Holy Crap, What a Week

am Michael Knowles, Senator. I am no constitutional expert. I did not go to law school, but I think I am right in saying this. The media don't get to pick the president, right, thankfully, although lord knows they're trying. It is the voters who decide. And you know, I got to say so. You and I are filming this on Tuesday night. Election Day was a week ago. We haven't done a podcast since before election Day. I kind of feel like Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton coming

back saying so what did I miss? Like, Holy crap, what a week this has been. There's never been a week like this in politics, in media, in life, and the consequence for the nation are enormous. You know, we've gotten a lot of messages of people asking why didn't you do an episode during the election or the day after the election. And I think people sometimes forget you are a sitting US senator. You know, you do have a pretty busy schedule, and the events have been changing

in real time. Obviously, on election night, you had certain cable networks calling Arizona, for instance, for Joe Biden. Then it seems like people were walking that back. Now it seems unclear who's going to get Arizona. You had a lot of vote coming really late in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin and Michigan, you had the polls counting stopping just at ten o'clock at night, and then it was supposed to not resume until the morning. Other reports that resumed in

the middle of the night. There's just so much disinformation, misinformation, and on the legal front, obviously, there are so many questions. So I know you have been through this actually before. You were a lawyer on President George W. Bush's team during the Florida recount and the questions of the two thousand presidential election. What are we looking at here in terms of President's Trump's chances for a second term in terms of the ability to find fraud in Philadelphia, for instance.

Where are we on the legal front. Well, I'll start with a radical proposition, which is that elections are decided when the results have been counted and the legal proceedings are over that that didn't used to be a controversial proposition. You know, think back to election night. I was here in Houston, was an election party with a number of friends. That night was a great night. Republicans were winning, We were winning the Senate, we were winning House seats, and

President Trump was winning re election. Early on Florida was called for the president. Early on Ohio was called for the president, and we were leading. I went home to go to bed about two in the morning, and we were leading in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin. I mean, it looked like a really strong night. And then I suspect a lot of us went to bed and we woke up in the morning and it's like what happened. There are multiple lawsuits all over the country right now

playing out. There were going to be recounts in multiple states. All of those proceedings have to be concluded before we know who actually will be the winner state by state. By state, and that's going to take, in all likelihood several weeks. It's not going to take six months, but the litigation is not going to be over by tomorrow. And the night of the election. Number one, the media, two outlets, Fox News and AP were really precipitous calling Arizona.

That was clearly a mistake. You know, when when CNNA is calling out Fox for being too anti Trump, you know, somebody's jumped the shark somewhere. I mean, I mean that that's a problem. But the instant the vote totals shifted to Joe Biden. We've seen virtually the entire mainstream media try to engage in an immediate coronation, big tech engage in total censorship of any view to the contrary. And and they're behaving with this weird you know. I mean,

it's almost like their persecuting heritage. If you dare say, well, let's wait till the litigation is resolved, they scream at you your undermining democracy. That's nutty. No democracy means if they're legal challenges, you resolve the legal challenges. And by the way, this happens in elections all the time. We see recounts, we see litigation. We see disputes over if there were votes that were illegally cast, that litigation has to be resolved. And you know the way it plays out.

Their cases in state court, their cases in federal court. The cases in state court will be adjudicated in a trial court. They will, they will in many instances go up to an intermediate court of appeals. They would go up maybe to the state Supreme Court, and then the US Supreme Court can take it from the state system. There will also be cases in federal court that start in federal district court, maybe go up to the Court of Appeals, and they can go up to the Supreme Court.

So if you look at Bush versus Gore, as you know my book One Vote Away, it's a whole chapter on Bush versus Gore, and it goes into great detailed Bush versus Gore took thirty six days when we arrived in Florida. Within days, we had a chart of seven different cases that we're all pending just in one state, justin Florida, any one of which could have cost the presidency of the United States. And it was chaos. We went to the Florida Supreme Court twice. We went to

the US Supreme Court twice. And when I say went to the US Supreme Court, I mean brief the case, argued it, and got a written decision from the Supreme Court twice in those thirty six days. And by the way, we also tried a full case in the Florida Trial Court in addition to multiple other arguments. So the court system can operate, but all of us should expect the courts to resolve these claims. There are lots of claims of voter fraud. I don't know which claims are accurate

and which aren't. You don't know which claims are accurate and which aren't. That's why we have a legal system. That's what courts do. And in today's world where you see you know, this Twitter allegation, that Twitter allegation, all sorts of things, it's really hard to know, all right, what really is the state of affairs? Well, we ought to allow the legal system to actually hear evidence, to examine the data, to listen to witnesses, to examine evidence,

and to make factual determinations. That's why we have a judicial system, of course, And the idea that there was no fraud whatsoever seems to me very difficult to believe. You called this out right, and I have to tell you, I don't mean to flatter you, Senator, but you were one of the few elected Republicans who actually came out strongly on this. Specifically in Philadelphia, you had Republican poll watchers show up every election. You got poll watchers from

both campaigns. They show up, they make sure there are no shenanigans going on. Republican poll watchers were turned away. There was then a court order that said you have to let the Republican poll watchers in. What happened, they still encountered resistance trying to take a look at these polls. That is outrageous, That is illegal, and who knows if that's through an election. We can't know that. Obviously a

legal process has to play out. But to say that there is no evidence whatsoever and we need to certify these results and move on and waiting even five days is too long and unprecedented. That just seems to be not in correspondence with reality. Well, and let's take that

component for a moment. I've been trying to be very active both on social media and also on media media, engaging in these issues and leading the fight it's interesting the media talking points and the dem talking points on the Pennsylvania ballot observers is, well, no, no, no, they were in the room. What they ignore is that they were being kept twenty feet away or twenty five feet away. If you've ever tried to actually look at a ballot twenty five feet away, you can't see the damn ballot.

You are not actually an observer if you're twenty five feet away. Ultimately, they went to a Pennsylvania state court and got an order to be six feet away. To be honest, it's hard to observe a ballot six feet away if you're trying to see are the guy's cheating? And that's a second point to understand. It couldn't sound like, oh, it's a technicality. It's a procedural issue whether there were

observers there. But the reason that the law mandates the observers be there is to prevent people from engaging in fraud, to prevent people from stealing votes. You look at Bush versus Gore. One of the first things the Democrats did is they sought recounts in four overwhelmingly Democratic counties in Florida, and I talk about in my book one vote away. How on the Bush legal team and I was a young lawyer at the time. I was in my late twenties and was part of it. Was an incredible legal

team that came together for George W. Bush. We had a big debate about, Okay, do we counter by asking for recounts and four overwhelmingly Republican counties. So if they're going to go seek recounts and Democratic counties, does it help us to do get recounts and Republican counties? We didn't do so we decided no, let's not do so.

And I'll tell you the reason why. Because we believe to a person that in the Democratic recounts that the hard leftist partisans would cheat, that they'd be sitting there those had chads that they literally we've poked them out with their fingernails, like if you didn't look, boom, there you go another vote for Gore. And what we said is, look, our guys won't cheat. Like, if we do a recount in a Republican county, it doesn't help us because the guys counting us are going to come up with basically

the same count that. Thankfully, I'm glad our guys won't cheat. Now look, some observers may say, oh, that's a pretty partisan view of things. I can't prove as a conclusive fact that the Democratic counters cheat significantly more than the Republican accounters do. What I can tell you is the reason we didn't seek a recount in the Republican counties is that all of our lawyers, all of George W. Bush's lawyers, believe that right, and so we didn't seek

a recount. It. As they recounted it, you kept seeing the numbers for Gore grow and grow and grow. I mean, it clearly played out in the pattern we anticipated. And just for people who think there isn't historical president here, obviously you've got Bush, bigre you've got the two thousand recount, but actually your predecessor in the Senate from Texas, Lyndon Johnson,

who obviously went on to become president. There's great controversy about his nineteen forty eight election to the Senate, where I think it was about a million votes cast and he won by something like eighty seven votes. You know, it was fewer than one hundred votes, and it all came from back thirteen Box thirteen, a box of ballots from a notoriously corrupt county, and there's allegations that it had been stuffed at. President Roosevelt actually joked about stuffing

ballot boxes at the time. This is an American tradition. Unfortunately it is. There has been significant voter fraud. And by the way, in these big democratic cities, cities like Pennsylvania, cities like Philadelphia, cities like Detroit in Michigan. In Detroit, they put poster board and covered up the ballot county

areas to hide them. You know, an analogy I use this weekend on one of the Sunday shows, I said, listen, if someone goes into a bank and shuts off all the security cameras, what is the natural inference that leads It's not that they're intending to do nothing wrong. I mean, if you're shutting off the mechanism for observing it, that people naturally say, well, there's a reason you don't want

people to see what you're doing. But but let me say, okay, in terms of where we are, I mean a lot of people are asking, all, right, where do we go? What's next? Let me give you good news and bad news. Okay, give me the good news first. Okay, the good news. First, there is reason for some optimism because listen, this was a weird election with COVID and you had massive mail

in votings and in person voting. The data show that on election day the people that went physically to the polls and voted in person, that Trump won those by a significant margin. The data also show that in many states on the mail in votes that Biden won those by a significant margin. So here's the good news, and a recount or in an election contest litigation, in person election day votes are significantly less likely to be deemed

illegal rights it's hard to cheat those votes. Generally, the count is what it is, and the in person election good point votes rarely change mail in votes if you look at recounts. If you look at election contests, some significant percentage of mail in votes fairly predictably are excluded as this doesn't meet the legal standards. This is whether it's you know someone, a dead person, whether it is someone who didn't sign the thing like for whatever reason.

That varies state by state, but mail in voters have a significantly higher percentage of being excluded. In this instance, mail in voters are predominantly for Joe Biden, so we may well see as these recounts go forward, a larger percentage of Biden votes being deemed illegal than Trump votes. We don't know that, but there's reason to have optimism. Now let me give you the flip side. Okay, I'm braced for it. What's the bad news for the Trump team to prevail? They can't just win in one state.

They've got to run the table. So let me give you some of the numbers, because it's this is the challenging piece. So right now, all right, I'm using the New York Times election results as one source. New York Times has Biden with a two seventy nine electoral lead to two hundred and fourteen. You need two seventy to be elected president. So it has Biden with two seventy nine. So the Times hasn't called Georgia right now. Biden has a fourteen thousand vote lead in Georgia, so we need

to pick up fourteen thousand votes in Georgia. The Times hasn't called Arizona right now. Biden has a twelve thousand vote lead in Arizona. Now let's talk about the states that they have called for Biden. Wisconsin with ten electoral votes. Biden has over a twenty thousand vote lead in Wisconsin. Nevada with six electoral votes. Biden has over a thirty six thousand vote lead in Nevada. Michigan with sixteen electoral votes. Biden unfortunately has one hundred and forty eight thousand vote

lead in Michigan. That's a big lead. And then Pennsylvania, which is the big Enchilada in terms of the most electoral votes of the states we're talking about, Biden has right now about a forty five thousand vote lead. That is a lot of votes to shift in a recount or a contest litigation. If you look at Florida and Bush versus Gore, the whole course of it, we were talking about a few thousand votes. Right at the end of the day, George W. Bush won by five hundred

and thirty seven votes. Right, the totals in Florida started out much much closer than where these totals are, And if we were talking about one state, you could be

more optimistic about what the result would be. In this instance, the Trump team's got to win in a whole bunch of states, right, I suppose even when you hear those numbers, I mean, it's amazing how thin some of Michigan accepted, how thin some of the margins are in Georgia, for instance, or Arizona or Wisconsin even But you know that that

is very tricky because time is running out. I suppose one cause for hope is that we are in this bizarre year of the universal unsolicited maland so perhaps that gives a greater opportunity to flip them, but perhaps not. I mean, that's a lot of votes in a lot of states. So what you're saying is, let the legal process play out. Do not in no way declare the winner, you know it, or go along with the media, but maybe don't pop the champagne. Yet, there's still a long

hill to climb. Well, and look there instances. Let's take there was a county in Michigan that has publicly admitted that there was a what they called a software glitch that shifted six thousand votes from Trump to Bide. Now, thankfully they caught it. They caught it and they did a hand recount and discovered weight our results are way off what we anticipated. And they said it's a glitch. This software is used I believe in forty seven counties

in Michigan. So look, if there were six thousand votes shifted in all forty seven counties, that would be enough to move the margin. What the Michigan officials are arguing, however, is that this quote glitch is idiosyncratic to just this county and that it's not present more widely. Now, this is an example of there's a reason to be skeptical of their sort of self serving explanation. But it actually is going to take the lawyers proving this in court.

It's going to take right now. And I've been on the phone with the President. I've been on the phone with Jared Kushner. I've been on the phone with the White House. I have been urging them to bring in a stronger legal team, more curious, high powered litigators, and to go make their case. At this point, yelling about

it isn't going to change it. You got to go into court, Yeah, and you got to put on evidence and demonstrate to a court a legal basis that the margins we're talking about state by state, that that portion of the votes were illegally cast and that's got to be proven with cross examination, with evidence. And we're not there yet. I hope we get there but that's not an easy task and it takes some real hard, careful, diligent work, right right, Okay, you have not completely thrown

me into despair. There is still some cause for hope, and obviously we'll see that play out. One of the reasons I think a lot of people want President Trump to get reelected is because they are so infuriated at the blob, the deep state, the administrative state, the out

of control agencies, whatever you want to call it. And you know, speaking of legal questions, I was wondering if you were going to be arrested for murder earlier today because you eviscerated mister Andrew McCabe, one of these corrupt officials who was involved in the entire hoax and the scandals of twenty sixteen surrounding that election and thereafter. It's not getting any play. I noticed the testimony of Andrew McCabe is not getting any play because everyone's focused on

the presidential But I thought it was extraordinarily telling. It's one of the most important issues of the past four years. And maybe going forward, could you just take us through a little bit of what happened. First, we'll just play a little clip of your grilling of mister McCabe. Mister mcabe. Yesterday on MSNBC, Ben Roods, the former deputy National Security advisor to President Obama, said that foreign leaders are already having conversations with Joe Biden quote, talking about the agenda

they're going to pursue January twenty. It's mister McKay. Based on that testimony, do you believe Joe Biden is violating the Logan Act. I'm not aware of Ben Rhodes's statements, or take it on faith he said what I read, assuming he's that quote is accurate, and so a verbatim quote, is that a violation of the Logan Act under any plausible theory? I am not prepared to take your statement on faith, and I am also not prepared to conduct legal analysis. All right, you're a lawyer. Have you ever

answered a hypothetical in court? If it is correct that I am accurately quoting, it's something the Department of Justice frequently did wrong in this investigation. If that is what Ben Rhodes said, If Joe Biden is talking with foreign leaders right now, does it violate the Logan Act? Yes?

Or no. I'm not going to opine on a hypothetical question about what him he is talking with foreign leaders, and it doesn't violate the Logan Act because the Logan Act is unconstitutional, which is why it's never been used to prosecute anyone. You authorized using it to go after General Flynn as part of a political persecution. I can give you the answer. Hell, no, Joe Biden is not

violating the Logan Act. The reason you won't say it is because that was your flimsy political basis to go after a decorated war hero because you disagreed with politically with President Trump. Well, look, McCabe was the deputy director of the FBI. Today was significant because there's been a conflict. There's been a conflict for a couple of years between McCabe and James Coomy, his boss, over whether Comy authorized

him and directed him to leak to the press. Comy's testified now repeatedly under oath under penalty of perjury, that he did not, that he never has, that he didn't. McCabe had told the press that Comy had authorized to But today was the first time McCabe ever said that under oath. So that's a big deal. It's one thing. Look, it ain't a crime. Delight of the press. May i'd be a good idea. It may not be honorable or ethical, but it is not. It doesn't carry a prison term

to lie to the press. If you lie to Congress under oath, that is a crime. And so my objective in this cross examination was to get and and Comy testified before the election. I got him on record again saying, no, he didn't authorize McCabe to do this. McCabe, now he you want to talk about a slippery witness. Boy, This guy, he's smarmy and political and hates Trump and is a hardcore Democrat and it was up to his eyeballs in

the political persecution of the president. But finally, after trying to wriggle away repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, he said on the record, Yes, Coomy did authorize me. And critically. I ended this cross examination by saying, mister McCabe, the FBI has the records to demonstrate who's telling the truth. Either you're telling the truth or Comy's telling the truth. You can't both be

one of you's lying. Do you think the FBI should release the records, whether emails or remember and or whatever documents they have to if you're telling the truth, to vindicate you, to tell show that you're telling the truth, and if Comey's telling the truth, to vindicate him. Do you think the FBI should release the materials? And McCabe said, yes, they should release the materials. Well, hot diggity damn, I

can tell you. I pulled my chief counsel aside right after the hearing and said, all right, I want you to draft a letter to Bill Barr and to Chris Ray, which we will send in the next day or two, quoting Comy's testimony, Quoting McCabe's testimony, pointing out there directly in conflict that the FBI has records demonstrating who's lying and who's telling the truth. And now even McCabe is

calling for them to be released. And I'm going to ask Barr and Ray release them now and let us know who committed perjury because they can't both be true true. One said yes, one said no. It is impossible for both to be testifying truth truthfully. And this is the issue. We hope, in Secretary of State Mike Pumpey's words, we hope for a smooth transition into a second term for the president. But in any case, there is no reason

not to get this information out. Now you know that you won't get it under a democratic administration, So very important, I thought. I thought the grilling was just terrific to watch, and I do hope that we can see the release of this kind of material, and I do hope that these people are held to account. Speaking of these agencies that are out of control, we'll want to get to two mail bad questions. First, one from Kim Joe. Biden, if he is named president, wants to issue a lot

of executive orders that would overturn Trump's executive orders. How easy is that to do? After the Supreme Court upheld one of Obama's unconstitutional executive orders, doesn't that make it harder for Biden to overturn Trump's owes if Biden actually gets elected. That is what is the deal here. We've always told, you know it lived by the executive order, die by the executive order, that they're easy to overturn. But sometimes the court has shown us that they're not

so easy to overturn. So that is a really smart, savvy question. If we were living in a world of principle and reason, the answer to that should be yes, it does make it harder. All right, let me step back and answered a little bit differently. In any ordinary world where you're following the law, a president condissue an executive order, the next president can rescind the executive order,

and the power to do so is unlimited. Now it's a different question whether the executive order is legal, but the power to rescind an executive order is complete in total. And an executive order, by the way, should not be making law. It is directing the executive their executive orders, going back to George Washington. But those are instructions from the president to the executive branch. Here's how you are to execute the law. So it's so, and that's an authority.

Obama abused it by trying to change the law, which

an executive order can't do. The Supreme Court lawlessly, and the most egregious example of it was this past summer in June, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's revoking Obama's amnesty executive order, and it was John robertson the Four Liberals, and John Roberts wrote what I think was a deeply unprincipled opinion where the Chief Justice didn't dispute that Obama had no authority to issue the executive order, and he said, of course Trump can rescind it, but

he didn't provide enough explanations as to why. So we're going to call a process foul and send it back. And the thing that is utterly and completely hypocritical is the chances that John Roberts holds a Joe Biden presidency to the same standards or zero. It was clearly a pretext to reinstate amnesty, and it's frankly it's the same pretext John Roberts and the four liberals did the prior term in the census case, where the Trump administration was going to ask in the census, are you a US citizen?

A question that has been asked for two hundred years. It's been asked over and over and over again in censuses. Are you a citizen? Well, left wing activists don't like that question because they don't want how many people are here illegally? Yeah, and Roberts played the same game, said, well, of course you can ask that question, but the memo laying it out you didn't have good enough reasons, So we're striking it down and saying, show your work, Go

show your homework a little more. And it was a political game because they ran out of time, and so I didn't ask the question. That game has been ship will only apply to Trump Biden? Will I think repeal executive orders? I think if Biden as president, he will re enter the Paris Climate Agreement. If Biden as president, I think he will reinstate many aspects, if not the entirety of the Iran nuclear deal. There's a lot the president can do unilaterally. If Republicans keep the Senate, we

can stop the worst legislative things. That's also something I supposed to hope for now. Senator, I know you don't want me to bug you about future plans, so I will not. But I felt this was a very important question, so I'm going to include it. This is from Tommy. If Senator Cruz ever seeks higher office, will he keep the beard? I think he should. Senator. Your answer, damn define out. The Beard's been fun. I grow it on a whim. I've had fun with it. At some point.

Heidi is not crazy about the beard, so there is some pressure to get rid of it. Well, we'll see how it shakes out. I'm fun with it, right now, Senator, I would like on the record you know I won't be like Andy McCabe here. I won't try to be weasily about my answers. I am fully one hundred percent pro beard. I think if for the Verdict listeners, if you agree with my position on this, please let us know on Twitter. I think it's great, it's very has

lots of Abraham Lincoln vibes. I think it's cool. If I were able to grow a beard, I would. Unfortunately it doesn't quite work out on me, but maybe someday in the future. Well, I will say that the baby face is a good look for you. Well, that's very kind, Thank you, Senator. I appreciate that very much, and I will I will try to keep the baby face. We will. I'm sure the next time we speak have a million more developments in this crazy, crazy end to a crazy

crazy year. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.