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,” referring to the decision by the feds to probe Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.
“What was going on here — this wasn’t Jason Bourne, this was Beavis and Butthead,” the GOP senator told Michael Horowitz, referring to the Bourne film franchise starring Matt Damon and MTV’s cartoon.
“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 lashed out 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 place 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 that was the opposing party to the one in power, is that right?” Cruz asked Horowitz.
“They sent confidential human sources in to do those,” Horowitz replied. “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 then suggested 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.
