James Comey, Incompetent or Corrupt?

be my favorite aspect of the show. I mean, this is what we've been seeing since impeachment, all the way back what was it eight nine months ago? Now is we get the first look and the first talk with Senator Cruz after all of these extraordinarily consequential events. Senator, you have just come from a hearing with former FBI Director James Comey. James Comy is not just a controversial figure, but he has, in your words, either incompetent or worse.

Let's if you wouldn't mind take us through the hearing. Well, yeah, so he was testifying about his leadership at the FBI and his role in the investigation of President Trump of his campaign of Michael Flynn of Carter Page, and I got to say, you know, you know, Comy at this point just blames everything on Oh, mistakes were made, the passive voice was used, nobody as an actor. It just just happened to happen. Oh up, some things were sloppy.

And I gotta say I thought too many Republican senators were willing to credit him with Oh, you just didn't know what was going on, Bologny. Comey knew exactly what was going on. Comy, I believe bears very direct responsibility for politicizing the FBI, for politicizing dj and Obama and Biden used Komy and used Brennan to turn dj CIA, FBI and the political weapons to go after Trump. And I think Komy was complicit the hearing today which I just came from. I spent most of the morning over

at the hearing. He's very good at dodging and weaving. He's slippery. He doesn't like to answer a direct question. So you know, he talked about well, anytime, anytime the FBI is thought of as less than competent or honest, that's a problem. And I pointed out that in according to the Inspector General report, they made seventeen material misstatements

to the Federal Court. And he's like, oh, well, yeah, that's competent and honest and and and he said, well he was honest at least, and I said, well, no. One of those was when an FBI lawyer who worked for you fraudulently altered a document from the CIA. He emailed the CIA and said, hey, it's Carter Page a source for you because he's talking to the Russians. But if he's talking to the Russians on behalf of the CIA, that's very different than if he's running around with Russian agents. See.

I said, oh, yeah, he's a source for us. And the FBI lawyer fraudulently altered that email and added the words is not a source, literally turned it to the opposite of what it said. I mean, I mean reversed its meaning one hundred and eighty degrees, and they used that as the basis for a submission to the Federal Court. Comy, being slippery as he is, said no, no, no, that's

not what the Inspector General concluded. And fortunately I had the IG report right in front of me, so I pulled it over and read the damn quote from the report, and he just he had nothing to say on that. I like this dichotomy that you drew between incomptance and corruption. I think even I and I think for so many people who are listening, who don't have the time to go through all of the aspects of what this means for spying on the Trump campaign and the Russian collusion narrative,

and on and on and on, and it's complicated. It's hard to figure out. It is hard to figure out. And we know that bureaucracies are incompetent a lot of the time. So I think even a lot of us who are pretty conservative will say, Okay, maybe we'll give them the benefit of the devil. What you're pointing to here is one the language that Komy uses, this passive voice which he always uses, is designed to push away any sort of guilt, and we can read in the

report that there was flagrant intentional dishonesty. Yeah. A couple of additional observations. Komy at the hearing today and at the press all the time, makes all these dispersions. Like he said at the hearing, I think the Russians have something on Trump. And mind you, he has no basis he was leading the FBI. It used to be the that you actually have something based on evidence rather than just making making wild accusations. But listen, I know James Comy not well, but I've dealt with him for a

number of years. I think Comey was deeply, deeply political, small p political political in the maneuvering, and I think Comey had delusions of grandeur. He worked in the Jed gro Hoover building, which is the headquarters of the FBI, and I think he thought he was Jed Groover. I mean, Hoover famously abused the power of head of the FBI and basically blackmailed people, had you know, all sorts of

incriminating information on lots of players. And I think Comy, look, Comy played a role in twenty sixteen and torpedoing Hillary at the end and then an exonerating Hillary and going back and forth, and I think he was playing politics. And then I think he felt guilty about the role he played in Hillary. And I think he hated Trump and he was perfectly happy to have the FBI be a political weapon. And there needs to be accountability. People need to go to jail for breaking the law and

to date, they haven't, and I hope they do. Will they be held to account? I mean, I know we're having hearings at the Senate, we're having the investigation from the DOJ into all the mess that happened. Is there going to be some consequence to all of this or are the nefarious players just going to run out the clock? Look, I pray they will. I don't know. I think Bill Barr is doing a terrific job. I think if anyone

can ensure some accountability, it's bar. That being said, it's been four years and there hasn't been much of any And you know, one of the things I asked Comey about is is he testified under oath and under penalty of perjury that he had never leaked to the press and that he'd never authorized anyone to leak to the press. Concerning this, Andrew McCabe, who was his deputy, has publicly stated that he leaked to the press and that Comy authorized him to do so, and he knew about it.

And so I asked Coomy about it. I read the two statements. I said, Look, these are directly contradictory. They can't both be true. So who's telling the truth and Comy again under oath, reiterated that he never leaked and never authorized anyone to leak. McCabe's coming before the Judiciary Committee next week, and you better believe I'm going to ask him the same thing. One or the other. Is lying and doing it in front of the Judiciary Committee.

Is perjury that is punishable by prison term. Well, we'll obviously have to cover that next week. You know, I want to get to the debates a little bit. And actually this ties directly in one one line that President Trump came back to last night, as he said, there was an attempted coup. The previous administration spied on my campaign, they drove up this whole ridiculous narrative. They tried to impeach me over absolutely nothing. And so it's not a

minor issue. It's not enough to just say, oh, well that was a few years ago. We'll move on. You know, this is an issue that gets to the heart of the integrity of our political system, and that there was a little bit of a parallel I felt at the debate, which is that it's supposed to be the two people who disagree, right, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and a

neutral moderator. There are supposed to be neutral, nonpartisan elements to our government, and the moderator, just like a lot of elements of the government, turned out to be a partisan Democrat weighing in on the side of Joe Biden. Yeah. I think Chris Wallace did an abysmal job. I think he's consistently been a really bad presidential debate moderator because he's biased, and he's condescending, and he thinks it's all

about him. And so you saw, you know, before the debate, he said he wanted to be invisible, but that disappeared when the debate started, where he you know, there was a lot of stomping his foot and you know, I'm in charge here, listen to me. You know, reminded me

of South Park, you know, respect my authority. I mean, I mean that that was Chris Wallace, and yes, and but he was also Look, a lot of people get confused because Wallace is on Fox News, and so they assume he might must be a Republican or right of center. He's a liberal Democrat and he's been in the entire time I've been in the Senate. I've seen Wallace do it over and over again, that he attacks conservatives, that

he carries water for the left. You saw with the questions, you know, one of his questions to Trump was the New York Times hit piece on the taxes, which you know, conveniently two days before the debate, entirely designed to be the attack on the debate. Now, mind you, the New York Times doesn't actually release the tax documents, so it's purely the Times's characterization of them. But but Wallace does none of that to Biden. Apparently there are no issues

with Biden. Did you know that there are no criticisms of Joe Biden? Lucky guy? You know, at times Wallace's question were almost like, you know, mister Vice President, are you more handsome or brilliant? Like like like it was, and his little his laughter, his snide comments. There is zero doubt for whom Chris Wallace is voting, that he is voting for Joe Biden. And that's not a good thing for for a moderator. Now, you know, we were talking about Senate Judiciary Committee a minute ago and how

the witnesses testify under penalty of perjury. I think it's a good thing that neither of the candidates last night were testifying under penalty. There's some exaggerations perhaps in there, or worse, it was wild and Woolley. I don't think there's ever been a debate like this in the history of presidential debates. At times it was ugly. I drew an analogy to the Detroit Pistons basketball team in the nineteen nineties in that there were a lot of hard

fouls and miss shots. And you know, Trump at times was Bill Lambier, coming with this massive arm and slamming Joe across the head. Now Joe was rabbit punching back, and I mean it was at times it almost became Jerry Springer and I expected someone to grab a chair and like throw it at the other. It was disappointing,

I felt, I have to say it was. It was obviously a two on one debate Wallace and Biden against Trump to begin with, but I think a lot of people were dispirited because you felt on the substance, Trump had much more than Joe Biden. And even even on the attacks, Joe Biden's attacks were just to call Trump a clown and a racist and tell him to shut up, man and come on man. But it was so childish and I understand maybe the President's strategy was to off foot Biden a little bit, but I felt there were

too many interruptions. I felt that was counterproductive. It was just dispiriting. I felt for both camps. What do you think the upshot of it is going to be for both campaign and how do you think that they can do better next time? Yeah, Look, I don't think the debate moved many votes last night. I think the people that came in supporting Trump left supporting Trump. The people that came in supporting Biden left supporting Biden. I don't think there were a whole lot of undecided voters whose

views were changed. Both candidates had good moments in the debate. Trump I think his best moment was when he called out Biden and he explained that Biden is supporting shutting down the economy, shutting down small businesses, shutting down restaurants, destroying job, shutting down schools. And Trump contrasted that says he wants people to open, go back to work, go back to school. That was really important, and Biden didn't have a good response to that. Biden was trying to

run away from his positions. I thought that was a very positive exchange. I also thought Trump was particularly good went on law enforcement. You know, Joe made reference to being supported law enforcement, and Trump said, really, name one, name one law enforcement organization in all of America supporting you, and Joe just kind of blinked, wide eyed and had no idea. And then, of course Chris Wallace jumped in

and bailed Joe out. Wallace should have shut up and stayed out of it right then, and Trump should have been quiet yeah and pressed it. It's one very powerful thing in a negotiation, in an interview is silence. Silence. People hate silence. People want to fill silence with space. And you know, the question Trump asked, name one law enforcement agency in the entire country that has supported you.

I think if Trump had just simply looked at him and waited, and there had been two three, four, five six seconds of silence as violent Biden had no answer, it would have been really powerful that being said, the point was made. Nonetheless, the point was made, and it was too bad that Chris Wallace jumped in. I mean, obviously I guess that was what he was there for,

was to go in and help the Democrat. But there is this basic rule in politics I don't need to tell you this, which is that when your opponent is destroying himself, don't get in the way. There's no reason to interrupt that well, and by the way, an another quick example, you know Joe Biden, he tried a couple of times to run away from some positions of the left. He pretended he didn't support packing the cord, or actually technically he said he wouldn't answer that question, which means yes,

he supports packing the cord. He did help himself, I think when he came out strongly and said that he opposed defunding the police, although I think both Wallace and Trump should have pressed back on him hard. And I thought it was interesting that he ran away from the Green New Deal and said I don't support the Green New Deal. If Wallace were actually being a fair and impartial moderator, the natural follow up question to that is why aspects of the Green New Deal do you not support?

You're running mate as a co sponsor of it. I mean, there was no substance, so he was able to say no, no, no no, no, I don't I don't support that, but with no details, and he wasn't pressed one iota. And the first question of the debate actually is what we were talking about on the last episode. The first topic dominated the beginning was the Supreme Court, and it was on this issue of court packing, and it was on

other other aspects of the Supreme Court. Coincidentally, you happen to have a book out on this subject, One Vote Away. But I do think it kind of vindicates what we were saying on the previous episode, which is that, however it is today, I don't however it came to be the Supreme Court is the dominant issue in the presidential elections. Now, I think that's right. It was the number one question in the debate. The book, One Vote Away, it came

out yesterday. It's actually done really well. We did podcast yesterday and we asked folks thank you for going going online to Amazon or wherever and buying it. We've been in the top ten national best sellers on Amazon. Actually right now on Amazon's best seller list for political conservativism and Liberalism, which is sort of an odd odd list

if you're I guess a righty or lefty. Um, the book is right now number one, and I gotta say I think Verdict listeners, you guys are a huge part of why that is thank you that really it makes a difference, and I think I think you'll find the book really interesting and informative and helpful, hopefully for the

same reason that that you find verdict helpful. Right. Well, it's actually I think it would be a good contrast to the debate, which is that I am professionally obligated to watch every minute of that debate, and if I were not professionally obligated to do it, I would not have it. I didn't feel it was productive. It was difficult often to watch and listen to. But it's different when you're talking about the book. You're you actually do leave.

I'm not. I'm not just shilling for your book. I really am enjoying it because for this reason, you leave with actual information, so you can say, Okay, this is this is ammo I can use frankly, when I'm having these debates with my friends and I'm at the water cooler or I'm wherever at a dinner party. Well, and you know the debate last night. The first question, actually Wallace asked a good first question. It was a neutral moderator question where he said, mister President, your position on

the Supreme Court vacancy is as follows. Vice President Biden, your position is as follows. And he fairly neutrally characterized both sides, and he said, tell us why, why you're right? And then so he just teat up the issue and then let them engage. That was actually a pretty good beginning. It was it was not as biased as some of his later questions. I got to say. The president's response, he essentially said, well, I'm president, and I got elected,

so I get to nominate, and we won. And I wish I wish the president had focused on why it matters, why the Supreme Court matters, what's at stake. I wish the president had focused on the issue is really at the core of the book. One vote away that he talked about free speech or religious liberty of the Second Amendment. You know, when I was a college debater, we used to think all the time, when when you were in

an opposition of of focusing on harms. In fact, you know, I would say, harms, harms, harms, how does it impact you? And and a little bit of the back and forth between Trump and Biden, it was about them and and and I really think it would have been more effective for it to be about you at home, if you're the soccer mom at home watching this debate. Okay, yes, people elected the president. And by the way, Biden had a huge created a huge opening because he came and said, well,

the American people deserved to have a say. They get to vote on a president, they get to vote on the Senate, and they deserve to have a say. That was his reason why we shouldn't vote on him. And Trump had a natural response of you know what, Joe was absolutely right. The American people deserved to have a say, and they did. They elected me in twenty sixteen. I told him what kind of justice I was going to appoint. They elected a Republican Senate. They told him what kind

of justice we were going to confirm. And Joe, there's a reason the American people that they want free speech. They don't want the government prohibiting you criticizing politicians. They want religious liberty, they want to be able to worship. They want the Second Amendment. And Joe, your justices would

take away Second Amendment rights from Americans. It was a great opportunity that Joe kind of stuck his chin out there and asked to be clavered, not in a personal attack, but really a substantive of your vision for America is not what the American people want, and it's not how they voted in twenty fourteen in the Senate, in twenty sixteen in the Senate and the presidency, or in twenty eighteen in the Senate. That's a great insight. I mean, I saw that missed opportunity there. I felt you could

have hit it. But I like the framing that you've just described, which is it's not about me, it's about you, and don't forget that was a huge help to President Trump in the general election in twenty sixteen when Hillary's slogan was I'm with her, and he said, forget that, I'm with you, completely flips there races I'm with you. And in the spirit of that, as a matter of fact, I do want to get to some mail bad questions from you, not you senator, but you out there. And

this does relate to the debate. This question is from Brandon what changes could be made to make the debates more effective or I'll add listenable. Look, at some level, it's impossible if the two are going to yell at each other. President Trump in particular want like is looking for a brawl. I actually think he would be better off sort of ratcheting down a little bit and engaging in a more more of a conversation and discussion. But

I think it would be benefited from having moderators. I think rather than pretending people are unbiased, we ought to just admit. So I'd have a Republican moderator, a Democratic moderator. I'd have a you know, how about have Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow moderator debate together and everyone will know which hat they're wearing, or you know, or Mark Levin

or Rush Limbaugh or Michael Knowles or Ben Shapiro. I mean, I mean, can you imagine Ben modering a debate and fine, get some whatever, smart lefty, get lefty Ben Shapiro and Chris Hayes. That would actually be an interesting debate. Now everyone gets that Shapiro would ask questions. He's coming from a perspective, and Hayes is coming from a perspective, and

they would ask questions to advance their perspectives. I think that actually be a more honest debate, an interesting debate, because it would expose the weaknesses of both sides and help people make an intelligent decision. Absolutely, I totally agree this idea of when can we get back to a perfectly balanced, neutral objective press that probably never existed, that I think is missing the point. Let's just be honest

about it, and that way you get to some fairness. Now, this question is going to come from the opposite end of watching or listening to last night's debate from Margot. What does Senator Cruz do for fun to take a break from politics? Play basketball? I love hoops about the past. I played two hours of hoops yesterday, played two hours of hoops two days ago. I can barely walk because I turned fifty and a couple of months, so for to five hours of hoops is a bit too much. Um.

I like playing tennis. I love movies. I'm I used to go to the movies at least once a week. I mean, I love being in the big movie theater. Um play with my kids. I mean the girls are nine and twelve, so so free time at home is family time. We play games. I'm love to play games, play poker, UM play backgammon with Catherine, she likes backgam and we play monopoly, played dominoes. UM, dominoes is a Cuban favorite. So every Thanksgiving and Christmas, the family will

get around. Cubans, by the way, play double nine dot double sixes, and and and my college and law school roommate guy named David Panton, who's Jamaican. In Jamaica, they play a lot of dominoes as well. They played double sixes. And David came to visit the house a couple of months ago when when Heidi was out of town, and so we just had kind of a boy's weekend hanging out, and a couple other guys came over and we played dominoes at the dining room table and and and that

particular time, David's a very good Domino's player. I happened to win that particular night, and so I called up my dad. My dad is a very good Domino's players too, And I called up and I said Dad, and my father knows David really well. And I said, Dad, you

really need to come for David right now. And actually I want to ask you to pray for him, because you know, he just flew all the way to Houston and he just got got humiliated at dominoes and and and he's hurting and so dad and I have him on FaceTime and I said, you know, Dad, I'm asking

you to to commiserated. My father had just finished playing dominoes with my cousin and my dad happened to have one too, and so my father was having He said, you know what, we ought to get David Marino together and then they can commiserate on on what it's like to to need to study dominoes. More so, it was not we weren't showing a whole lot of compassion at

that moment. Senator, I've got to tell you, while I'm picturing you playing dominoes at the table, all I'm picturing is you guys lining them all up and then you push one down and they all that's that's I don't know how to play dominoes. That's all I know how to do with them, But it creates a much funnier immage you. I notice you left one thing off the list, which is my favorite hobby that we've ever done together. The cigars. Where are the cigars? It doesn't make the

top ten? Um, so when I play poker, I love to smoke cigars. Um. All right. A funny Heidi story. When Heidi and I were engaged. Um. I used to host a regular poker night and my buddies would come over at the dining room table and we'd we'd play poker and we'd smoke cigars sitting at the dining room table, and they were like, man, your girlfriend or your fiance is amazing, Like I can't believe she let you smoke inside. And I'm just like, yeah, yeah, that's like you know what,

I'm yeah, that's that's just how cool it is. Cool's amazing. And we got married May twenty seventh, two thousand and one. We're coming up on our twentieth anniversary. We literally get back from the honeymoon. I'm getting rid of host poker game. She says, get the damned cigars outside. You are never to smoke it inside again. And I never have. It's been twenty years since I've been able to smoke a

cigar inside. So so sometimes the engagements rules are different from the marriage rules, and then I can see that it's sort of it changes like that. I suppose. I suppose marriage is a bad sacrifice, good though, to be able to take a moment to relax, even if you have to do it outside. Now, to have a little bit of fun, because a lot to celebrating gratulations on the book going so far up up the list, and be sure for everyone to go out there and get

a copy of One Vote Away. I promise it will be a substantive distraction from all the madness that you're going to be getting in the media for the next couple months of the presidential cycle. We're gonna be back forgetting about our relaxation. We're gonna be back talking about all of that. Obviously a lot coming up, but 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.