got Donald Trump right now, who is a predecessor
Speaker 1: of Joe Biden, a potential political rival of Joe Biden
Speaker 1: if he runs in twenty twenty four. And you've got
Speaker 1: the DOJ now the AG admitting that he's the one
Speaker 1: who called for this raid for something like the Federal
Speaker 1: Records Act or some vaguely described classified documents or or
Speaker 1: what what is this about? Yeah, look, it is utterly unprecedented.
Speaker 1: And the word unprecedent had as as a meaning, there
Speaker 1: is no precedent, and our nation's history for federal law
Speaker 1: enforcement officers raiding the home of a former president has
Speaker 1: never happened, going all the way back to George Washington,
Speaker 1: this has never happened, in significant part because we're a
Speaker 1: country that has a tradition of the peaceful transfer a power,
Speaker 1: and part of the peaceful transfer a power is the
Speaker 1: successor regime does not then use government to go target
Speaker 1: their predecessor. You see banana republics do that. You know,
Speaker 1: if you go down to tinpot dictatorships, that's a common feature.
Speaker 1: When one guy's out and the next guy's in, the
Speaker 1: next guy goes after the former guy. By the way,
Speaker 1: that's the abbreviation lefties like to use for Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: the former guy. Well, there is an element of respective
Speaker 1: rule of law and respect for the office of the
Speaker 1: presidency that says you don't turn the federal government into
Speaker 1: a political tool to target your enemies. Unfortunately, Barack Obama
Speaker 1: trampled on that tradition and politicized the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: and the FBI, and now Joe Biden has made it
Speaker 1: markedly worse. This is a complete abuse of power. It
Speaker 1: is utterly corrupt, and you know it was rather striking.
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland said, I won't stand by why while anyone
Speaker 1: calls into question the good men and women of the FBI.
Speaker 1: Let's be real clear, get Merrick, We're not calling into
Speaker 1: question the line officers. We're calling into question your integrity.
Speaker 1: We're calling into in question the top political operatives at
Speaker 1: DOJ and the FBI that have no respect for the
Speaker 1: rule of law and that instead are perfectly content to
Speaker 1: be the Biden White House's political henchman. The buck stops here.
Speaker 1: You approved it, and you shouldn't have, and you should
Speaker 1: be embarrassed by sending the FBI and into this situation
Speaker 1: doing enormous damage to the credibility, to the respect to
Speaker 1: the FBI. These partisans are burning to the ground centuries
Speaker 1: of credibility built by the federal government and law enforcement
Speaker 1: and and it really is. It's an outrage to watch. Well,
Speaker 1: this was the most shocking part to me of his
Speaker 1: statement when he invoked the integrity of the DOJ and
Speaker 1: the FBI, and you, I think rightly are pointing to
Speaker 1: the political hacks who run those groups. I thought, what
Speaker 1: integrity is it? The integrity that led the DOJ and
Speaker 1: the FBI under Barack Obama to spy on Donald Trump's campaign,
Speaker 1: that led the DOJ and the FBI under during the
Speaker 1: Trump administration to undermine his presidency by using a completely fabricated,
Speaker 1: cooked up nonsense about Russian collusion that, by the way,
Speaker 1: the DOJ and the FBI cooked up with the Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton campaign. That integrity, is that what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't really see that. And I guess what the
Speaker 1: Libs right now are bringing up and what you're hearing
Speaker 1: top Democrats bring up and even some moderate Republicans is well, hey,
Speaker 1: let's just let this play out. Let's hold on here,
Speaker 1: because maybe Donald Trump was violating some law. And it
Speaker 1: raises to me this point that one, you can indict
Speaker 1: a ham sandwich, first of all, but two, we haven't
Speaker 1: seen this before because of what you're bringing up our
Speaker 1: tradition of the peaceful transfer of power. So, as far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned, unless there are severed heads in a
Speaker 1: freezer at Mara Lago, I don't really understand what kind
Speaker 1: of violation Donald Trump could have committed that would justify
Speaker 1: a forty agent raid on his private residence. You know,
Speaker 1: you were talking a minute ago about my book. Actually,
Speaker 1: the book that is coming out in just a few
Speaker 1: weeks is exactly on this topic. So the title of
Speaker 1: the book, as viewers of the pod no, is just
Speaker 1: as corrupted. How the left has weaponized the legal system,
Speaker 1: And it goes through that what Richard Nixon tried to do.
Speaker 1: In the first chapter of the book talks about Nixon
Speaker 1: and Watergate, and Nixon tried to use the legal system
Speaker 1: to go after his enemies. By and large, the system resisted.
Speaker 1: So Nixon tried to get the IRS to attack his enemies.
Speaker 1: The IRS refused in significant parts, the system worked, and
Speaker 1: I think Nixon was utterly corrupt. What Nixon attempted to do,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama succeeded in doing, and Joe Biden has taken
Speaker 1: it to the next level. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice and the FBI, you look at
Speaker 1: the IRS targeting political enemies under Barack Obama. You look
Speaker 1: at the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland sending the FBI
Speaker 1: after parents who speak up at school board meetings. You
Speaker 1: look at Crossfire Hurricane. This is while Trump was president,
Speaker 1: but under Obama, hardcore leftist partisan's burrowed in to senior
Speaker 1: career positions at the FBI and the Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: and they weaponized law enforcement in the intelligence community to
Speaker 1: go after Donald Trump as a whole chapter in justice
Speaker 1: corrupted on Crossfire Hurricane, explaining how it got so far
Speaker 1: that an Assistant General Council of the FBI created a
Speaker 1: counterfeit document and submitted that counterfeit document to a federal court,
Speaker 1: which is a felony. That's how corrupt it got because
Speaker 1: they hated Donald Trump, and they cooked up the entire
Speaker 1: garbage of Russian collusion, which was always a croc That
Speaker 1: same pattern is continuing today. And look, one of the problems,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning Crossfire Hurricane in a
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, should adj be able to investigate a
Speaker 1: sitting president or a former president, Yes, if that president
Speaker 1: has violated the law. That being said, the threshold for
Speaker 1: when a Department of Justice investigates someone in particular investigates
Speaker 1: the opposing party. So if you're a Republican administration and
Speaker 1: you're contemplating in investigating a leading Democrat, or if you're
Speaker 1: a Democrat investigator administration, you're contemplating investigating a leading Republican.
Speaker 1: The threshold for doing so should be very, very high,
Speaker 1: because there is such a danger of this being used
Speaker 1: simply as a cudgel to beat your opponents senseless. Under
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, the FBI was wire tapping Donald Trump's campaign
Speaker 1: headquarters when he was the Republican nominee to be president.
Speaker 1: They were sending people in wearing wire taps trying to
Speaker 1: entrap Trump in a violation of the law that was
Speaker 1: utterly insane. Like in any Department of Justice, the threshold
Speaker 1: for you know, some loon told someone at a bar, well,
Speaker 1: I heard you know, you know he went to Russia once,
Speaker 1: like that is not enough to go wire tap the
Speaker 1: opposing campaign. Here, the predicate for it is so utterly
Speaker 1: flimsy as to make this whole thing ludicrous. And you asked, okay,
Speaker 1: why is this is? This is ostensibly under the Presidential
Speaker 1: Records Act. Now, let me say a couple of things
Speaker 1: about it. Number One, Ordinarily, the way a matter a
Speaker 1: dispute like this would be solved is the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice would negotiate with the lawyers for the former presidents,
Speaker 1: say hey, we think you have some documents you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to have. We'd like to get them. Okay, you
Speaker 1: negotiate back and forth, you produce them. That happens all
Speaker 1: the time. And by the way, they've done that, so
Speaker 1: Trump has cooperated. He's produced i think fifteen boxes voluntarily
Speaker 1: through negotiations back and forth. That's the way this would
Speaker 1: ordinarily operate if the person was being resistant. The next
Speaker 1: step is to issue a subpoena. Subpoena is a legal compulsion.
Speaker 1: You must turn over the following. They didn't do that.
Speaker 1: They skipped over the subpoena. They skipped over, apparently the
Speaker 1: compromise and reaching a solution through negotiated settlement, and instead
Speaker 1: they do a surprise raid with forty agents that is
Speaker 1: such overkill as to be obvious and political and partisan.
Speaker 1: And let's be clear, the biggest losers here are the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, the FBI, and the rule of law,
Speaker 1: because their actions were so political that it was obvious
Speaker 1: to everyone. And I'll give an example. So I'm going
Speaker 1: in to cite famed right winger and noted republican partisan
Speaker 1: former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Yeah, who tweeted quote,
Speaker 1: d J must immediately explain the reason for its raid,
Speaker 1: and it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives,
Speaker 1: or it will be viewed as a political tactic and
Speaker 1: undermine any future credible investigation and legitimacy of January sixth investigations.
Speaker 1: So this is even Cuomo, who obviously is such a partisan.
Speaker 1: Damn it, it bursts out of his pores. Who's saying, guys,
Speaker 1: if this is all about us, he put it a
Speaker 1: search for inconsequential archives, You guys are screwed because it's
Speaker 1: going to be obvious. You're just going after him because
Speaker 1: you don't like him, and he's ease on the other team.
Speaker 1: So what does this mean for twenty twenty four, assuming
Speaker 1: that they really were just going after these inconsequential archives.
Speaker 1: Merritt Garland, who just gave this statement and took responsibility
Speaker 1: for authorizing the raid, he didn't actually explain what the
Speaker 1: raid was about. He just sort of huffed and puffed
Speaker 1: and said, how dare you besmirch my glorious DOJ and
Speaker 1: then said I'm not going to give you any other information.
Speaker 1: So one, is there another shoe potentially that could drop?
Speaker 1: And two, what is the practical effect? You said, it
Speaker 1: looks like a disaster for the DOJ and the FBI
Speaker 1: and the rule of law. What does it mean for
Speaker 1: the Republican presidential nomination? Is this going to galvanize support
Speaker 1: around Donald Trump for the Republicans? Are they going to
Speaker 1: lead the guy out in handcuffs at a certain point?
Speaker 1: Are they preparing an indictment? What does it mean for
Speaker 1: the next step at Marlago? So, look, they may well
Speaker 1: be trying to prepare an indictment. And as you noted,
Speaker 1: the typical rule as a prosecutor could a ham sandwich,
Speaker 1: So they might try to indict him. I will say this,
Speaker 1: if they do, I think it will backfire even more
Speaker 1: than this raid is backfired. Part of the problem with
Speaker 1: DJ and the FBI and the left, like the media,
Speaker 1: they hate Trump so much that that they just they
Speaker 1: foam at the mouth and they view everything from the
Speaker 1: lens that they assume everyone else on earth hates him
Speaker 1: as much, and so they don't have any actual awareness
Speaker 1: of reality. Merrick Garland and the FBI have just boosted
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's twenty twenty four prospects so much so that
Speaker 1: I actually, if I were a campaign finance lawyer for Trump,
Speaker 1: I might well report to the Federal Elections Commission this
Speaker 1: raid as an in kind contribution to the Trump political
Speaker 1: campaign because it is so enormously helpful to Trump. It
Speaker 1: was stupid, it was idiotic. Now, look, we'll see what
Speaker 1: plays out. But but let's take let's take the alleged crime,
Speaker 1: which is the Presidential Records Act, which is the law
Speaker 1: that says, essentially every piece of paper in the White
Speaker 1: House belongs to the federal government and the federal government
Speaker 1: has control of it. Well, that's true on paper, but
Speaker 1: what is it meant in practice? And if you look
Speaker 1: at every single president, all of them have taken a
Speaker 1: crap ton of stuff with him. And let's go to
Speaker 1: some specifics, because the specifics are rather stunning. All right,
Speaker 1: the Nixon library didn't release the final batch of his
Speaker 1: secret tapes until twenty thirteen, which was thirty nine years
Speaker 1: after Nixon left office. So for thirty nine years. Apparently
Speaker 1: the GMN should have come bursting down Nixon's doors for
Speaker 1: thirty years because he had these tapes. And you want
Speaker 1: to talk about presidential records, tapes in the Oval office
Speaker 1: are pretty juicy and spicy stuff. Thirty nine years. All right, Nixon,
Speaker 1: bad guy? You might say, all right, how about LBJ,
Speaker 1: hero of the left. Well, the Lynnon B. Johnson Library
Speaker 1: delayed releasing the final batch of his secret tapes of
Speaker 1: presidential conversations until twenty sixteen, which, if you're counting, was
Speaker 1: forty seven years after he left office. So apparently for
Speaker 1: forty seven years the FBI should have rated LBJ or
Speaker 1: then rated his estate. All right, how about more recently,
Speaker 1: how about the patron saint of the left, Barack Hussein Obama.
Speaker 1: At the end of his presidency, Obama took thirty million
Speaker 1: pages let me repeat that again, thirty million pages of
Speaker 1: the administration records to Chicago, and he promised to digitize
Speaker 1: them and eventually put them online. More than five years
Speaker 1: after Obama's presidency ended, zero pages have been digitized and disclosed.
Speaker 1: So he took them, he didn't follow through on his commitment.
Speaker 1: Every president has done this. And so the idea that
Speaker 1: all right, we're sending forty FBI agents to raid the
Speaker 1: former president for doing what every former president has done,
Speaker 1: it doesn't pass the smell test. And then layer on
Speaker 1: top of that, as Sherlock Holmes wrote, the dog who
Speaker 1: didn't bark? Who didn't they send the FBI to raid? Well,
Speaker 1: they didn't send the FBI to raid Hillary Clinton. And
Speaker 1: if they claim to care about classified documents, the classified
Speaker 1: documents that Hillary took, why didn't the FBI rate her?
Speaker 1: Or how about Hunter Biden our last podcast where we
Speaker 1: talked about the guy literally videos himself with crack, naked
Speaker 1: with prostitutes and a gun, like like multiple felonies. Where
Speaker 1: are the FBI agents? By the way, Hunter's not hard
Speaker 1: to find. Within hours of the FBI agents raiding Mara Lago,
Speaker 1: Hunter was on Air Force one with Dad. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he brought the crack and the gun, and
Speaker 1: and and and his lady friends. But the obvious double
Speaker 1: standard is lost on nobody. It seems to me even
Speaker 1: worse than a double standard when it comes to Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: because with Trump, what we're talking about is physical documents
Speaker 1: that are at this point, what two years old at least,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe more than them, maybe six years old. When
Speaker 1: we're talking about Hillary Clinton, we're talking about digital documents,
Speaker 1: talking about information that is easily hackable. The only way
Speaker 1: to hack the documents in Mara Lago is if a
Speaker 1: spy comes in with an axe and knocks down the
Speaker 1: door and takes the documents. When we're talking about Hillary's
Speaker 1: unsecure server, we're talking about foreign governments that certainly easily
Speaker 1: could have had access to those documents and almost certainly did.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about documents that were contemporary. We're talking
Speaker 1: about documents that were classified information that was relevant at
Speaker 1: the very moment that it was accessible to other people,
Speaker 1: that it was on this home server. They're really incomparable
Speaker 1: in the sense that what Hillary did was much much worse.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Hillary was not president, she was
Speaker 1: merely a secretary of State would presumably have even less
Speaker 1: of a right to have those kinds of documents. And
Speaker 1: so when we're talking about whether or not the rate
Speaker 1: is justified, I think all of this is really relevant
Speaker 1: because you might point to some provision of the law
Speaker 1: and say, well, Trump didn't have the right to have
Speaker 1: those papers in his home. First of all, all these
Speaker 1: other presidents did it too. And you've never seen any
Speaker 1: kind of raid, certainly not against Hillary Clinton. So how
Speaker 1: do you conclude anything other than this was a partisan
Speaker 1: attack on a political opponent of Joe Biden. It's unquestionably that,
Speaker 1: And I'll point out that they're two ostensible hooks for
Speaker 1: the raid. One is the Presidential Records Act, which, as
Speaker 1: I said, has never been enforced in this way against
Speaker 1: any other president. So apparently the law applies uniquely to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump because they hate him. Or two. You sometimes
Speaker 1: see people in toning about classified documents, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded. In nineteen ninety seven there was a federal
Speaker 1: commission headed by Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick moynihan who described quote,
Speaker 1: he said, secrets in the federal government are whatever anyone
Speaker 1: with a stamp decides to stamp secret. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth to that. I've been to a ton
Speaker 1: of classified briefings and there are things that are classified
Speaker 1: that there is no reason whatsoever for them to be
Speaker 1: classified other than someone put a stamp on him, and
Speaker 1: sometimes because a White House doesn't want it public. So
Speaker 1: one of the favorite moves, particularly of the Biden White House,
Speaker 1: is politically embarrassing information that is classified. Stuff like anything
Speaker 1: like any explanation of why Afghanistan was an absolute cluster,
Speaker 1: was a train wreck, was an absolute disaster. All of
Speaker 1: that's classified because oh gosh, that would embarrass Democrats. But
Speaker 1: there is a legal complication and actually a big difference
Speaker 1: between Trump and Hillary Clinton, which is under the law,
Speaker 1: it is incredibly difficult bordering on impossible to charge a
Speaker 1: president with disclosing classified information. Why because under the law,
Speaker 1: the president is the arbiter of what's classified and what's not.
Speaker 1: A president can declassify any damn document he wants, by
Speaker 1: the way, a Secretary estate can't. So Hillary Clinton didn't
Speaker 1: have the ability to declassify documents, but Donald Trump did.
Speaker 1: And so the idea that he was in charge, he
Speaker 1: can literally he can read a classified document and go
Speaker 1: out on TV and read it on TV. And that's
Speaker 1: under the law. The president has the authority to make
Speaker 1: a determination even though it's classified, I'm declassifying it. So
Speaker 1: the idea that we're going to send in the gmend
Speaker 1: to prosecute, to raid him, and to set up a
Speaker 1: prosecution on that legally that there's no there there. Now,
Speaker 1: some people have suggested that if you violate this Presidential
Speaker 1: Records Act, that you can be barred fore you improperly
Speaker 1: handle classified materials, that you can be barred from running
Speaker 1: for office again, and that this is a way for
Speaker 1: the Democrats to prevent Trump from running in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Is there any substance to that kind of suggestion, So
Speaker 1: it's utterly absurd. It is true. The statute says that.
Speaker 1: So they do have a statutory hook that there is
Speaker 1: language that says, if you're convicted, you can be barred.
Speaker 1: The Constitution sets out the qualifications to be president. I
Speaker 1: think that statute, if it was applied to the president,
Speaker 1: would be deemed unconstitutional. The Court has repeatedly in decisions,
Speaker 1: decisions like the US term limits decisions, made clear you
Speaker 1: can't add additional qualifications to run for federal office beyond
Speaker 1: the constitutional qualifications. There is a constitutional mechanism to bar
Speaker 1: someone from running for subsequent office, and that is impeachment
Speaker 1: and conviction, and upon conviction, that is a potential punishment.
Speaker 1: But the Democrats tried that and failed, and so twice yes,
Speaker 1: and so if they went down this ludicrous path and
Speaker 1: tried to prosecute him, I think they would fail in
Speaker 1: the prosecution. But if they got a conviction and they
Speaker 1: tried to argue he was barred from running for president,
Speaker 1: they would lose in court. The court would throw that out.
Speaker 1: They would the court would say the Constitution and sets
Speaker 1: the qualifications to run for president, and that whole fight again.
Speaker 1: If this raid was an in kind contribution, I might
Speaker 1: call the Biden white House the Trump superpack at that point,
Speaker 1: because like, if they went down that insane rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: you might as well start start getting tickets for the
Speaker 1: inauguration ball because that they would. I don't think even
Speaker 1: in their deranged Trump derangement syndrome, they're likely to go
Speaker 1: down that far. That's the sort of thing MSNBC producers
Speaker 1: say to each other when they're spooning in the back
Speaker 1: closet and trying to trying to titillate. But but it
Speaker 1: is not a reality that I think exists anywhere on
Speaker 1: planet Earth. Thank you for that image, Senator. That's really
Speaker 1: sort of burned into my mind now, the spooning at
Speaker 1: MSNBC speaking of the g men abusing their authority. This
Speaker 1: ties directly into one of the spookiest news stories to
Speaker 1: come out of your place of employment, to come out
Speaker 1: of the US Capital and the US Senate. The Senate
Speaker 1: has just voted to give the IRS an additional I
Speaker 1: think what eighty billion dollars and to authorize eighty seven
Speaker 1: thousand additional IRS agents for what to authorize all of
Speaker 1: our tax returns more quickly, No, I think, probably to
Speaker 1: audit ordinary Americans and have passed this precedent to go
Speaker 1: after the political opponents of this administration. How worried should
Speaker 1: we be about that? We should be very worried. This
Speaker 1: is about abuse of power. One of the elements of
Speaker 1: the terrible build back Broke bill that the Democrats just
Speaker 1: ram through is eighty seven thousand new IRS agents, more
Speaker 1: than doubling the size of the IRS. If those positions
Speaker 1: were filled, the IRS would have more more agents than
Speaker 1: the State Department, the Border Patrol, the FBI, and the
Speaker 1: Pentagon combined. It is utterly disconnected from what people want. Listen,
Speaker 1: I campaign all over Texas, all over the country. I've
Speaker 1: never heard one person come up to me and say,
Speaker 1: what we really need is tens of thousands of more
Speaker 1: I R S agents, Like like there is zero demand
Speaker 1: for it. You know. It's kind of like someone saying
Speaker 1: we need more Gonorea in the world, or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the Biden White House we need more monkeypox. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's this is not what the people want, and
Speaker 1: you are right. It is designed to go after ordinary Americans.
Speaker 1: It's not designed to go after billionaires. It's not designed
Speaker 1: to go after giant corporations. By the way, this bill
Speaker 1: also has massive subsidies for giant corporations, so the Democrats
Speaker 1: are perfectly happy to take care of their friends in
Speaker 1: corporate America. This is designed to go after small businesses.
Speaker 1: This is designed to go after families. This is designed
Speaker 1: to send a swarm of IRS agents like locusts to
Speaker 1: descend on America. But even worse, overlay it with the
Speaker 1: pattern of how the Biden administration uses law enforcement. I
Speaker 1: think they want this to be used to harass conservatives,
Speaker 1: to harass Republicans. We saw under Barack Obama the IRS
Speaker 1: targeting conservative groups, Tea party groups, pro constitution groups, pro
Speaker 1: Israel groups, targeting and weaponizing the IRS. They want eighty
Speaker 1: seven thousand new agents to do this even more and
Speaker 1: to give you a sense of what they envision. So
Speaker 1: the IRS posted job postings already. They got very excited
Speaker 1: about this, and here are the job postings they posted.
Speaker 1: It says major duties adhere to the highest standards of conduct,
Speaker 1: especially in maintaining honesty and integrity. Okay, that's good work.
Speaker 1: A minimum of fifty hours per week, which may include
Speaker 1: irregular hours, and be on call twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: including holidays and weekends. Okay, so this is going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of IRS agents here all the time.
Speaker 1: All right, Okay, what about what next? Maintain a level
Speaker 1: of fitness necessary to effectively respond to life threatening situations
Speaker 1: on the job. Carry a firearm and be willing to
Speaker 1: use deadly force if necessary. And here's the final bullet point,
Speaker 1: be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of
Speaker 1: search warrants, especially on mar Lago and other dangerous assignments
Speaker 1: other than the Mara Lago bit. Every word of that
Speaker 1: is verbatim in the IRS posting, and it's so bad
Speaker 1: they pulled it down like people suddenly noticed. Wait, you're
Speaker 1: advertising for Jack Buddhed thugs like like that. That's what
Speaker 1: the posting says, give us leftist with guns to go
Speaker 1: after Conservatives and Americans. That's what they want. And the
Speaker 1: image I have of a typical IRS employee is a
Speaker 1: sort of bookish looking fellow with maybe a pocket protector
Speaker 1: and a green visor on, you know, clicking on it.
Speaker 1: So are you looking in the mirror? Micro I there
Speaker 1: was a softball that I just sent up to you.
Speaker 1: You know what I usually don't picture though, I usually
Speaker 1: don't picture Rambo kicking down people's doors. Though conservatives often
Speaker 1: speak of these government agencies as being so over the
Speaker 1: top and aggressive against ordinary Americans. Now it seems that
Speaker 1: the IRS is admitting it. That's what they want. Well
Speaker 1: it is. And you know the sort of lefties on
Speaker 1: Twitter say, oh, well, it's just tax sheets and if
Speaker 1: you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry about it. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently they've never been subjected to an IRS audit. Because
Speaker 1: when you have the government come after you, number one,
Speaker 1: it can cost you thousands or tens of thousands or
Speaker 1: even hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend yourself. And
Speaker 1: and especially in a context where an administration is willing
Speaker 1: to target their enemies on that inflicting that kind of
Speaker 1: cost and pain. One of the things I talk about
Speaker 1: in Injustice Corrupted, I talk about True the Vote. I
Speaker 1: talk about Katherine Engelbrecht, who's a grassroots activist. She founded
Speaker 1: a group called King Street Patriots in Houston. I know
Speaker 1: Catherine well, she founded a group called True the Vote.
Speaker 1: Under Obama, they sent out the dogs to come after
Speaker 1: and everyone went after her. So she got audited, She
Speaker 1: and her husband's business got audited. OSHO went and did
Speaker 1: safety inspections atf went after her husband for having sold
Speaker 1: years earlier a gun for like two hundred dollars. Like
Speaker 1: every federal agency, they said, this is persona non grata
Speaker 1: as as mister Burns would say, release thounds. That's what
Speaker 1: they did. How did it? How did this bill get through?
Speaker 1: You were obviously there. You were staying up all night
Speaker 1: while I've been up with my crying newborn child. You
Speaker 1: were up for sixteen hours straight and vote a rama
Speaker 1: to ram through this bill. I was really hoping that Cinema,
Speaker 1: maybe Mansion, the moderate Dems who have resisted the most
Speaker 1: outrageous predations of the Biden administration. I was hoping they
Speaker 1: wouldn't cave, And yet they did. So what were they
Speaker 1: each given ferraris or something? What did Biden do to
Speaker 1: win their votes? Look, unfortunately, they're both Democrats, and so
Speaker 1: they had previously stood up and said no, But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day they gave in. This is
Speaker 1: a terrible bill. So this bill spends hundreds of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars in corporate welfare, in boondoggles. It's going to
Speaker 1: be We're gonna see a whole lot of cylindros, We're
Speaker 1: going to see a whole lot of quote green energy
Speaker 1: companies headed by former Democrats, staffers with lobbyists that support Democrats,
Speaker 1: who are suddenly getting millions or billions of dollars from
Speaker 1: the federal government, and that money is going to be
Speaker 1: allocated not based on what they can do, but based
Speaker 1: on who their friends are, based on their political influence.
Speaker 1: And they're going to take those millions and billions of
Speaker 1: dollars and turn around and hold fundraisers for Joe Biden
Speaker 1: and Kamala Harris and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. It's
Speaker 1: pure political graft, paying off their buddies. That's one component,
Speaker 1: but there's another component of it. So Biden and the
Speaker 1: Democrats keep telling us that they want number one to
Speaker 1: stop inflation. They've called this the Inflation Reduction Act. It
Speaker 1: truly is an Orwellian name. It's like calling a can
Speaker 1: of gasoline the fire reduction tool, like this will increase inflation.
Speaker 1: It is literally hundreds of billions of dollars of yet
Speaker 1: more spending. Even Bernie Sanders it admits right. Senator Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders came out and he referred to it as the
Speaker 1: so called Inflation Reduction Act, because even he is socialist,
Speaker 1: is willing to admit that's spending a bunch of money
Speaker 1: on all this nonsense. Is not going to do anything
Speaker 1: about inflation. Well, and he's understating it because it'll make
Speaker 1: inflation worse, will exacerbate inflation. It is, we have inflation
Speaker 1: because the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of
Speaker 1: dollars it didn't have. The Democrats solution was, let's spend
Speaker 1: hundreds of billions more. That will produce more inflation. But
Speaker 1: they actually made it even worse because it also includes
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of new taxes. Now, Joe Biden, every
Speaker 1: Democrats say they want to lower the price of gas
Speaker 1: at the pump. Now they're lying. They don't mean this.
Speaker 1: There are lots of reasons we know they're lying. There
Speaker 1: are lots of things Biden could do to lower prices
Speaker 1: at the pump, like stop assaulting oil and gas production
Speaker 1: in the US with regulations. But on the face of it,
Speaker 1: this bill imposes billions and new taxes on oil and
Speaker 1: gas production. If you want prices of something to go down,
Speaker 1: you don't vote for billions and new taxes on the thing.
Speaker 1: You're saying, we want prices to go down by and
Speaker 1: we had what's called voter ramis, so how does that operate.
Speaker 1: The tool that the Democrats used to pass this is
Speaker 1: the Budget Act of nineteen seventy four, and it's what's
Speaker 1: called reconciliation. We've talked about this before. The most important
Speaker 1: thing about it is it's a significant exception to the filibuster.
Speaker 1: Passing something under reconciliation takes only fifty votes, not sixty.
Speaker 1: They're limitations. You can't do everything under reconciliation, but you
Speaker 1: can do a lot. You can do taxes under reconciliation.
Speaker 1: You can do a lot of spending under reconciliation. So
Speaker 1: they used budget reconciliation. But one of the consequences of it.
Speaker 1: Under the statute there are unlimited amendments, and normally the
Speaker 1: majority can stop the minority from having amendments, but under reconciliation,
Speaker 1: it's the one big exception they can't do that. So
Speaker 1: we have the ability. I have the ability as an
Speaker 1: individual senator to offer as many amendments as I want.
Speaker 1: So we were there all night and well into the
Speaker 1: next day offering amendments. We had an amendment on stripping
Speaker 1: out the gas taxes. For all the Democrats who say
Speaker 1: they don't want gas taxes. They don't want gas prices
Speaker 1: to go up. Every single Democrat voted no. All of
Speaker 1: them are on record voting in favor of new taxes
Speaker 1: on oil and gas, which means when your gas prices
Speaker 1: go up, you know who's to blame. So, Michael, I
Speaker 1: had four amendments that I forced. I think it was
Speaker 1: the most of any of the Republicans. All four I
Speaker 1: think were important. One of the amendments I forced was
Speaker 1: a simple amendment that deleted the hiring of eighty seven
Speaker 1: thousand new IRS agents. Just deleted that from the bill,
Speaker 1: said nope, we're not doubling the funding of the IRS.
Speaker 1: We're not hiring eighty seven thousand new IRS agents. We
Speaker 1: voted on it. It was fifty fifty. Every Republican voted
Speaker 1: yes for my amendment. Every Democrat voted no. That means
Speaker 1: every single Democrat was the deciding vote. Democrats in Georgia
Speaker 1: and Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, all of them were the
Speaker 1: deciding vote in favor of eighty seven thousand new IRS agents.
Speaker 1: I had another amendment that would prohibit the federal government
Speaker 1: from selling oil from our strategic petroleum reserve. Two Communist China,
Speaker 1: which is you know, Joe Biden is sold over two
Speaker 1: million barrels of oil to communist China from the strategic
Speaker 1: Petroleum Reserve. We voted on it. Every Democrat but four
Speaker 1: voted against it, so there were four. This particular amendment
Speaker 1: was at a sixty vote threshold, so they had some
Speaker 1: votes to give away. Normally amendments are at a fifty
Speaker 1: vote threshold, but in this case we had a ruling
Speaker 1: from the parliamentarian that set it at sixty. So four Democrats,
Speaker 1: the two from Georgia, one from Nevada, and one from
Speaker 1: New Hampshire voted with me, but every other Democrat voted
Speaker 1: against it. So Mark Kelly and Arizona voted for Joe
Speaker 1: Biden to sell oil paid for by the taxpayers to
Speaker 1: communist China. By the way, Joe Mansion voted for selling
Speaker 1: oil to communist China. John Tester not on the ballot
Speaker 1: this time, but it'll be on the ballot in two years.
Speaker 1: In Montana voted for Biden to be able to sell
Speaker 1: oil to communist China. These are dumb, dumb votes, but
Speaker 1: the Democrats voted it down. Let me tell you my
Speaker 1: final two amendments, because they're going to blow you away.
Speaker 1: The DC public schools have implemented a vaccine mandate that
Speaker 1: they require all students in order to go to school,
Speaker 1: have a COVID vaccine, and that's kicking in in the
Speaker 1: next week or two when school starts. Here the stats
Speaker 1: in DC of the students in DC, roughly eighty five
Speaker 1: percent of the students have been vaccinated. That means fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the students have not. So the DC schools
Speaker 1: have decided to throw fifteen percent of the students out
Speaker 1: of school. It gets even worse when you look at
Speaker 1: the demographics among African American students and they're an enormous
Speaker 1: percentage of the students in DC schools or African American.
Speaker 1: Sixty percent of African American students in the DC public
Speaker 1: schools are vaccinated. That means forty percent are not. I
Speaker 1: forced to vote to eliminate the DC vaccine mandate for COVID.
Speaker 1: Every single Democrat voted no. Every one of them voted
Speaker 1: literally to throw forty percent of the black kids out
Speaker 1: of school. And by the way, forever to literally you're
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old African American kid in DC. Guess what,
Speaker 1: you're a high school dropout now. Because every Democrat voted
Speaker 1: unless you comply to their demand to get this vaccine,
Speaker 1: you're done with schools. Sucks to be you. It was
Speaker 1: a stunning vote, and every single one of them voted
Speaker 1: to throw those kids out of school. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you my final amendment. We've talked a lot about Merrick
Speaker 1: Garland and the FBI targeting parents as domestic terrorist under
Speaker 1: the Patriot Act. And by the way, even though Garland
Speaker 1: tried to backtrack in front of Senate Judiciary Committee last week,
Speaker 1: we had the head of the FBI in front of
Speaker 1: the Senate Judiciary Committee. I asked him about it. The
Speaker 1: FBI has interviewed, has interrogated dozens of parents because they
Speaker 1: spoke up at school boards. They're implementing this. They are
Speaker 1: doing this because I remember that they called them these
Speaker 1: parents domestic terrorists, and you thought, yeah, well that's just
Speaker 1: this is insane. But I at least believed there's no
Speaker 1: way that they're actually going to act on this. They're
Speaker 1: doing it all over the country. Wow, Wow, they are
Speaker 1: doing it all over the country. They are bringing in
Speaker 1: moms and dads, they're interrogating them. And so I had
Speaker 1: a imple amendment that said the FBI should not target
Speaker 1: parents as domestic terrorists for speaking up at school boards.
Speaker 1: Every single Democrat voted no, failed by one vote. That
Speaker 1: means every Democrat on the ballot November is the deciding
Speaker 1: vote in favor of the FBI targeting you, targeting mom
Speaker 1: and dad as a domestic terrorist. That is a It
Speaker 1: was an amazingly stupid vote. I actually think if they
Speaker 1: had any sense, like if Schumer were not such a
Speaker 1: wild eyed partisan, he would have told all his guys
Speaker 1: vote for that, let's all get on record and say,
Speaker 1: don't target parents as domestic terrorists. That would have been
Speaker 1: a rational Democrat responding to that vote. The fact that
Speaker 1: he said, every one of you go walk the plank. Listen.
Speaker 1: This issue single handedly elected Glen Yunkan in Virginia, and
Speaker 1: now every Democrat is on record saying we're with the
Speaker 1: g man going after mom and dad. It was stunning
Speaker 1: and radical and extreme. That is surprising because I understand
Speaker 1: the Democrat vote on the COVID vaccine. The consequences are horrific,
Speaker 1: but I get it. They're saying, we are so bought
Speaker 1: in on vaccine mandates. It's so important to us. We're
Speaker 1: willing to take the political heat for this vote. But
Speaker 1: I think calling parents domestic terrorists, that's really so important
Speaker 1: to you that you're going to risk what happened to
Speaker 1: Yuncan in Virginia, what we're seeing play out in Florida.
Speaker 1: This education issue so important right now to voters, you're
Speaker 1: really going to risk that just so that you can
Speaker 1: keep sicking the federal government on concerned parents. And they're saying, yes,
Speaker 1: the Democrats are saying that is important enough to us
Speaker 1: to risk it. Well, and you know why they do it, Michael.
Speaker 1: They do it because they know the corporate media is corrupt.
Speaker 1: They know they won't get called out about on it.
Speaker 1: So you and I are talking about it, But let
Speaker 1: me ask you, have you seen any TV station talking
Speaker 1: about that vote. I mean, we do have better ratings
Speaker 1: in CNN, but do you definitely have better ratings than
Speaker 1: their shows? But you don't. You're not seeing this anywhere
Speaker 1: in the liberal press. It's why Democrats are so radical
Speaker 1: and so extreme because they're and again I talk about
Speaker 1: it in Justice Corrupted, which, by the way, everyone going
Speaker 1: to Amazon and pre order Justice Corrupted. You can go
Speaker 1: do it right now. Go to Amazon, click pre order
Speaker 1: but I talk about the corrupt corporate media has played
Speaker 1: a major role in producing this corruption because it teaches
Speaker 1: democrats I can abuse my power and I won't get
Speaker 1: called out on it, that there will be no consequences.
Speaker 1: And so if you're a Democrat and you're like, should
Speaker 1: I vote on whether or not the FBI should target
Speaker 1: parents as domestic terrorists, Well, I'll just vote party line
Speaker 1: because no reporter will ask me about it. No headline
Speaker 1: back home, no coverage with nothing will address this issue.
Speaker 1: So I'm safe and immune. If we have some campaigns
Speaker 1: in November that don't suck, that are actually competent and
Speaker 1: capable on the Republican side, every one of these votes
Speaker 1: out to appear in campaign ads. But before the ads,
Speaker 1: you ought to have real journalists asking about it. But
Speaker 1: the number of real journalists left in the world is
Speaker 1: vanishingly small. Before we go, Senator, speaking of accountability, I
Speaker 1: want to get to at least one question from the
Speaker 1: Verdict plus subscribers, And so this question comes from Eileen,
Speaker 1: who says, I kind of feel like this raid on
Speaker 1: Mara Lago could also be a smokescreen for something else
Speaker 1: that they want to distract us from. They do it
Speaker 1: all the time. Does anything come to mind? November can't
Speaker 1: come fast enough. PS. I love to barbecue, but I
Speaker 1: can't find the Jack Daniels original recipe, any replacement suggestions
Speaker 1: from attack X. And I think even casey masterpiece is gone.
Speaker 1: So we're really seeing two distinct issues brought up in
Speaker 1: this question. I'll let you take them in either order
Speaker 1: you prefer, all right, So I'll start with with with
Speaker 1: just a confession that I like to eat barbecue, but
Speaker 1: I'm not much of a barbecure myself. Um. I have
Speaker 1: a big green egg in the backyard that that I'll
Speaker 1: grill up a burger a steak on. But to be honest,
Speaker 1: for good barbecue, I just go to a Texas barbecue
Speaker 1: joint and eat it there. So um, I have nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing of value to impart uh. In terms of the
Speaker 1: best way to prepare it, I find the best way
Speaker 1: to prepare it just ordering it, um right. The best
Speaker 1: way to make it, make it is make a reservation.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, fair enough, it's a good it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good manly answer. Just call it it is. But
Speaker 1: you know, look, I can grill up a burger or
Speaker 1: steak that that much I can do but but, but
Speaker 1: my my cooking repertoire is pretty limited. Um YEA look,
Speaker 1: in terms of a distraction, I mean, it's right to
Speaker 1: be skeptical. They're doing a ton that is bad. I
Speaker 1: don't think this was deliberately a distraction. I think this
Speaker 1: was tone deaf. I think this was we talked about
Speaker 1: it earlier in the pod. The partisans at DOJ. They've
Speaker 1: drunk the kool aid. Everyone they know hates Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: He is the devil, they believe, and so everyone they
Speaker 1: know has been like eagerly, Like you know, if you
Speaker 1: saw Stephen Colbert who had, you know, practically an epileptic
Speaker 1: seizure he was so excited with the FBI raid. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's it's the bias of reinforcements that they're
Speaker 1: just tone deaf and eager to charge in do I
Speaker 1: think it is a carefully calibrated plan to distract from
Speaker 1: something specific and otherwise no, is it part of distracting
Speaker 1: from the disaster of inflation and gas prices and crime
Speaker 1: and open borders. Yes, so all of January sixth is
Speaker 1: a political circus designed to distract from the failures of
Speaker 1: the Biden agenda. So in that context, This is also
Speaker 1: a distraction from that, but I don't think it's specifically
Speaker 1: hiding one particular pernicious thing, in part because I think
Speaker 1: they're doing one hundred pernicious things all at once, right,
Speaker 1: and it never ascribed to four dhs that which is
Speaker 1: equally explained by a blunder and incompetence. Very good point.
Speaker 1: Now there is much more to discuss, but not with me.
Speaker 1: The rest to discuss will be for the Verdict plus
Speaker 1: subscribers with our friend Liz Wheeler on cloakroom. Liz, what
Speaker 1: will you be talking about High Michal High Center. I
Speaker 1: gotta say, after sitting here and watching and listening to
Speaker 1: this ups for the past hour, this feels very different
Speaker 1: to me. There have been a lot of federal agencies
Speaker 1: who have abused their power and targeted the American people
Speaker 1: a lot of different times, and I think this time
Speaker 1: the American people feel that a line has been crossed.
Speaker 1: I've never seen the emotion and the passion and the
Speaker 1: fury as I've seen this week. It just feels different.
Speaker 1: On the cloakroom, Senator, and I'm addressing this to you
Speaker 1: because you don't know what we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: until I tell you on air. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Alex Jones. I know interesting topic. There's actually some
Speaker 1: very interesting legal questions as it pertains to the defamation
Speaker 1: trial that Alex Jones just underwent, about slander and libel
Speaker 1: and the different types of damages, whether they're compensatory, whether
Speaker 1: they're punitive and prool an unusual punishment. So please join
Speaker 1: us over there. We're going to be talking about that.
Speaker 1: You can go to Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com
Speaker 1: slash plus. If you use my promo code Cloakroom, you
Speaker 1: can get one month free on your annual subscription Verdict
Speaker 1: with Ted Cruise dot Com slash Plus. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear about it, and I do want to hear
Speaker 1: more about the gay frogs. It's amazing that the man
Speaker 1: was right on the gay frogs. We have to leave
Speaker 1: it there on Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Speaker 1: This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought
Speaker 1: to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political
Speaker 1: action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates
Speaker 1: across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and
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Speaker 1: Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.