Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was on fire during Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that featured testimony by IG Michael Horowitz. He called the report a “stunning indictment of the FBI and the Department of Justice, of a pattern of abusive power.”Mary covered part of Cruz’s questioning yesterday.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) brought up FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who changed an “email that he sent to the supervising agent who thereafter relied on it to swear out the final FISA application.” Cruz mentioned that an ordinary citizen would face prosecution if they did the same:
“So the men and women at home need to know what’s happening,” Cruz continued. “A lawyer at the FBI creates fraudulent evidence, alters an email, that is in turn used for the basis of a sworn statement to the court that the court relies on. Am I stating that accurately?“That’s correct,” Horowitz answered. “That is what occurred.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday tore into the FBI agents and Justice Department officials who conducted the Russia probe — comparing them to buffoonish cartoon characters.“What was going on here — this wasn’t Jason Bourne, this was Beavis and Butthead,” the GOP senator told Michael Horowitz, referring to the superspy from the Bourne film franchise starring Matt Damon and MTV’s cartoon knuckleheads.. . . . Cruz said the IG’s report laid out “a stunning indictment of the FBI and the Department of Justice, of a pattern of abuse of power.”“I think the facts that are in this report need to be understood and they should be deeply chilling to anyone who understands the facts,” Cruz continued.Cruz zeroed in on a portion of Horowitz’s report that said the feds used confidential sources to talk to one-time Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.“The Crossfire Hurricane team used the techniques including confidential human sources to interact and record multiple conversations with Page and Papadopoulos as well as on one occasion with a high-level Trump campaign official who was not the subject of the investigation,” Cruz said, following up on GOP charges that the feds spied on Trump’s campaign.“They didn’t play spies in the campaign, but they sent spies to record senior members of the campaign in the middle of a presidential campaign when that candidate was the nominee for the other major party to the opposing party to the one in party, is that right?” Cruz asked Horowitz.“They sent confidential human sources in to do those,” Horowitz replied, prompting Cruz to demand who else in the chain of command was aware.“Who at DOJ knew about this? Did the attorney general know about this? Did the White House know about this?” Cruz demanded.“Based on what we found, nobody had been told in advance,” Horowitz said.
Cruz, who once worked at the DOJ, then pointed out that if someone during his tenure there had suggested spying on a Democrat’s presidential campaign someone would have asked “what in the hell are you talking about?”.
Cruz then asserted that if someone within the FBI or Justice Department had tried to open an investigation into a rival presidential candidate when he worked for Justice someone would have wondered “what in the hell are we doing?”“When I was at DOJ if someone said let’s tap Hillary Clinton, or let’s tap Bill Clinton or John Kerry the people would have said what in the hell are you talking about?”“Any responsible leader when hearing that you’re talking about sending in spies and sending in a wiretap on any presidential nominee should say what in the hell are we doing?” he said before making the comic comparison.
Cruz tweeted the key segments containing three of the most glaring abuses of power by the Obama DOJ and FBI:
Watch:
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