Final Six Victories in the 1BBB, Cartels Outpace U.S. Law Enforcement in the Skies & Gabbard Drops the Receipts Week In Review

Summary

Verdict with Ted Cruz: Final Six Victories in the 1BBB, Cartels Outpace U.S. Law Enforcement in the Skies & Gabbard Drops the Receipts Week In Review

Release Date: July 26, 2025
Host: Ben Ferguson
Guest: Senator Ted Cruz
Podcast Network: Premiere Networks

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Introduction

In the July 26, 2025 episode of "Verdict with Ted Cruz," hosted by Ben Ferguson and Senator Ted Cruz, the duo delves into three pivotal stories shaping the political landscape. The episode emphasizes significant legislative victories, emerging national security threats from drone technology, and a groundbreaking report alleging misconduct by the Obama administration.

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1. Final Six Victories in the One Big Beautiful Bill (1BBB)

Senator Ted Cruz highlights six crucial conservative triumphs embedded within the expansive "One Big Beautiful Bill" (1BBB), aimed at advancing various policy areas and countering Democratic initiatives.

a. Spectrum Auction Authority

• Timestamp: [01:46] - [03:20]
• Key Points:
  • Definition: Spectrum refers to the electromagnetic range used for all wireless communications, including cell phones, Wi-Fi, satellites, and streaming.
  • Issue Addressed: Under President Biden, the U.S. government halted new spectrum auctions, favoring governmental control over private sector investment, inadvertently allowing China to gain technological supremacy.
  • Cruz's Legislation: Directed the federal government to auction 800 MHz of spectrum to the private sector.
  • Benefits:
    • Revenue Generation: Expected to bring in over $100 billion to the federal government.
    • Job Creation: Anticipated creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
    • Technological Advancement: Aimed to outpace China in developing 6G technology.
• Notable Quote:
  • "President Trump is so excited about this one big beautiful bill, because it is massive, massive victories for America." – Ted Cruz [01:07]

b. Modernizing Air Traffic Control

• Timestamp: [03:20] - [05:52]
• Key Points:
  • Investment: Allocated $12.5 billion to update outdated air traffic control systems.
  • Safety Enhancements: Replacing obsolete radars and computer systems to enhance flight safety.
• Notable Quote:
  • "To keep your family safer when you fly. To keep my family safer when we fly." – Ted Cruz [04:30]

c. Space Investment

• Timestamp: [05:52] - [07:17]
• Key Points:
  • Funding: Allocated $10 billion to NASA for the Artemis and Gateway programs.
  • Objective: To establish a sustained human presence on the Moon and eventually Mars, ensuring the U.S. does not cede celestial high ground to China.
  • Strategic Importance: The Moon's strategic value for national security and economic benefits from rare earth minerals.
• Notable Quote:
  • "If we lose the moon to China, it would be a catastrophic loss." – Ted Cruz [06:45]

d. CAFE Standards Repeal

• Timestamp: [07:17] - [09:47]
• Key Points:
  • Issue Addressed: Biden administration's increasing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards aimed at phasing out internal combustion engines in favor of electric vehicles.
  • Legislative Action: Completely abolished existing CAFE standards.
  • Impacts:
    • Cost Reduction: Potential decrease in vehicle prices.
    • Safety Improvement: Return to sturdier steel vehicles, enhancing crash safety.
• Notable Quote:
  • "They’re gone. So it’s actually... a great American car again, made of steel, tough as hell." – Ted Cruz [08:07]

e. School Choice

• Timestamp: [09:47] - [13:16]
• Key Points:
  • Legislation: Passed the largest federal school choice bill in U.S. history.
  • Mechanism: Allows taxpayers to contribute up to $1,700 annually to scholarship organizations with dollar-for-dollar tax credits.
  • Long-term Vision: Empowering parents and children with educational opportunities, potentially transforming blue states into red through enhanced education choices.
• Notable Quote:
  • "These are victories, generational victories." – Ted Cruz [12:45]

f. Trump Accounts - Invest America Accounts

• Timestamp: [13:16] - [31:15]
• Key Points:
  • Initiative: Establishment of personal investment accounts for every child in America.
  • Features:
    • Seeding: Each newborn receives $1,000.
    • Contributions: Parents and employers can add up to $5,000 annually.
    • Investment: Funds are invested in the S&P 500, fostering long-term wealth accumulation.
  • Impact: Aims to create a financially empowered generation with substantial investments in the American economy.
• Notable Quote:
  • "The wealth creation for the next generation of Americans will be utterly transformative." – Ted Cruz [11:30]

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2. Cartels Outpacing U.S. Law Enforcement in the Skies

The discussion shifts to the escalating threat posed by drone technology in the hands of criminal organizations, particularly cartels, and its implications for national security.

a. Current Threat Landscape

• Timestamp: [14:48] - [20:54]
• Key Points:
  • Cartel Operations: Utilization of advanced drones for smuggling fentanyl, coordinating illegal border crossings, and jamming U.S. surveillance.
  • Global Implications: Drones are altering modern warfare and increasing casualties, as seen in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
  • Comparison: Cartels now possess more drone capabilities than U.S. law enforcement agencies.

b. Legislative Gaps and Challenges

• Authority Limitations: Current laws severely restrict federal and even more so state/local law enforcement from intercepting or disabling drones.
• Potential Threats: Includes assassination attempts using drones, attacks on commercial aviation, and large-scale terrorist activities.

c. Call for Legislative Action

• Senator Cruz’s Advocacy:
  • Emphasizes the need for new legislation granting law enforcement the authority to neutralize drone threats effectively.
  • Highlights the asymmetric nature of drone warfare, enabling low-cost drones to challenge high-value military assets.
• Bipartisan Potential:
  • Cruz expresses hope for cross-party collaboration, stressing that drone threats transcend political divisions.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "Cartels today have more drone capability than American law enforcement." – Ted Cruz [16:53]
  • "This ought to be an issue that brings us all together as before." – Ted Cruz [20:29]

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3. Gabbard Drops the Receipts: Bombshell Report on Obama Administration

The episode culminates with an explosive report unveiled by Tulsi Gabbard, accusing the Obama administration of orchestrating a false narrative regarding Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

a. Timeline of Events

• Timestamp: [21:25] - [33:30]
• Key Points:
  • Initial Assessment (August-September 2016): Intelligence indicated no Russian intent to manipulate the vote count.
  • Change in Narrative (December 2016): Key Obama administration officials, including James Clapper and Susan Rice, reversed their stance, attributing election interference to Russia without substantial evidence.
  • Orchestrated Lies: The administration actively disseminated false intelligence, manufacturing a narrative to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy.

b. Tulsi Gabbard’s Disclosure

• Statement Highlights:
  • Integrity of Democracy: Emphasizes the threat posed by the manufactured intelligence reports to the democratic process.
  • Conspiracy Elements: Accusations extend to deep state actors and media collaborators who promoted the false narrative.
  • Implications: Suggests a targeted coup against President Trump’s administration orchestrated through deceit and manipulation.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "This episode is a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundations of our democratic system." – Ted Cruz [23:29]
  • "They conspired to subvert the will of the American people who elected Donald Trump." – Ted Cruz [27:17]

c. Legal Ramifications and Investigations

• Formation of a Strike Force:
  • Initiative: Attorney General Pam Bondi has established a strike force to investigate Gabbard’s disclosures.
  • Targets: Senior Obama administration officials, including James Clapper, Susan Rice, John Kerry, and Andrew McCabe.
• Potential Charges:
  • Perjury and Fraud: Citing 18 USC §1621 and §1001, Cruz outlines possible charges for those who knowingly provided false statements.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "The people who are most likely to face criminal liability are those senior members of the Obama intelligence community." – Ted Cruz [30:57]

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Conclusion

The episode of "Verdict with Ted Cruz" delivers a comprehensive analysis of significant legislative victories that bolster conservative agendas, underscores the escalating drone threats posed by criminal organizations, and exposes alleged malpractices within the Obama administration’s handling of election interference intelligence. Through incisive discussions and compelling evidence, Senator Cruz and Ben Ferguson aim to inform and empower listeners with crucial insights into the current political and security challenges facing the United States.

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Note: For an in-depth exploration of these topics, listeners are encouraged to download and listen to the full podcast episode available through iHeart Podcasts.

Transcript

[Ben Ferguson]

This is an iHeart podcast. Welcome. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz, Week in Review. Ben Ferguson with you. And here are the three major stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week. First up, we put together an Incredible list of 12 things that you may not have known that were in the big beautiful bill that will impact your life in a major way. I've got the final six great things for you in today's list. And you can also go back and hear the entire list from earlier this this week. Story number two, real problem with enemy drones in the skies and the national threat they pose to our national security. So what can Congress do to protect all of us? We're going to break that down for you as well. And finally, in the biggest story of the week, the bombshell report from the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard on Barack Obama. What now is being described as treasonous actions by Obama and. And the Attorney General, Pam Bondi has jumped into the case. It's the weekend review and it starts right now.

[Ted Cruz]

I told you, I'm gonna give you 12 major conservative victories in the one big beautiful bill. We're at six. I actually want listeners to pause for a second. How many of you could list the first six before this podcast? And I just wanna make the point. What kind of job does the corporate media do? I'm willing to bet virtually none of our listeners could have listed those first six because the news hasn't covered it. And it's why we do this podcast, to give you information so that when you're talking to your friends and your colleagues, you will know what's being accomplished. There's a reason President Trump is so excited about this one big beautiful bill, because it is massive, massive victories for America.

[Ben Ferguson]

Number seven.

[Ted Cruz]

Number seven, spectrum. Now, spectrum. What is spectrum? Electromagnetic spectrum. It is how we communicate. It's how our cell phones work. It's how WI fi works. It's how satellites work. It's how streaming works. It's all of electronics. Spectrum. The largest holder of spectrum is the United States government. The United States government has vast swaths of spectrum. And under Joe Biden, the United States government stop making new spectrum available to the private sector. They ended auction authority. It was grotesquely irresponsible. It did massive damage to America. It destroyed jobs in America and it let China get ahead of America in this bill. I wrote the legislation that directs the federal government to auction to the private sector 800 MHz of spectrum for private sector investment. What does that mean? Number one, that will generate in excess of $100 billion of revenue to the federal government.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow.

[Ted Cruz]

Real money. Now, even in government terms, $100 billion is real money. And listen, you and I are deeply concerned about the deficit and the debt. The entire Commerce title that I wrote that had historic investments in Coast Guard and a bunch of other things, I ended up saving over $40 billion, reducing the deficit and the debt by over $40 billion. And the driver was, because of Spectrum Auction Authority, we will bring in $100 billion to pay down the debt.

[Ben Ferguson]

That's incredible.

[Ted Cruz]

That's real money. But it's not the biggest piece of this. The biggest piece of this is by auctioning this Spectrum off, we will open up billions and billions of dollars of private sector investment. The companies that buy this Spectrum are going to invest. It is going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. That is not an exaggeration. Hundreds of thousands of jobs. And you know what Spectrum is all about? Beating China to 6G. I mentioned my consistent theme. Beat China, beat China in the Arctic with the Coast Guard, beat China to 6G with spectrum. And I gotta tell you, three months ago, there was nobody in Washington who thought we could get this done. I sat in the office of the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a good friend of mine. I said, mike, we're gonna do Spectrum on the one big, beautiful bill. And Mike laughed in my face. He's a good friend, but he's like, there's no way. He said, there's no chance. Because the Department of Defense and the CIA will fight you. They will stop you. You cannot get it done. We not only got it done, when I cut the deal and got it in the bill, President Trump called me the next morning. He said, ted, this is incredible. This is like, how did you get such an incredible deal? Historic Spectrum Auction Authority producing hundreds of thousands of jobs and beating China to 6G. That's in the bill. Number eight, air traffic control. This bill invests $12.5 billion modernizing our air traffic control. To keep your family safer when you fly. To keep my family safer when we fly. To stop using outdated radars, to stop using computers that have floppy disks and little copper wire. Copper wire. To modernize our air traffic control. A massive investment in keeping the American public safe. This bill. I wrote that portion that is also in the Commerce title. So I wrote that portion that will fund and improve air traffic control. A huge victory. Number nine, space. Yep. This bill has $10 billion for NASA to go to the moon, for the Artemis program, for the Gateway program, to beat China. To the moon. China has said they intend to return to the moon by 2030. In my view, if we lose the moon to China, it would be a catastrophic loss. It would be a loss if we woke up in a few years and China was on the moon and China established a base on the moon, which is what they said they intend to do with the Russians.

[Ben Ferguson]

And they made that very clear. That is the sole intent of going. It's not just to go to the moon, it's to have a base on the moon.

[Ted Cruz]

Yes, if they did that and we lost, I think it would be worse than Sputnik, that it would be a national body blow that would crush this country. And look, the Moon is critical, number one, for national security. The Moon is the high ground. You look at so much of our national security and so much of our commerce depends on satellites in orbit around the Earth. The Moon gives you the high ground. It is very dangerous for us to cede that to China. It is unacceptable for us to cede that to China. But number two, there are massive rare earth minerals on the moon. There are enormous economic advantages. It is current US law that it is the policy of the American government to have a sustained human habitation either on the lunar surface or in cislunar orbit. This investment in beating China to the moon. And by the way, the moon is a stepping stone to Mars. We will go to Mars, but we haven't landed on a celestial body in over 50 years. So we're going to land on the moon first to make sure we know how to do it, and then we're going to go to Mars. This investment, I wrote this investment in there, I will say there was significant resistance. And without getting too much into the sausage making, we won against the resistance. This is in there. It is a massive investment.

[Ben Ferguson]

And China is going to notice this as well.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah, that is exactly right. That's number nine. Number ten. CAFE standards, the standards that mandate you keep having to have higher and higher fuel efficiency on your cars. That's what the Biden administration has used as its tool, as one of its tools to wage the war on the internal combustion engine, to try to force every car to be electric is they keep jacking up CAFE standards. Higher and higher and higher. What does that mean? Number one, it drives up the cost of your cars. You notice cars have gotten a lot more expensive. Trucks have gotten a lot more expensive. Number two, it makes cars less safe because one of the ways you get the gas efficiency higher is you replace metal with plastics.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

Make it lighter, cheap plastic that crumbles in a crash and more people die in the commerce section of the one big beautiful bill. You know what we did to CAFE.

[Ben Ferguson]

Standards, what was that?

[Ted Cruz]

Zeroed them out.

[Ben Ferguson]

Really?

[Ted Cruz]

They're gone. So it's actually.

[Ben Ferguson]

So you're telling me that my car, instead of being all plastic, where you have a little fender barrel and everything breaks, they could actually go back and say, hey, we're not trying to save weight here. We're trying to actually make safe cars again.

[Ted Cruz]

It can be a great American car again, made of steel, tough as hell. And by the way, you want to buy electric car, great. That's your choice. You want to buy a hybrid, great. You want to buy a gas car, great. It ought to be consumers choosing. And actually, the way we did this, we very much modeled how in 2017, we repealed the individual mandate on Obamacare. So that was a fight I led in 2017. The individual mandate, the way we eliminated it is under the rules of reconciliation. We could not eliminate the legal mandate to buy health insurance, which was the individual mandate under Obamacare. So you know what we did? We made the penalty zero. So you used to be. The IRS fined you if you didn't buy health insurance, the IRS would fine you. It is still the law. You're required to buy health insurance, but you don't, you will be fined $0. We did the same thing to CAFE standards so they could put their standards out, but the penalty for violating it is zero. And I want to mention, look, this is again, like PBS and NPR. This has been a conservative battle for.

[Ben Ferguson]

50 years and Democrats have been winning for 50 years, unfortunately.

[Ted Cruz]

And we got this done. I wrote this portion. It is in the bill. It is zeroed out. And we got this done. And I'm willing to bet fewer than 1% of our listeners even knew we had done it because we won so many victories that this falls all the way down to number 10 on the list.

[Ben Ferguson]

Incredible. Well done.

[Ted Cruz]

The final two. Yep, the final two, as you know, are very near and dear to my heart. Number 11 is school choice. In this bill, we passed the single largest and most consequential federal school choice bill in, in the history of our country. I wrote this provision. Every single American taxpayer can now contribute up to $1,700 a year to a scholarship granting organization in the states and get a dollar for dollar credit on their taxes. It means the money is free. The effect of this is going to be tens of billions of new scholarship money in the states for school choice, for K through 12, school choice we, we're going to do a subsequent pod that does a really deep dive.

[Ben Ferguson]

Because this is part of your legacy, by the way. This is going to be part of your legacy.

[Ted Cruz]

This is the issue I care more about than anything else. I have spent 30 years fighting for it. And we're going to do another pod where we do a very deep dive because there's some aspects of this that I want the listeners to appreciate that are both incredible policy victories, but also massive political victories. We are creating incentives to turn blue states red to build constituencies of parents and kids who want fantastic education. This is, I told the President, if and when we get this done, you will go down in history as one of the greatest civil rights presidents in our nation's history. Your critics will never acknowledge that.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah, but the reality will be you're going to change poor communities.

[Ted Cruz]

The reality is the school choice provision is massive and it's in the bill. And then the final number 12 are the Trump accounts, the Invest America accounts. Again, I wrote this provision.

[Ben Ferguson]

This could fundamentally change this country.

[Ted Cruz]

By the way, starting next year, July 4th of next year, the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, every child in America will have a personal investment account. Every newborn child will have it seeded with $1,000. Parents, family, employers can contribute up to $5,000 a year in a tax advantaged account. All of that money is invested in The S&P 500 is invested in the stock market. That enables every kid to enjoy the incredible benefits of compound growth which will transform our kids. The wealth creation for the next generation of Americans will be utterly transformative. And not only that, this creates a new generation of capitalists, as our kids are, will all be owners of the largest employers in America. These two victories, school choice and personal investment accounts for kids. Without exaggeration, Ben, and I've told the President this, I think 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now, these will be the two things everyone remembers from this bill. Everything else I listed 1 through 10, which are massive. Yeah, they are conservative victories for the generations. I think 11 and 12 will dwarf 1 in 10 because the difference we will see trillions of dollars invested in 401ks for kids in these Trump accounts. That will change the future of every one of our kids and make them all have skin in the game in our capitalist society. And school choice is going to literally provide hope and opportunity to millions of kids. We got both of them done. Those are victories, generational victories. And when the President signed it on July 4, they were victories for all of America.

[Ben Ferguson]

Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now, on to story number two. I want to move to something else. And this is about securing our skies. Law enforcement and drones and public safety are something I think a lot of people are paying attention to, especially since we really exposed this on Verdict, where we were talking about how the cartels have got an amazing ability to use drones. Now, they are heavily advanced and invest in this technology for drones to be able to see what we're doing on our side of the border, see when border patrol agents are going one direction or the other so they can get people across drugs, across the. It's incredible. There's also another national security standpoint on drones as well. We've witnessed what drones have become in this war with Russia and Ukraine. And it terrifies me what we're seeing now with drone technology and how drones are changing warfare. And unfortunately, you're seeing it have a massive impact on the number of casualties between Russia and Ukraine. You combine those two things, the cartels, the drugs, the human trafficking, sex trafficking, child trafficking, the. The fentanyl and the war aspect of this, and there's a nefarious individuals, isis, al Qaeda, the list goes on and on. You guys are looking at this from an issue of we got to secure our skies with this new legislation that you're advocating for. Talk about that.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, war often foreshadows the next threats we will face, the next threats we will face from terrorism, the next threats we will face from criminal attacks. And you're right, the war in Ukraine right now, if you look at how drones are being used, it illustrates the profound threat. We had a hearing this week in the Senate Judiciary Committee. I raised some questions on this. I laid this out. Give a listen to what I had to say in the Judiciary Committee hearing this week. In 2024, Thomas Crooks flew a drone over a Trump rally site for 11 minutes, scouting the grounds. Before his attempted assassination of President Trump that same year, drones hovered over Naval Air Station Fort Worth for more than two hours, unintercepted at our southern border. Cartels now operate drone fleets, smuggling fentanyl, coordinating illegal crossings and jamming U.S. surveillance. They form specialized drone units. They've dropped bombs, they've deployed jammers. Drones right now are outpacing our law enforcement at every turn. In our prisons, drones drop weapons, phones, and fentanyl, arming inmates and fueling the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. And here's the Most damning part, cartels right now have more drone capability than American law enforcement. Let me repeat that. Cartels today have more drone capability than American law enforcement. Mr. Hardy, you work at the intersection of law and policy regarding drones at the doj. Is it true that only a handful of federal agents, under narrow legal authority, can intercept or disable a drone?

[Ben Ferguson]

Thank you, Senator.

[Ted Cruz]

That is generally true under the 2018 act that gives DHS and DHS DOJ authority to conduct detection and mitigation operations.

[Ben Ferguson]

That's shocking, Senator. That. That's. That's it. Like, that's. We are. You want to talk about being behind the eight ball?

[Ted Cruz]

Like, good grief, yes. And it's not just at the hearing, we also got into the fact that federal law enforcement is highly limited. And actually state and local law enforcement is even more limited. So understand the threat we're going to face. We are going to see a major terrorist attack carried out by drones. We are going to see people killed via drones. We may see a drone flown into a commercial airline. We are going to see, I believe, political leaders assassinated using drones. The threats are massive. And right now, the authority of law enforcement to take out a drone, if there's a drone that is over a sports stadium for a football game, a baseball game, a World cup game, right now, there is extremely limited, almost no authority to take out that drone, even moments before it detonates a bomb or distributes a bioweapon or engages in some other act of terrorism.

[Ben Ferguson]

This is the most scary, I think, part about red tape with government is if you see a threat and it's there, it's almost like you have to hope that law enforcement will just say, I'll deal with whatever the consequences later, because I know I'm doing the right thing. And you worry that people are like, well, hold on a second, you can't do that. You don't have the authority. And then the worst case scenario happens.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah, look, and this hearing is driving. We need legislation that gives law enforcement the authority to protect us, to take out drones, take out drones that are a threat to airplanes. I am very concerned about an aviation accident of a drone getting in the way of a commercial aircraft. We need authority to take out drones that pose a threat to civilians, pose a threat to sports gatherings, pose a threat. As I laid out the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the assassin who shot President Trump used a drone initially to scout it out. This is coming and it is dangerous. And I think we have a responsibility to act and to act. You know, there's a long phenomenon that when it comes to warfare, generals far too often fight the last war rather than the next war. If you look at the war in Ukraine, it gives us a window into the future because drones allow for asymmetric attacks for those who lack power to use a $400 drone to take out a multi million dollar tank or a multimillion dollar fighter jet, that asymmetry is dangerous. And I think we need real leadership, real leadership on the part of the Trump administration, real leadership on the part of Congress to enhance our ability to stop dangerous drones and to recognize this is the next frontier for warfare, for terrorism and for threats of violence against civilians across this country.

[Ben Ferguson]

Final question on this. Do you believe this is at least one of those issues where you can get bipartisan support that this won't be Republican and v. Democrat and make this so hard to do? Are Democrats on board with this? Because the national security issue so I hope so.

[Ted Cruz]

I don't know yet if Democrats will be willing to work together. It should be. I mean this ought to be a level of common sense that people would recognize this threat is not a partisan threat. It's not a right wing threat or a left wing threat. It's a vulnerability we have as a society. And so I'm certainly going to try to get Democrats and Republicans to come together, but I will say it as early. So we don't know for sure. But this ought to be an issue that brings us all together as before.

[Ben Ferguson]

If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download 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. All right, so let's go to the Bombshell Center. I was in D.C. when this happened and everyone was talking about the report that was released showing how the Obama administration, administration in essence perpetrated the Russian hoax on Donald Trump to undermine his presidency, but also to really get him out of the White House.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, that's right. And it's important to understand what is new about this. Listen, everyone has known for some time that the Obama team pushed the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. We've known that. That's been well established. What is new? What Tulsi Gabbard put out this week is that they knew they were lying when they did that because the intelligence had been precisely the opposite. And what I want to do is I want to walk through a little bit this timeline and give you the specific facts. So August 31st of 2016. A DHS official tells former DNI director James Clapper that there was, quote, no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count. That's in August of 2016. Then September 2, 2016, the FBI said it was, quote, uncomfortable, implying that there was definitive information that Russia intended to disrupt our elections. Then on September 9, 2016, quote, the intelligence community concluded that Russia was probably not trying to influence the election by using cyber means to target election infrastructure. That continued. So that was not just through August and September of 2016, but it continued after the election. The election happens in November of 2016, on December 7, 2016. Here are the talking points that DNI Director Clapper had prepared for him. Quote, foreign adversaries did not use cyber attacks on election infrastructure to alter the US presidential election outcome. The next day, December 8, Barack Obama's presidential Daily Brief read as follows. Quote, we assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.

[Ben Ferguson]

That's an important point there, by the way.

[Ted Cruz]

That's what Barack Obama was briefed on December 8. And then December 9, 2016, everything changed. On December 9, DNI Director Clapper, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Deputy FBI Director McCabe, they all met in person. And in that meeting, they reversed course entirely, 180 degrees. They flipped. And. And they agreed to recommend sanctioning members of the Russian military intelligence because of the Russia hoax. They tasked the intelligence community with creating an assessment of the tools Moscow used to influence the 2016 election. And that same day, deep state officials in the intelligence community began leaking false intelligence to the Washington Post Post. This was a decision they made to lie to the American people. And that's the new deliberately and orchestrated.

[Ben Ferguson]

And well planned out. This wasn't just a random let's go out there and lie at a press briefing. This was a plan, like writing a movie script of how you are going to lie to the American people and use the intelligence agencies to do it.

[Ted Cruz]

And what Tulsi Gabbard has now given us the receipts on is they knew they were lying. That for months and months and months the intelligence community had been reporting exactly the opposite. So when they made this decision, it was a political determination. It was a political determination because they hated Donald Trump. And it was a political determination because they were furious with the American people for electing Donald Trump president. And this was an attempt to subvert democracy. And this was an attempt to overthrow the then newly elected President of the United States. And what is brazen about it is that they did it. All of the intelligence that for months and months and months had been reported, it suddenly, magically disappeared. They didn't acknowledge it. They simply. Those facts were no longer operative. They had a political agenda, facts be damned. And they were willing to lie to the American people and they were willing to lie to Congress.

[Ben Ferguson]

Senator, I want to go back into what Tulsi Gabbard said when she went to the White House, White House press briefing room and she opened it up as she was introduced by the White House press secretary, and here's what she had to say.

[C]

The stunning revelations that we are releasing today should be of concern to every American. This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This has to do with the integrity of our Democratic Republic and American voters having faith that the votes cast will count. There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false. They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn't. The report that we released today shows in great detail how they carried this out. They manufactured findings from shoddy sources. They suppressed evidence, incredible intelligence that disproved their false claims. They disobeyed traditional tradecraft intelligence community standards and withheld the truth from the American people. In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people who elected Donald Trump in that election in November of 2016. They worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump and launching what would be a years long coup against him and his administration.

[Ben Ferguson]

A years long coup against him and his administration orchestrated with the deep state and the media. She's indicting all of them saying they knew this was a lie.

[Ted Cruz]

She is. And I will say, as she rightly pointed out, the evidence she put out shows, number one, it was false that Russia was trying to interfere with the election. But number two, a second predicate of their lieutenant is that Russia was trying to interfere to benefit Donald Trump. That was a critical Democrat partisan lie. And one of the pieces that she put out is that the Obama intelligence community assessed that Russia had in its possession damaging information about Hillary Clinton, including DNC communications. So this is the Democrat National Committee communicating, saying that Clinton was suffering from, quote, intensified psycho emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression and cheerfulness. And by the way, that's really weird.

[Ben Ferguson]

Well, if you've been around Hillary Clinton and cheerfulness, if you've been around Hillary Clinton, she's not exactly the most cheerful person. So that would be a red flag.

[Ted Cruz]

And what the DNC communications further indicated was that Clinton was placed on a daily regimen of quantum, quote, heavy tranquilizers. And while be afraid of losing, she remained, quote, obsessed with a thirst for power. Now, I don't know if, if this supposed Russian intelligence is accurate or not. Tulsi Gabbard released it and said that the Obama intelligence community assessed that Russia had this. And here's the critical part. Russia didn't release it. It clearly would have been damaging to Hillary Clinton. If they wanted Donald Trump to win, they would have put it out, presumably in October of 2016. They didn't. That shed an other element of the lie.

[Ben Ferguson]

Yeah, it's, it's a huge element of the lie. So the question now becomes this, where we go from here? And it seems to be moving actually very fast. Great example of that is the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, we're now being told, is forming a strike force to, quote, investigate disclosures from the Office of the Director of of National Intelligence. That would be Tulsi Gabbard. That raises allegations. The Obama administration, quote, manufactured an intelligence assessment in 2017 promoting the Russian hoax collusion, saying, quote, the Department of Justice announcing the formation of the strike force on Wednesday. The strike force will assess the evidence publicized by the DNI director and investigate any potential, quote, next level steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard's disclosures. That's coming from the release. And Bondi called the disclosures from Gabbard's office, quote, troubling in the statement.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, I'm very glad that the Trump Department of Justice is investigating this. Tulsi Gabbard made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice and Pam Bondi launched this strike force. And many people are asking quite reasonably, is anyone going to be held accountable for this? Because it seems so frustrating to have people breaking the law over and over and over again and nobody being prosecuted, nobody going to jail. I very much hope people are held accountable. I hope that the Trump Department of Justice is able to prosecute and prove if there is criminal conduct, that they're able to prove it and get convictions and people are held accountable. And I'll tell you, the people who are most likely to face criminal liability are those senior members of the Obama intelligence community. Those people that were in the December 9 meeting where they decided to deliberately lie to the American people.

[Ben Ferguson]

Those names, by the way.

[Ted Cruz]

And in particular, so those names you're.

[Ben Ferguson]

Talking about, James Clapper is one example. We're talking about the biggest names there.

[Ted Cruz]

Yes, I'm talking about James Clapper, I'm talking about Susan Rice, I'm talking about John Kerry, and I'm talking about Deputy FBI Director McCabe.

[Ben Ferguson]

Wow.

[Ted Cruz]

Those were the ones. And, and in particular also it is the senior officials who testified, falsely testified before Congress and lied and knew they were lying. And there are two relevant federal criminal statutes that are most relevant. Number one is 18 USC section 1621, and that is perjury. Whoever, having taken an oath willfully states any material matter which he does not believe to be true is guilty of perjury. That this applies to sworn congressional testimony. And secondly, 18 USC Section 1001, whoever knowingly and willfully makes any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch shall be fined or in prison. Both of these you, you've got in particular two different testimonies that are really problematic. Number one, on May 8, 2017, James Clapper testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Russia collusion. And what he said, according to what's been released by Tulsi Gabbard, he knew was false. He said in particular, quote, Russia's influence activities in the run up to the 2016 presidential election constituted the high water mark of their long running efforts. They must be congratulating themselves. This episode is a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundations of our democratic system. And then In November of 2020, Andrew McCabe testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He lied as well. And I will say for the statute of limitations, if it was materially covered up, it is extended. That's this is the most likely area you'll find criminal liability.

[Ben Ferguson]

As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download 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 the Ben Ferguson Podcast and we will see you back here on Monday morning. This is an I heart podcast.