Jan 6 committee probing Ted Cruz involvement in plans to overturn election result, report says

Sen Ted Cruz, who was one of Donald Trump’s top allies in the Senate in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has fallen under the scrutiny of the House committee investigating the January 6 attack according to a new report in The Washington Post.

Mr Cruz’s support of the efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory has been long known. In early December of 2020, it was even reported that Donald Trump had personally asked Mr Cruz to represent his case against the rightful election results in four states should it reach the Supreme Court; Mr Cruz reportedly agreed, though the cases were all dismissed.

Now, the Post reports that the House select committee is investigating whether Mr Cruz had any communications with John Eastman, a controversial attorney who represented the former president in his efforts to claim that election fraud had robbed him of victory and who is now alleged by the committee to have been a part of a criminal conspiracy to push false claims about the election and overturn the rightful results.

Mr Cruz declined to comment to the Post about whether he had spoken to Mr Eastman about the lawyer’s efforts to aid Mr Trump, and Mr Eastman himself pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked by the committee’s attorneys whether he had “any communication with Senator Ted Cruz regarding efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 election”.

A spokesperson for the senator did contend to the newspaper that Mr Cruz had not, to his knowledge, viewed the so-called “Eastman memo” outlining a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to interfere with the certification of the 2020 election by the Senate until it was publicly reported by the news media.

“Sen. Cruz has been friends with John Eastman since they clerked together in 1995,” said the spokesperson. “To the best of his recollection, he did not read the Eastman memo until months after January 6, when it was publicly reported.”

The Independent reached out to Mr Cruz’s office for comment regarding the committee’s interest in his communications with Mr Eastman, but did not immediately receive a response.

Rep Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, eviscerated the Texas senator on Twitter late last year for his efforts to pander to what she called the “secessionist” faction of the GOP.

"I know you're posturing for the secessionist vote, Ted. But my party, the Republican Party, saved the Union. You swore an oath to the Constitution. Act like it,” she tweeted at Mr Cruz in November.

Mr Cruz has remained adamant in interviews that his vote against certifying the election was due to a desire for an investigation into the former president’s false claims and his supposed concern about the fears that Trump supporters had about America’s election systems.

Speaking to CBS News last year, he claimed that he voted to object in order “to call for an electoral commission to review the claims of voter fraud and assess and make a determination to consider the evidence” of supposed election fraud.

During the same interview, he falsely claimed: “Democrats and a lot of the press decided to just engage in incendiary rhetoric rather than acknowledge voter fraud is real. It is a problem. And the allegations of voter fraud needed to be examined on the merits.” The US attorney general appointed by Donald Trump during his presidency, as well as the head of the nation’s top cybersecurity agency, both declared that there was no evidence of voter fraud or election interference to a degree that it could have had meaningful effects on results in any state in 2020.

In one interview with a Trump supporter the senator did insist, however, that he “led the fight” to block the election from being certified.

Numerous Trump supporters still believe that the 2020 election was stolen and a poll published last year by Monmouth University indicated that about a third of American adults believed that conspiracy.

Mr Trump is seen as a top potential contender for the 2024 GOP nomination as he continues to publicly tease a third bid for office.