Ted Cruz Figured He Was Just The Man To Defend Texas's Dumb Election LOLsuit At The Supreme Court

“Sure, I’d be happy to” he gabbled to the then-President on December 8 when reached by phone at a DC restaurant.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump famously called Cruz’s wife Heidi ugly and described the senator as “the single biggest liar I have ever dealt with in my life.” But all is forgiven now, and The Washington Post has a piece out today on Cruz’s extensive efforts to keep Trump in office for a second term despite the expressed wishes of America’s voters.

According to the Post, while John Eastman advocated that Mike Pence make a frontal attack on the Electoral College by rejecting electors outright, Cruz rounded up ten Republican senators to send swing state electors back to the Republican-dominated legislatures to consider recasting them for Trump in light of the non-existent electoral fraud which had supposedly plagued the election. And now Cruz’s advocacy has placed him in the January 6 Select Committee’s crosshairs.

“I think that Senator Cruz knew exactly what he was doing,” Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the Committee’s two Republicans told the Post. “I think that Senator Cruz is somebody who knows what the Constitution calls for, knows what his duties and obligations are, and was willing, frankly, to set that aside.”

Cheney’s position is echoed by retired U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, the conservative former Fourth Circuit judge for whom both Cruz and Eastman clerked, who holds Cruz personally responsible for the events of January 6.

“Once Ted Cruz promised to object, January 6 was all but foreordained, because Cruz was the most influential figure in the Congress willing to force a vote on Trump’s claim that the election was stolen,” Judge Luttig told the Post. “He was also the most knowledgeable of the intricacies of both the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution, and the ways to exploit the two.”

Indeed, the judge gave similar advice to Mike Pence about the illegality of the Eastman’s schemes, describing his former clerk as “incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2 memorandum.” And Pence, without even the benefit of Harvard Law School, was smart enough to heed Judge Luttig’s counsel.

But Cruz couldn’t let Josh Hawley get to the right of him, so he went ahead and objected to the Pennsylvania electors, even after rioters overran the Capitol, forcing the Senators into hiding for several hours. And he’s still insisting that his position would have been good for American democracy.

“[Cruz] has repeatedly observed that, had Congress followed the path he urged and appointed an Election Commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit and consider on the merits the evidence of voter fraud, the American people would today have much greater confidence and trust in the integrity of our elections and our democracy,” a spokesman told the Post in response to written questions.

But not in person, because Cruz declined to be interviewed for the article. Probably too busy searching for his own name on Twitter. He’s always got time for Hannity though!

Inside Ted Cruz’s last-ditch battle to keep Trump in power [WaPo]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.