Ted Cruz Tapes To Be Handed Over to Jack Smith's DOJ Probe

A lawyer for Fox News whistleblower Abby Grossberg—the former producer on Tucker Carlson Tonight who's suing the host and other executives at the network—has confirmed that the DOJ's Special Counsel Jack Smith has requested access to some of the recordings in her possession.

The lawyer confirmed Smith's request on MSNBC on Tuesday, saying that he had "been contacted by several law enforcement authorities." When asked by news anchor Ari Melber if the DOJ was "one of those entities," the lawyer replied "yes." He then confirmed, after being prompted by Melber, that it was the special counsel—Jack Smith—who got in touch.

While the lawyer didn't specify exactly which tapes Smith asked for—Grossberg said she has about 90 unaired recordings from inside Fox News—MSNBC aired a part of the Ted Cruz tapes where the Texas senator discusses overthrowing the election with Fox's Maria Bartiromo.

The tapes contain evidence of the Republican senator discussing blocking the certification of the 2020 election with Fox News's Bartiromo, who joined the network in 2013 and became an advocate for Donald Trump during his presidency, often giving him unchallenged interviews. Bartiromo's coverage of the 2020 election, together with Carlson's, was a focus of the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting System against Fox, which the network settled for $787.5 million.

In the tape dated January 2, 2021, which Melber played on MSNBC, Cruz can be heard saying: "I think that the country deserves to have a credible assessment of these claims and what the evidence shows and the mechanism to try to force that is denying certification on the sixth."

The tape well precedes the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, and exposes Cruz's apparent plot to overthrow the 2020 election's result by blocking the certification of Joe Biden's victory on January 6 and establishing a commission to investigate alleged claims of fraud.

"As we were looking at this Jan. 6 certification, all of the options that were being discussed were problematic," Cruz said. "And so I wanted to find a path that was consistent with the Constitution and the law, and that addresses these very real serious claims."

Melber said that Bartiromo then asked Cruz who would decide who gets inaugurated, and Cruz answered "that this fake, made up, so-called commission that he and his Trump buddies were planning to try to create to bureaucratize a coup—and that's what they were trying to do—that was his answer, that's how they would steal this race."

Cruz responded to the airing of the tape on national television by tweeting that there's nothing secret about the tape. "This @msnbc is breathlessly reporting that I 'secretly' said in a phone call...the EXACT same thing I said on national television the next morning! And then said again on the Senate floor four days later," he said.

On the same day of the phone call to Bartiromo, January 2, 2021, Cruz and other Republican senators published a joint statement which outlined a similar plan to challenge the results of the 2020 election on January 6.

Newsweek has contacted Ted Cruz's office and the DOJ for comment by email.