The Department of Injustice

Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing. I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter. Let me address recent unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department agents and prosecutors. I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked. This episode of Verdict with

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to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I am Michael Knowls. Be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast. If you have not done so already, you can find us over at Verdict plus at locals, and you can like and subscribe on any platform. Merritt Garland, the Attorney General will not stand for attacks on the integrity of Joe Biden's DOJ and FBI. I think that's going to be the title of my next blank book, The Integrity of Joe

Biden's DOJ, A comprehensive guide. And speaking of books, Senator, no one has made this observation yet, but I have to call you out because right before your last book came out, One Vote Away. It was about how one vote can change Supreme Court rulings. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. I think that was about one week before now, just weeks before your next book is coming out. Justice Corrupted. The Attorney General six the FEDS on Donald Trump's home at Mara Lago, Senator, I want a straight answer. Are

you behind all of this? No, no, I'm not. But but I promise you right now, I've had several friends say, please, please, please don't write your next book on global thermonuclear war, because I will say it does seem to keep happening and and happening right right as the book next books about to come out, the Bankruptcy of Michael Knowles by Ted Cruz. I don't want to see it. That would be a very terrible thing. This, really, the timing is is bizarre. I'm sure it's great for the publicity of

the book. It's really really bad for the country that your terrible have come true. Here, this to me seems unprecedented. You've got Donald Trump right now, who is a predecessor of Joe Biden, a potential political rival of Joe Biden if he runs in twenty twenty four. And you've got the DOJ now the AG admitting that he's the one who called for this raid for something like the Federal Records Act or some vaguely described classified documents or or

what what is this about? Yeah, look, it is utterly unprecedented.

And the word unprecedent had as as a meaning, there is no precedent, and our nation's history for federal law enforcement officers raiding the home of a former president has never happened, going all the way back to George Washington, this has never happened, in significant part because we're a country that has a tradition of the peaceful transfer a power, and part of the peaceful transfer a power is the successor regime does not then use government to go target

their predecessor. You see banana republics do that. You know, if you go down to tinpot dictatorships, that's a common feature. When one guy's out and the next guy's in, the next guy goes after the former guy. By the way, that's the abbreviation lefties like to use for Donald Trump, the former guy. Well, there is an element of respective rule of law and respect for the office of the presidency that says you don't turn the federal government into

a political tool to target your enemies. Unfortunately, Barack Obama trampled on that tradition and politicized the Department of Justice and the FBI, and now Joe Biden has made it markedly worse. This is a complete abuse of power. It is utterly corrupt, and you know it was rather striking. Merrick Garland said, I won't stand by why while anyone calls into question the good men and women of the FBI. Let's be real clear, get Merrick, We're not calling into

question the line officers. We're calling into question your integrity. We're calling into in question the top political operatives at DOJ and the FBI that have no respect for the rule of law and that instead are perfectly content to be the Biden White House's political henchman. The buck stops here. You approved it, and you shouldn't have, and you should be embarrassed by sending the FBI and into this situation doing enormous damage to the credibility, to the respect to

the FBI. These partisans are burning to the ground centuries of credibility built by the federal government and law enforcement and and it really is. It's an outrage to watch. Well, this was the most shocking part to me of his statement when he invoked the integrity of the DOJ and the FBI, and you, I think rightly are pointing to the political hacks who run those groups. I thought, what

integrity is it? The integrity that led the DOJ and the FBI under Barack Obama to spy on Donald Trump's campaign, that led the DOJ and the FBI under during the Trump administration to undermine his presidency by using a completely fabricated, cooked up nonsense about Russian collusion that, by the way, the DOJ and the FBI cooked up with the Hillary Clinton campaign. That integrity, is that what you're talking about.

I don't really see that. And I guess what the Libs right now are bringing up and what you're hearing top Democrats bring up and even some moderate Republicans is well, hey, let's just let this play out. Let's hold on here, because maybe Donald Trump was violating some law. And it raises to me this point that one, you can indict a ham sandwich, first of all, but two, we haven't seen this before because of what you're bringing up our

tradition of the peaceful transfer of power. So, as far as I'm concerned, unless there are severed heads in a freezer at Mara Lago, I don't really understand what kind of violation Donald Trump could have committed that would justify a forty agent raid on his private residence. You know, you were talking a minute ago about my book. Actually, the book that is coming out in just a few weeks is exactly on this topic. So the title of the book, as viewers of the pod no, is just

as corrupted. How the left has weaponized the legal system, And it goes through that what Richard Nixon tried to do. In the first chapter of the book talks about Nixon and Watergate, and Nixon tried to use the legal system to go after his enemies. By and large, the system resisted. So Nixon tried to get the IRS to attack his enemies. The IRS refused in significant parts, the system worked, and

I think Nixon was utterly corrupt. What Nixon attempted to do, Barack Obama succeeded in doing, and Joe Biden has taken it to the next level. And if you look at the Department of Justice and the FBI, you look at the IRS targeting political enemies under Barack Obama. You look at the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland sending the FBI after parents who speak up at school board meetings. You

look at Crossfire Hurricane. This is while Trump was president, but under Obama, hardcore leftist partisan's burrowed in to senior career positions at the FBI and the Department of Justice, and they weaponized law enforcement in the intelligence community to go after Donald Trump as a whole chapter in justice corrupted on Crossfire Hurricane, explaining how it got so far that an Assistant General Council of the FBI created a

counterfeit document and submitted that counterfeit document to a federal court, which is a felony. That's how corrupt it got because they hated Donald Trump, and they cooked up the entire garbage of Russian collusion, which was always a croc That same pattern is continuing today. And look, one of the problems, let's go back to the beginning Crossfire Hurricane in a Department of Justice, should adj be able to investigate a sitting president or a former president, Yes, if that president

has violated the law. That being said, the threshold for when a Department of Justice investigates someone in particular investigates the opposing party. So if you're a Republican administration and you're contemplating in investigating a leading Democrat, or if you're a Democrat investigator administration, you're contemplating investigating a leading Republican. The threshold for doing so should be very, very high, because there is such a danger of this being used

simply as a cudgel to beat your opponents senseless. Under Barack Obama, the FBI was wire tapping Donald Trump's campaign headquarters when he was the Republican nominee to be president. They were sending people in wearing wire taps trying to entrap Trump in a violation of the law that was

utterly insane. Like in any Department of Justice, the threshold for you know, some loon told someone at a bar, well, I heard you know, you know he went to Russia once, like that is not enough to go wire tap the opposing campaign. Here, the predicate for it is so utterly flimsy as to make this whole thing ludicrous. And you asked, okay, why is this is? This is ostensibly under the Presidential Records Act. Now, let me say a couple of things

about it. Number One, Ordinarily, the way a matter a dispute like this would be solved is the Department of Justice would negotiate with the lawyers for the former presidents, say hey, we think you have some documents you're not supposed to have. We'd like to get them. Okay, you negotiate back and forth, you produce them. That happens all the time. And by the way, they've done that, so Trump has cooperated. He's produced i think fifteen boxes voluntarily

through negotiations back and forth. That's the way this would ordinarily operate if the person was being resistant. The next step is to issue a subpoena. Subpoena is a legal compulsion. You must turn over the following. They didn't do that. They skipped over the subpoena. They skipped over, apparently the compromise and reaching a solution through negotiated settlement, and instead they do a surprise raid with forty agents that is such overkill as to be obvious and political and partisan.

And let's be clear, the biggest losers here are the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the rule of law, because their actions were so political that it was obvious

to everyone. And I'll give an example. So I'm going in to cite famed right winger and noted republican partisan former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Yeah, who tweeted quote, d J must immediately explain the reason for its raid, and it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives, or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation and legitimacy of January sixth investigations. So this is even Cuomo, who obviously is such a partisan.

Damn it, it bursts out of his pores. Who's saying, guys, if this is all about us, he put it a search for inconsequential archives, You guys are screwed because it's going to be obvious. You're just going after him because you don't like him, and he's ease on the other team. So what does this mean for twenty twenty four, assuming that they really were just going after these inconsequential archives.

Merritt Garland, who just gave this statement and took responsibility for authorizing the raid, he didn't actually explain what the raid was about. He just sort of huffed and puffed and said, how dare you besmirch my glorious DOJ and then said I'm not going to give you any other information. So one, is there another shoe potentially that could drop? And two, what is the practical effect? You said, it looks like a disaster for the DOJ and the FBI and the rule of law. What does it mean for

the Republican presidential nomination? Is this going to galvanize support around Donald Trump for the Republicans? Are they going to lead the guy out in handcuffs at a certain point? Are they preparing an indictment? What does it mean for the next step at Marlago? So, look, they may well be trying to prepare an indictment. And as you noted, the typical rule as a prosecutor could a ham sandwich, So they might try to indict him. I will say this, if they do, I think it will backfire even more

than this raid is backfired. Part of the problem with DJ and the FBI and the left, like the media, they hate Trump so much that that they just they foam at the mouth and they view everything from the lens that they assume everyone else on earth hates him as much, and so they don't have any actual awareness

of reality. Merrick Garland and the FBI have just boosted Donald Trump's twenty twenty four prospects so much so that I actually, if I were a campaign finance lawyer for Trump, I might well report to the Federal Elections Commission this raid as an in kind contribution to the Trump political campaign because it is so enormously helpful to Trump. It was stupid, it was idiotic. Now, look, we'll see what

plays out. But but let's take let's take the alleged crime, which is the Presidential Records Act, which is the law that says, essentially every piece of paper in the White House belongs to the federal government and the federal government has control of it. Well, that's true on paper, but what is it meant in practice? And if you look at every single president, all of them have taken a crap ton of stuff with him. And let's go to

some specifics, because the specifics are rather stunning. All right, the Nixon library didn't release the final batch of his secret tapes until twenty thirteen, which was thirty nine years after Nixon left office. So for thirty nine years. Apparently the GMN should have come bursting down Nixon's doors for thirty years because he had these tapes. And you want to talk about presidential records, tapes in the Oval office are pretty juicy and spicy stuff. Thirty nine years. All right, Nixon,

bad guy? You might say, all right, how about LBJ, hero of the left. Well, the Lynnon B. Johnson Library delayed releasing the final batch of his secret tapes of presidential conversations until twenty sixteen, which, if you're counting, was forty seven years after he left office. So apparently for forty seven years the FBI should have rated LBJ or then rated his estate. All right, how about more recently, how about the patron saint of the left, Barack Hussein Obama.

At the end of his presidency, Obama took thirty million pages let me repeat that again, thirty million pages of the administration records to Chicago, and he promised to digitize them and eventually put them online. More than five years after Obama's presidency ended, zero pages have been digitized and disclosed. So he took them, he didn't follow through on his commitment.

Every president has done this. And so the idea that all right, we're sending forty FBI agents to raid the former president for doing what every former president has done, it doesn't pass the smell test. And then layer on top of that, as Sherlock Holmes wrote, the dog who didn't bark? Who didn't they send the FBI to raid? Well,

they didn't send the FBI to raid Hillary Clinton. And if they claim to care about classified documents, the classified documents that Hillary took, why didn't the FBI rate her? Or how about Hunter Biden our last podcast where we talked about the guy literally videos himself with crack, naked with prostitutes and a gun, like like multiple felonies. Where are the FBI agents? By the way, Hunter's not hard to find. Within hours of the FBI agents raiding Mara Lago,

Hunter was on Air Force one with Dad. I don't know if he brought the crack and the gun, and and and and his lady friends. But the obvious double standard is lost on nobody. It seems to me even worse than a double standard when it comes to Hillary Clinton, because with Trump, what we're talking about is physical documents that are at this point, what two years old at least,

maybe maybe more than them, maybe six years old. When we're talking about Hillary Clinton, we're talking about digital documents, talking about information that is easily hackable. The only way to hack the documents in Mara Lago is if a spy comes in with an axe and knocks down the door and takes the documents. When we're talking about Hillary's unsecure server, we're talking about foreign governments that certainly easily could have had access to those documents and almost certainly did.

And we're talking about documents that were contemporary. We're talking about documents that were classified information that was relevant at the very moment that it was accessible to other people, that it was on this home server. They're really incomparable in the sense that what Hillary did was much much worse. And by the way, Hillary was not president, she was merely a secretary of State would presumably have even less

of a right to have those kinds of documents. And so when we're talking about whether or not the rate is justified, I think all of this is really relevant because you might point to some provision of the law and say, well, Trump didn't have the right to have those papers in his home. First of all, all these other presidents did it too. And you've never seen any kind of raid, certainly not against Hillary Clinton. So how do you conclude anything other than this was a partisan

attack on a political opponent of Joe Biden. It's unquestionably that, And I'll point out that they're two ostensible hooks for the raid. One is the Presidential Records Act, which, as I said, has never been enforced in this way against any other president. So apparently the law applies uniquely to Donald Trump because they hate him. Or two. You sometimes see people in toning about classified documents, and you know,

I'm reminded. In nineteen ninety seven there was a federal commission headed by Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick moynihan who described quote, he said, secrets in the federal government are whatever anyone with a stamp decides to stamp secret. And there's a lot of truth to that. I've been to a ton of classified briefings and there are things that are classified that there is no reason whatsoever for them to be classified other than someone put a stamp on him, and

sometimes because a White House doesn't want it public. So one of the favorite moves, particularly of the Biden White House, is politically embarrassing information that is classified. Stuff like anything like any explanation of why Afghanistan was an absolute cluster, was a train wreck, was an absolute disaster. All of

that's classified because oh gosh, that would embarrass Democrats. But there is a legal complication and actually a big difference between Trump and Hillary Clinton, which is under the law, it is incredibly difficult bordering on impossible to charge a president with disclosing classified information. Why because under the law, the president is the arbiter of what's classified and what's not. A president can declassify any damn document he wants, by

the way, a Secretary estate can't. So Hillary Clinton didn't have the ability to declassify documents, but Donald Trump did. And so the idea that he was in charge, he can literally he can read a classified document and go out on TV and read it on TV. And that's under the law. The president has the authority to make a determination even though it's classified, I'm declassifying it. So the idea that we're going to send in the gmend to prosecute, to raid him, and to set up a

prosecution on that legally that there's no there there. Now, some people have suggested that if you violate this Presidential Records Act, that you can be barred fore you improperly handle classified materials, that you can be barred from running for office again, and that this is a way for the Democrats to prevent Trump from running in twenty twenty four. Is there any substance to that kind of suggestion, So it's utterly absurd. It is true. The statute says that.

So they do have a statutory hook that there is language that says, if you're convicted, you can be barred. The Constitution sets out the qualifications to be president. I think that statute, if it was applied to the president, would be deemed unconstitutional. The Court has repeatedly in decisions, decisions like the US term limits decisions, made clear you can't add additional qualifications to run for federal office beyond

the constitutional qualifications. There is a constitutional mechanism to bar someone from running for subsequent office, and that is impeachment and conviction, and upon conviction, that is a potential punishment. But the Democrats tried that and failed, and so twice yes, and so if they went down this ludicrous path and tried to prosecute him, I think they would fail in the prosecution. But if they got a conviction and they tried to argue he was barred from running for president,

they would lose in court. The court would throw that out. They would the court would say the Constitution and sets the qualifications to run for president, and that whole fight again. If this raid was an in kind contribution, I might call the Biden white House the Trump superpack at that point, because like, if they went down that insane rabbit hole, you might as well start start getting tickets for the

inauguration ball because that they would. I don't think even in their deranged Trump derangement syndrome, they're likely to go down that far. That's the sort of thing MSNBC producers say to each other when they're spooning in the back closet and trying to trying to titillate. But but it is not a reality that I think exists anywhere on planet Earth. Thank you for that image, Senator. That's really sort of burned into my mind now, the spooning at

MSNBC speaking of the g men abusing their authority. This ties directly into one of the spookiest news stories to come out of your place of employment, to come out of the US Capital and the US Senate. The Senate has just voted to give the IRS an additional I think what eighty billion dollars and to authorize eighty seven thousand additional IRS agents for what to authorize all of our tax returns more quickly, No, I think, probably to audit ordinary Americans and have passed this precedent to go

after the political opponents of this administration. How worried should we be about that? We should be very worried. This is about abuse of power. One of the elements of the terrible build back Broke bill that the Democrats just ram through is eighty seven thousand new IRS agents, more than doubling the size of the IRS. If those positions were filled, the IRS would have more more agents than the State Department, the Border Patrol, the FBI, and the

Pentagon combined. It is utterly disconnected from what people want. Listen, I campaign all over Texas, all over the country. I've never heard one person come up to me and say, what we really need is tens of thousands of more I R S agents, Like like there is zero demand for it. You know. It's kind of like someone saying we need more Gonorea in the world, or you know, maybe the Biden White House we need more monkeypox. I mean, it's it's this is not what the people want, and

you are right. It is designed to go after ordinary Americans. It's not designed to go after billionaires. It's not designed to go after giant corporations. By the way, this bill also has massive subsidies for giant corporations, so the Democrats are perfectly happy to take care of their friends in corporate America. This is designed to go after small businesses. This is designed to go after families. This is designed to send a swarm of IRS agents like locusts to

descend on America. But even worse, overlay it with the pattern of how the Biden administration uses law enforcement. I think they want this to be used to harass conservatives, to harass Republicans. We saw under Barack Obama the IRS targeting conservative groups, Tea party groups, pro constitution groups, pro Israel groups, targeting and weaponizing the IRS. They want eighty seven thousand new agents to do this even more and to give you a sense of what they envision. So

the IRS posted job postings already. They got very excited about this, and here are the job postings they posted. It says major duties adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially in maintaining honesty and integrity. Okay, that's good work. A minimum of fifty hours per week, which may include irregular hours, and be on call twenty four to seven including holidays and weekends. Okay, so this is going to be a lot of IRS agents here all the time.

All right, Okay, what about what next? Maintain a level of fitness necessary to effectively respond to life threatening situations on the job. Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force if necessary. And here's the final bullet point, be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, especially on mar Lago and other dangerous assignments other than the Mara Lago bit. Every word of that is verbatim in the IRS posting, and it's so bad

they pulled it down like people suddenly noticed. Wait, you're advertising for Jack Buddhed thugs like like that. That's what the posting says, give us leftist with guns to go after Conservatives and Americans. That's what they want. And the image I have of a typical IRS employee is a sort of bookish looking fellow with maybe a pocket protector and a green visor on, you know, clicking on it. So are you looking in the mirror? Micro I there was a softball that I just sent up to you.

You know what I usually don't picture though, I usually don't picture Rambo kicking down people's doors. Though conservatives often speak of these government agencies as being so over the top and aggressive against ordinary Americans. Now it seems that the IRS is admitting it. That's what they want. Well it is. And you know the sort of lefties on Twitter say, oh, well, it's just tax sheets and if you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry about it. Well,

apparently they've never been subjected to an IRS audit. Because when you have the government come after you, number one, it can cost you thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend yourself. And and especially in a context where an administration is willing to target their enemies on that inflicting that kind of cost and pain. One of the things I talk about in Injustice Corrupted, I talk about True the Vote. I

talk about Katherine Engelbrecht, who's a grassroots activist. She founded a group called King Street Patriots in Houston. I know Catherine well, she founded a group called True the Vote. Under Obama, they sent out the dogs to come after and everyone went after her. So she got audited, She and her husband's business got audited. OSHO went and did safety inspections atf went after her husband for having sold

years earlier a gun for like two hundred dollars. Like every federal agency, they said, this is persona non grata as as mister Burns would say, release thounds. That's what they did. How did it? How did this bill get through? You were obviously there. You were staying up all night while I've been up with my crying newborn child. You were up for sixteen hours straight and vote a rama

to ram through this bill. I was really hoping that Cinema, maybe Mansion, the moderate Dems who have resisted the most outrageous predations of the Biden administration. I was hoping they wouldn't cave, And yet they did. So what were they each given ferraris or something? What did Biden do to win their votes? Look, unfortunately, they're both Democrats, and so they had previously stood up and said no, But at the end of the day they gave in. This is

a terrible bill. So this bill spends hundreds of billions

of dollars in corporate welfare, in boondoggles. It's going to be We're gonna see a whole lot of cylindros, We're going to see a whole lot of quote green energy companies headed by former Democrats, staffers with lobbyists that support Democrats, who are suddenly getting millions or billions of dollars from the federal government, and that money is going to be allocated not based on what they can do, but based on who their friends are, based on their political influence.

And they're going to take those millions and billions of dollars and turn around and hold fundraisers for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. It's pure political graft, paying off their buddies. That's one component, but there's another component of it. So Biden and the Democrats keep telling us that they want number one to stop inflation. They've called this the Inflation Reduction Act. It

truly is an Orwellian name. It's like calling a can of gasoline the fire reduction tool, like this will increase inflation. It is literally hundreds of billions of dollars of yet more spending. Even Bernie Sanders it admits right. Senator Bernie Sanders came out and he referred to it as the so called Inflation Reduction Act, because even he is socialist, is willing to admit that's spending a bunch of money on all this nonsense. Is not going to do anything

about inflation. Well, and he's understating it because it'll make inflation worse, will exacerbate inflation. It is, we have inflation because the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars it didn't have. The Democrats solution was, let's spend hundreds of billions more. That will produce more inflation. But they actually made it even worse because it also includes billions of dollars of new taxes. Now, Joe Biden, every Democrats say they want to lower the price of gas

at the pump. Now they're lying. They don't mean this. There are lots of reasons we know they're lying. There are lots of things Biden could do to lower prices at the pump, like stop assaulting oil and gas production in the US with regulations. But on the face of it, this bill imposes billions and new taxes on oil and gas production. If you want prices of something to go down, you don't vote for billions and new taxes on the thing.

You're saying, we want prices to go down by and we had what's called voter ramis, so how does that operate. The tool that the Democrats used to pass this is the Budget Act of nineteen seventy four, and it's what's called reconciliation. We've talked about this before. The most important thing about it is it's a significant exception to the filibuster. Passing something under reconciliation takes only fifty votes, not sixty.

They're limitations. You can't do everything under reconciliation, but you can do a lot. You can do taxes under reconciliation. You can do a lot of spending under reconciliation. So they used budget reconciliation. But one of the consequences of it. Under the statute there are unlimited amendments, and normally the majority can stop the minority from having amendments, but under reconciliation, it's the one big exception they can't do that. So

we have the ability. I have the ability as an individual senator to offer as many amendments as I want. So we were there all night and well into the next day offering amendments. We had an amendment on stripping out the gas taxes. For all the Democrats who say they don't want gas taxes. They don't want gas prices to go up. Every single Democrat voted no. All of them are on record voting in favor of new taxes on oil and gas, which means when your gas prices

go up, you know who's to blame. So, Michael, I had four amendments that I forced. I think it was the most of any of the Republicans. All four I think were important. One of the amendments I forced was a simple amendment that deleted the hiring of eighty seven thousand new IRS agents. Just deleted that from the bill, said nope, we're not doubling the funding of the IRS. We're not hiring eighty seven thousand new IRS agents. We voted on it. It was fifty fifty. Every Republican voted

yes for my amendment. Every Democrat voted no. That means every single Democrat was the deciding vote. Democrats in Georgia and Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, all of them were the deciding vote in favor of eighty seven thousand new IRS agents. I had another amendment that would prohibit the federal government from selling oil from our strategic petroleum reserve. Two Communist China, which is you know, Joe Biden is sold over two million barrels of oil to communist China from the strategic

Petroleum Reserve. We voted on it. Every Democrat but four voted against it, so there were four. This particular amendment was at a sixty vote threshold, so they had some votes to give away. Normally amendments are at a fifty vote threshold, but in this case we had a ruling from the parliamentarian that set it at sixty. So four Democrats, the two from Georgia, one from Nevada, and one from New Hampshire voted with me, but every other Democrat voted

against it. So Mark Kelly and Arizona voted for Joe Biden to sell oil paid for by the taxpayers to communist China. By the way, Joe Mansion voted for selling oil to communist China. John Tester not on the ballot this time, but it'll be on the ballot in two years. In Montana voted for Biden to be able to sell oil to communist China. These are dumb, dumb votes, but the Democrats voted it down. Let me tell you my final two amendments, because they're going to blow you away.

The DC public schools have implemented a vaccine mandate that they require all students in order to go to school, have a COVID vaccine, and that's kicking in in the next week or two when school starts. Here the stats in DC of the students in DC, roughly eighty five percent of the students have been vaccinated. That means fifteen percent of the students have not. So the DC schools have decided to throw fifteen percent of the students out

of school. It gets even worse when you look at the demographics among African American students and they're an enormous percentage of the students in DC schools or African American. Sixty percent of African American students in the DC public schools are vaccinated. That means forty percent are not. I forced to vote to eliminate the DC vaccine mandate for COVID. Every single Democrat voted no. Every one of them voted literally to throw forty percent of the black kids out

of school. And by the way, forever to literally you're a fourteen year old African American kid in DC. Guess what, you're a high school dropout now. Because every Democrat voted unless you comply to their demand to get this vaccine, you're done with schools. Sucks to be you. It was a stunning vote, and every single one of them voted to throw those kids out of school. Let me tell

you my final amendment. We've talked a lot about Merrick Garland and the FBI targeting parents as domestic terrorist under the Patriot Act. And by the way, even though Garland tried to backtrack in front of Senate Judiciary Committee last week, we had the head of the FBI in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I asked him about it. The FBI has interviewed, has interrogated dozens of parents because they

spoke up at school boards. They're implementing this. They are doing this because I remember that they called them these parents domestic terrorists, and you thought, yeah, well that's just this is insane. But I at least believed there's no way that they're actually going to act on this. They're doing it all over the country. Wow, Wow, they are doing it all over the country. They are bringing in

moms and dads, they're interrogating them. And so I had a imple amendment that said the FBI should not target parents as domestic terrorists for speaking up at school boards. Every single Democrat voted no, failed by one vote. That means every Democrat on the ballot November is the deciding vote in favor of the FBI targeting you, targeting mom and dad as a domestic terrorist. That is a It

was an amazingly stupid vote. I actually think if they had any sense, like if Schumer were not such a wild eyed partisan, he would have told all his guys vote for that, let's all get on record and say, don't target parents as domestic terrorists. That would have been a rational Democrat responding to that vote. The fact that he said, every one of you go walk the plank. Listen. This issue single handedly elected Glen Yunkan in Virginia, and now every Democrat is on record saying we're with the

g man going after mom and dad. It was stunning and radical and extreme. That is surprising because I understand the Democrat vote on the COVID vaccine. The consequences are horrific, but I get it. They're saying, we are so bought in on vaccine mandates. It's so important to us. We're

willing to take the political heat for this vote. But I think calling parents domestic terrorists, that's really so important to you that you're going to risk what happened to Yuncan in Virginia, what we're seeing play out in Florida. This education issue so important right now to voters, you're really going to risk that just so that you can keep sicking the federal government on concerned parents. And they're saying, yes, the Democrats are saying that is important enough to us

to risk it. Well, and you know why they do it, Michael. They do it because they know the corporate media is corrupt. They know they won't get called out about on it. So you and I are talking about it, But let me ask you, have you seen any TV station talking about that vote. I mean, we do have better ratings in CNN, but do you definitely have better ratings than their shows? But you don't. You're not seeing this anywhere

in the liberal press. It's why Democrats are so radical and so extreme because they're and again I talk about it in Justice Corrupted, which, by the way, everyone going to Amazon and pre order Justice Corrupted. You can go do it right now. Go to Amazon, click pre order but I talk about the corrupt corporate media has played a major role in producing this corruption because it teaches democrats I can abuse my power and I won't get called out on it, that there will be no consequences.

And so if you're a Democrat and you're like, should I vote on whether or not the FBI should target parents as domestic terrorists, Well, I'll just vote party line because no reporter will ask me about it. No headline back home, no coverage with nothing will address this issue. So I'm safe and immune. If we have some campaigns in November that don't suck, that are actually competent and capable on the Republican side, every one of these votes out to appear in campaign ads. But before the ads,

you ought to have real journalists asking about it. But the number of real journalists left in the world is vanishingly small. Before we go, Senator, speaking of accountability, I want to get to at least one question from the Verdict plus subscribers, And so this question comes from Eileen, who says, I kind of feel like this raid on Mara Lago could also be a smokescreen for something else that they want to distract us from. They do it all the time. Does anything come to mind? November can't

come fast enough. PS. I love to barbecue, but I can't find the Jack Daniels original recipe, any replacement suggestions from attack X. And I think even casey masterpiece is gone. So we're really seeing two distinct issues brought up in this question. I'll let you take them in either order you prefer, all right, So I'll start with with with just a confession that I like to eat barbecue, but I'm not much of a barbecure myself. Um. I have a big green egg in the backyard that that I'll

grill up a burger a steak on. But to be honest, for good barbecue, I just go to a Texas barbecue joint and eat it there. So um, I have nothing, nothing of value to impart uh. In terms of the best way to prepare it, I find the best way to prepare it just ordering it, um right. The best way to make it, make it is make a reservation. Fair enough, fair enough, it's a good it's a it's

a good manly answer. Just call it it is. But you know, look, I can grill up a burger or steak that that much I can do but but, but my my cooking repertoire is pretty limited. Um YEA look, in terms of a distraction, I mean, it's right to be skeptical. They're doing a ton that is bad. I don't think this was deliberately a distraction. I think this was tone deaf. I think this was we talked about it earlier in the pod. The partisans at DOJ. They've

drunk the kool aid. Everyone they know hates Donald Trump. He is the devil, they believe, and so everyone they know has been like eagerly, Like you know, if you saw Stephen Colbert who had, you know, practically an epileptic

seizure he was so excited with the FBI raid. I think it's it's it's the bias of reinforcements that they're just tone deaf and eager to charge in do I think it is a carefully calibrated plan to distract from something specific and otherwise no, is it part of distracting from the disaster of inflation and gas prices and crime and open borders. Yes, so all of January sixth is a political circus designed to distract from the failures of

the Biden agenda. So in that context, This is also a distraction from that, but I don't think it's specifically hiding one particular pernicious thing, in part because I think they're doing one hundred pernicious things all at once, right, and it never ascribed to four dhs that which is equally explained by a blunder and incompetence. Very good point. Now there is much more to discuss, but not with me. The rest to discuss will be for the Verdict plus

subscribers with our friend Liz Wheeler on cloakroom. Liz, what will you be talking about High Michal High Center. I gotta say, after sitting here and watching and listening to this ups for the past hour, this feels very different to me. There have been a lot of federal agencies who have abused their power and targeted the American people a lot of different times, and I think this time the American people feel that a line has been crossed. I've never seen the emotion and the passion and the

fury as I've seen this week. It just feels different. On the cloakroom, Senator, and I'm addressing this to you because you don't know what we're going to talk about until I tell you on air. We're going to talk about Alex Jones. I know interesting topic. There's actually some very interesting legal questions as it pertains to the defamation trial that Alex Jones just underwent, about slander and libel and the different types of damages, whether they're compensatory, whether

they're punitive and prool an unusual punishment. So please join us over there. We're going to be talking about that. You can go to Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash plus. If you use my promo code Cloakroom, you can get one month free on your annual subscription Verdict with Ted Cruise dot Com slash Plus. I can't wait to hear about it, and I do want to hear more about the gay frogs. It's amazing that the man was right on the gay frogs. We have to leave

it there on 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.