Welcome.
It's Verdict with Center Ted Cruz. Week in Review, Ben Ferguson with you, and these are the stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week. First up, shocking funding for the United Nations going directly to Terris that we're attacking Israel.
We'll have all the details on that.
Plus, many Americans are very angry over massive funding still being forced down our throats to go to Ukraine. So what's behind this funding and why are they getting so much cash? And finally, could there be a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court over the Colorado case against Donald J.
Trump.
It's the Week in Review and it starts right now. So let's follow the money here. If UNDRA is getting funds from the United Nations, and we're the biggest donor to the United Nations, we're giving money and it's being funneled to those that are helping carry out terrorist attacks as well as protecting terraces and the planning and the rockets that are being shot into Israel for for years now, while they've been in the same building.
Now, that's exactly right. As The Times of Israel reported, unro's Gaza headquarters is located in Gaza City's upscale Remand neighborhood, an area that the Israeli the IDF had previously operated in and dismantled the local Hamas battalion and withdrawn its troops from And here's a quote from Colonel Benny Aharon from the IDF, who says, quote the IDF was here previously.
The first time was to destroy the enemy. But when we were here the last time, we collected a lot of intelligence documents and findings, a lot of prisoners, and thanks to this we reached here. Now we carried carried out a targeted operation to take the capability away. We had a basis of information, but not enough to be able to dig down twenty meters to find it. Twenty meters is about sixty feet. We needed a bit more.
There's information we get from prisoners, we capture from computers, we find from documents, maps, and they went down and discovered this terror tunnel. Hazan, who is tasked with coordinating the brigade's underground operation, said the main entrance to the tunnel was located under an Unrau school in the area. Wo and this look the un you want to talk about Number one the UN has always been just a
pit of anti Semitism, anti Israel hatred. But they have funneled billions of dollars to UNRA, which in turn is supporting terrorists and supporting him and employing people who participated in the October seventh terror attack.
What will America's response be to this, as the Biden administration said anything? And are there anyone in his administration or the UN ambassador asking questions saying what the hell is going on at the United Nations Relief and Work Agency that's been knowingly, as you described it, providing support Tomas terrorists who committed these atrocies against over one thousand Israelies and dozens of Americans as well, which I think has been overlooked as well by this administration.
Yes, so sadly, the Biden administration from day one has been funneling money into Gaza. Look early on in the Biden administration, I led a group of seventeen senators saying do not give money to Gaza, because if you give money to Gaza, that will flow directly to Hamas and be used for terrorist activities. At the time I sent that letter, there were one hundred and fifty House Democrats who sent a letter to the administration saying, please do give money to Gaza even though it will likely be
used by Hamas for terrorism. We now know because it's been publicly reported how the Biden administration resolved that issue. The Biden administration concluded that it was quote highly likely those are their terms, highly likely that money given to Gaza would be used by Hamas for terrorism. Now ordinarily been under US anti terrorism law. If it's highly likely the money will be used for terrorism, you can't send
the money. That would be common sense. Well, what the Biden administration did instead is they formally waived US anti terrorism law because their political ideology, they so wanted to send the money they didn't care if it would be used by Hamas for terrorism. So, in a very real sense, Joe Biden the Democrats funded Hamas and the October seventh terror.
Attack, which goes back back to the bigger question in the aid it looks like American aid. We say, hey, we're going to send some to Israel, but we're also wanting to send aid to Gaza. How do we not how do we assure that that money is not going to go directly in the hands of the terrorists.
We can't and it is truly asinine. And in the wake of this horrific terror attack, what did Joe Biden the Democrats want to do. Let's send more money to Gaza. Let's send more money to Gaza. And my view is stop sending money to people who want to kill us. If you cannot assure that the money doesn't go to terrorists who want to murder Americans, don't send the money.
And by the way, this past week, I let a group of senators urging the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a US based nonprofit that raises money for UNRA. And it's a group called UNRA USA, which is a nonprofit with the self described mission to support the quote work of UNRA through fundraising, education, and advocacy in the United States. And as I pointed out, here's
what I wrote in the letter with several other senators. Quote, we write to call on you to open a criminal investigation into NRA USA, its principles, and its leadership for knowingly providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations including hamas. This support facilitated and continues to facilitate terrorism, including the October seventh terrorist attack in which Palestinian terrorists killed or kidnapped dozens of Americans and over one thousand, two hundred Israelis.
According to its twenty twenty one annual report, NRA USA dispersed nearly five million dollars in donations to ANRA that year, making the organization onnra's largest institutional donor.
I mean you hear that, and is an American taxpayer. It makes me angry to know that basically I'm funding the terrorists that took out these attacks, not just on the people in Israel. But we still have not, I think, gotten a full accounting from this administration on Americans that were killed and also taken hostage.
Now, sadly that's right. And the Biden administration we've talked about before when it comes to foreign policy, it is all politics all the time, and they set aside US national security that they set aside the interest of protecting our allies, and they especially set aside the interest of protecting American citizens, and it's made the world much more dangerous.
Sata, I want to ask you another question about just the response from this administration when this type of news comes out. There seems to be a no re response. Are a very timid response. And I worry that's because they've known that there's been this level of corruption for quite some time. They're just now being faced with it in the government. What do we When did they know about the corruption with with Andra and and when did the warning STEGN start hitting them?
Was it before this attack or can they play done?
No, We've known about it a long time, and I will say it's bad ding. When I questioned the Biden administration, when I questioned the State Department, and I press them, why do you keep giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza. Gaza is run by Hamas. Hamas is the government of Gaza, And people.
Don't believe you when you say that.
Just the tunnel system that we've seen since they the Israelis have gone in is more than enough proof they.
Can understand the Palestinians. So part of the leftist rhetoric they say Gaza is the largest open air prison on earth. That's a lie. You know, Gaza is not run by Israel. Gaza is run by the Palestinians. Israel left the Gaza Strip, So the Gaza Strip is a portion of what used to be Israel, and it is on the south west portion of Israel, and they just left Israel left and said, all right, there's a massive population Palestinians. You guys are
in charge. You run it. And they had elections in Gaza, and the people of the Gaza Strip elected Hamas, which is which is a terrorist organization. It pledges the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews. That that is in its core mission. That's who the people of the
Gaza Strip elected. Now understand, over the past decades, billions of dollars have flowed into the Gaza Strip in terms of relief, both from the United States, from Europe, from international agencies, from UNRA, and that money instead of actually helping the Gaza Strip, helping the Palestinians, instead of building schools and hospitals, instead of building roads, they take massive amounts of that money and they turn it directly to terrorism.
So for example, and I've been to Israel many times and when you talk with it, with the Israeli forces, they explain money that goes into Gaza, say to build water pipes to bring fresh water to people who need it. They take the water pipes, they cut it into six feet segments and they use those water pipes, they turn them into rockets and they fill them with propellant and explosive and shrapnel ball bearings and metal that they can
then fire into Israel. And so the result is the people of Gaza, the Palestinians, get denied relief they desperately need. Why because Hamas, who controls it, would rather kill Jews than help Palestinians. And every time I am asked the Biden administration, okay, how do you make sure the money going into Gaza doesn't go to terrorism? Their response, you know what, they say, what's that? Oh, we trust UNRA.
Unra's great. Give it to UNRELL. Be fantastic. And it has been evident for a long time that UNRA and Hamas are utterly intertwined. A dozen UNRAU employees were actual terrorists on October seventh, and yet the Biden administration's position is we love UNRA.
Final question on this, is there a way to actually stop the funds going into Gaza going into UNRA.
And and what Donald Trump did it? Absolutely, you can stop it. The reason this money has gone is because Joe Biden places a higher priority on his political ideology than he does on keeping Americans safe, or keeping Israeli safe, in our allies safe, and the result is the world's a lot more dangerous.
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this kind conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now onto story number two. Senator, there are a lot of Americans that are very angry that so many Republicans defected and did this deal with Democrats to send more funding to Ukraine than we'll be spent to secure our southern border, putting Americans last and putting others first around the world. And this money we
don't have, We're gonna have to borrow this money. We're gonna have to pay interest on this money. And it seems like there's no in insight for the obsession with sending money to Ukraine. We're sending more money to them than to Israel as well. Why did so many Democrats get along so well with so many Republicans on this one? How is it that so many Republicans can't just stand their ground.
Well, it's incredibly frustrating. Look, you and I are recording this. It is ten oh seven pm Texas time on Tuesday night. I started this day this morning at a little after five am, voting on the Senate floor. And the reason we were voting at five am is because Chuck Schumer had kept the Senate in all night in order to try to force this vote through, and he succeeded. The
vote was seventy to twenty nine. In other words, seventy Senators voted yes, twenty nine voted no. All the Democrats except three voted for the funding bill, and yet there were just twenty nine of us.
I was a no.
There were twenty nine of us, and that was twenty six Republicans and three Democrats who voted no. And listen, my reasons for voting no. We've talked about at length, but it's worth revisiting. There are elements of this bill that I support. There are even elements of this bill that I strongly support. So for example, this bill includes emergency military funding for Israel. I think that is incredible important.
I think we should have passed that months ago. This bill includes funding to help Taiwan defend itself against communist China. I think that is very important for US national security. And then, most notably, this bill contains tens of billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine. Now, my views on
that are mixed. I think it is very important that Russia lose and Putin loses, and there are certainly circumstances in which I would be willing to support military funding for Ukraine to stop Russia, because I think that's in the United States's interest. However, just a couple of months ago, every single Republican in the Senate we stood united, and we made a united stand. We said we will not fund additional money for Ukraine unless and until we secure
our own border. That we're not going to spend billions to secure the border of another name until America secures our border. And we're not going to spend billions to stop the invasion of another country until we stopped the invasion of our own country. Now, when I said that, I meant it. Unfortunately, I think for a lot of my colleagues they did not, because, as you know, what happened was Chuck Schumer and the Democrats refused to negotiate
and agree to meaningful border security. Instead, they demanded a bill that in many ways would have made the border crisis worse, would have codified Joe Biden's open borders, and when as soon as the bill TECHS was released, they negotiated in secret. Within twenty four hours, the bill had collapse because everyone reading it realized it was a terrible bill.
What Republican leadership did next, I think was indefensible. They said, Okay, well a few people don't like Chuck Chuck Schumer's open border proposal, then never mind, will'll just pass all the funding with nothing on the border at all. I think that is an absurd position. But unfortunately seventy senators just cast a vote that way.
So what happens now, because what we're hearing is that this could move the House side Speaker Johnson has indicated no or probably not, this isn't going to happen. And then now Democrats apparently, oh Kim Jeffreys is saying, all right, well they're going to get together and they're going to get a game planned or basically ram this down everyone's throat. What would that look like and what does that mean
moving forward? On top of the fact that the House majority for Republicans just got slimmer as well tonight because we've lost a special election.
Well that's exactly right. Look, if it is up to House leadership, if it's up to the Speaker of the House. This bill will not pass. The Speaker has said so unequivocally that the House is not going to take up and pass any military funding for Ukraine unlessen until it contains serious and meaningful border security. And by the way, the House has already passed strong border security legislation, that is HR two. The House passed that months ago. Chuck
Schumer refused to take it up. I introduced HR two in the Senate. I'm the author of HR two in the United States Senate. I had it as an amendment to this bill. And by the way, I was clear, I said, you know what, if we pass HR two, I'll vote for this bill. If we pass strong legislation that forces Joe Biden to secure the border, I'm on board. And Schumer said, not just no, but hell no. Refused to allow a vote on HR two. When we were voting this morning, I was trying very hard to get
a vote. Schumer locked down and blocked every single amendment vote. What I expect Republican leadership in the House to do is to take up this bill and to attach strong border security to it and then send it back to the Senate. That's what I think is likely to happen.
There is a chance, and you referenced it. There's some Democrats talking about trying to do what's called a discharge petition, which is all the House Democrats teaming up with a handful of hawkish Republicans to basically overrule the Speaker of the House and force the bill onto the floor. I don't think that will happen, and it is the sort of move that would be just absolute rebellion by the
rank and file Republican members. And but that is really what Mitch mcconnlin Chuck Schumer's plan is, is to try to use this bill to directly attack the Republican Speaker of the House. And I got to say, Ben, I don't understand why Senate Republican leadership is trying to lead the attack on House Republican leadership.
Well, one final question this what was in it for Republicans that just caved on this? I mean, I know, and I'm cynical because I've been around it probably too long, and you're probably you see it every day, so you're cynical too. I'm like, all right, so what did you get like to make you not listen to the American people and just go along with this. What was the incentive there to side with the Democrats.
So so let me be a little more forgiving in this sense. You know, there are folks that said, what did they get? They're compromised. Look, in my experience, that's not how Washington works. I don't think there's anybody with a folder of people having, you know, sexual relations with barnyard animals. And I don't think this is compromant. I don't think it's And I also don't think for the people who voted for this that what did they get? I don't think that they're like the Biden family in
terms of making millions of dollars off of this. I don't think that's why it happened. At least among the Republicans. I think a great many of them passionately believe that it is in America's interest for you Ukraine to beat Russia. And I understand that sentiment. I think Russia's winning this war would be very, very bad for America and over the long term, would be much more expensive for American taxpayers than it would be to defeat Russia and Ukraine.
So want I want Russia to lose and I think it's combined with there are a lot of Republican senators that basically they don't like a fight, and in any given fight, when you ask them, all right, let's hold the line and say we won't do this unless we get real border security, they look at you and say, well, Chuck Schumer would never do that. And I don't understand why they expect Chuck Schumer to stand strong and never blink, and yet their solution is always, well, therefore, we got
to give Schumer what he wants. But that's temperamentally the view of far too many Republicans in Congress.
As before, If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go go back and now the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week.
You may have missed.
It's amazing that Colorado took it this far because to me, this seems like there's a decent chance this could be exactly what you thought. It could be a unanimous decision or even an eight to one.
Well, and to underscore that, so we played obviously Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsich are conservatives. But let's listen now to Justice Elena Kagan, and remember what I said at the outset, which is that I believe this had a very good chance of being unanimous. I think the Chief Justice desperately wants it to be unanimous, and I think the way it gets to be unanimous, in particular, is the Chief Justice goes to Elena Kagan, who I think
is the smartest of the liberal justices. She was the former dean of the Harvard Law School, she was former Solicitor General of the United States. She's very, very smart. Listen to Justice Kagan asking the Colorado lawyer Jason Murray question.
Before I play that for you, I want to tell you about our friends over at Patriot Mobile. For ten years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. When I say only trust me, they're the only one. Patriot Mobile is a great support of the show. That's one of the reasons why I love them. I'm proud to partner with great commies at sport conservative Christian values.
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two Patriot. That's nine seven to two Patriot. Get free activation when you use the promo code Verdict that's Patriot Mobile dot com slash verdict. Or call them nine seven to two Patriot. That's nine seven to two Patriot. Take a listen to this very interesting back and forth between Justice Kagan and the Colorado lawyer Jason Murray.
Justice Kavanaugh, there has to be some process for determining those questions, and then the question becomes does anything in the fourteenth Amendment say that only Congress can create that process? And Section five very clearly is not an exclusive provision. It says Congress shall have power.
It maybe put most boldly, I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States. In other words, you know, this question of whether a former president is disqualified for insurrection to be president again is just say it. It sounds awfully national to me.
So whatever means there are to enforce it would suggest that they have to be federal national means, why does you know if you weren't from Colorado when you were from Wisconsin or you were from Michigan, And it really, you know, what the Michigan Secretary of State did is going to make the difference between whether Candidate A is elected or Candidate BE is elected. Matt seems quite extraordinary, doesn't it.
No, your honor, Because ultimately it's this court that's going to decide that question of federal constitutional eligibility and settle the issue for the nation. And certainly it's not unusual that questions of national importance come up.
Well, I suppose this Court would be saying something along the lines of the state has the power to do it. But I guess I was asking you to go a little bit further and saying, why should that be the right rule? Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens, but for the rest of the nation.
Because Article two gives them the power to appoint their own electors as they see fit. But if they're going to use a federal constitutional qualification as a ballot access determinant, then it's creating a federal constitutional question that then this
Court decides and other courts other states. If this Court affirms the decision below determining that President Trump is ineligible to be president, other states would still have to determine what effect that would have on their own states law and state procedures.
Well, I mean we if we affirmed, I mean center, even she someone you would expect would be on the side of Colorado not really having it either.
Yeah.
Look, and as I said, I don't think any justices are going to vote with Colorado. I think we're going to see in all likelihood of unanimous decision. And she's focusing on you know, earlier we played Katanji Brown Jackson, and she was focusing on the fact that that president is not an officer that has specified in the fourteenth Amendment, Section three. Justice Kaiget's po pointing out, well, why does
one state get to do this? And if one state gets to do it, couldn't another state do something different?
What do you do with that?
And let's let's do one other clip which emphasizes that point. And you remember we did an entire podcast talking about the amicus brief that I filed, and this was an argument that I made on behalf of one hundred and seventy members of Congress, and I think it's a really powerful argument. Let's listen to Justice Alito asking about that argument, in particular, Thank you, Thank.
You, Counsel Justice Thomas.
Justice Alito, Suppose there's a country that proclaims again and again and again that the United States is its biggest enemy. And suppose that the President of the United States, for diplomatic reasons, think that it's in the best interests of the United States to provide funds or release funds so that they can be used by that country. Could a state determine that that person has given aid and comfort to the enemy and therefore keep that person off the ballot.
No, your honor, this Court has never interpreted the aid and comfort language, which also is present.
So that's another enormous problem with Colorado's argument, which is that if Colorado is able to throw Donald Trump off the ballot, you're going to see other states act. You're going to see red states throw Joe Biden off the ballot. And the hypothetical that Sam Alito asked, it's a very
good hypothetical. He's obviously talking about Iran, and Iran is led by an Iatola who chanced death to America, who has murdered hundreds upon hundreds of servicemen and women, American servicemen and women, who's the biggest funder of state funder of terrorism in the world, And Joe Biden has flowed one hundred billion dollars to the IYATOLA. Now, as Justice
Alito pointed out, Biden argues, it's for diplomatic reasons. But under the argument of Colorado, you could some other state could say, well, no, we conclude you're giving aid and comfort to our enemy. So Joe Biden is off the ballot. And the lawyer's answer was just well no, no, no, no, that's a different provision. So no, no, we like Joe Biden,
so you can't do that. I think that demonstrates that the theory behind this decision is insupportable, and it leads to chaos, and it fundamentally leads to judges battling each other to decide elections rather than the voters deciding elections.
And so I'm going to reiterate, I think the chances that the US Supreme Court reverses this decision are one hundred percent, and I think the chances are significant more likely than not that the decision will be unanimous and I think we will get it this month, the month of February.
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal with my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards, I'd love to have you as a listener to again Ben Ferguson Podcasts, and we will see you back here on Monday morning.