In a recorded conversation with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) laid out a plan to create a “commission” to help him overturn the 2020 election Donald to keep Trump in the White House.
“I think the country deserves a credible assessment of these claims and what the evidence shows, and trying to enforce the mechanism that denies certification on the 6th,” Cruz says in the recording obtained on January 2, 2021 and on Aired Tuesday by MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
Cruz starred on January 6, 2021, when he led a group of Republican senators to object to certain states’ Electoral College counts in the 2020 presidential election. He then continued to support Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud even after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to disrupt electoral vote certification, confirming that Joe Biden had won the presidency.
According to Melber, the tape showed how Cruz wanted to help Trump seize power and overthrow the election after all of the former president’s challenges were thrown out in court.
“He literally explains it like that,” Melber said. “Essentially, they would hijack the certification and use their own fabricated, fake commission to declare that the Biden win was fraudulent, and then that would decide who gets inducted.”
In the conversation with BartiromoCruz said if a majority of the House and Senate object to the Jan. 6 election certificate, an election commission could be formed to ultimately decide who gets inducted.
If the commission “finds credible evidence of fraud that is undermining confidence in a particular state’s election results,” Cruz said, it could reconfirm the results.
Notably, in a November 2020 call with Bartiromo that MSNBC aired last week, Cruz suggested Trump’s legal team lacked “actual evidence” of voter fraud that would stand up in court.
The same day as his call to Bartiromo, Cruz and 10 other Senate Republicans revealed a plan refuse to certify results in states where Trump is contesting defeat unless it is a “10-day emergency.” [congressional] Audit” of the results has been completed.
Cruz criticized Melber’s reporting on Tuesday, arguing that his plan to overthrow the election was no secret:
MSNBC obtained the footage from Abby Grossberg, a former Fox News producer for Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, who is suing the network over allegations of workplace misconduct. Listen to them below.