Sen. Cruz on Hannity: Once the President Is Able to Defend Himself, I’m Confident That the President Will Be Acquitted
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on The Constitution, on Wednesday appeared on Fox News' ‘Hannity' and the Joe Pags Show after the House took a vote to name their impeachment managers and send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Catch Sen. Cruz's full interview with Sean Hannity here and the Joe Pags Show here. Excerpts are below.
After House Democrats marched the articles over to the Senate, Sen. Cruz said on Fox News' ‘Hannity':
"The good news is the partisan circus in the House is over. Nancy Pelosi's circus is done. And we're not going to see the one-sided show trial that the House has engaged in for months and months and months. That farce is over."
When Hannity asked about his hopes for the Senate's trial, Sen. Cruz said:
"I'm confident the Senate will conduct a fair trial. That means we'll give the House managers an opportunity to present their case. We'll listen to what they have to say. But then we're going to do something that the House didn't do, which is we're going to give President Trump a full opportunity to defend himself. To present his case. To lay out the facts and evidence and law that the House ignored. And once the President is able to defend himself, I am confident that the result of that is the President will be acquitted. And the reason is these Articles of Impeachment on their face are ridiculous. They don't satisfy the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors."
He continued noting the ridiculousness of House Democrats' case against President Trump, saying:
"If the House managers get up and they want to do a presentation on all of their ridiculous somebody knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who said the following, I feel confident that President Trump's lawyers are going to eat their lunch. Because it's ridiculous. [...] This is the first time in the history of the country a President has ever been impeached without an article even alleging criminal conduct. They don't allege a single federal law that violated, not a criminal law, not a civil law. This is a partisan sham because they're mad - the House Democrats - are mad at the American people for electing President Trump. And that's why the result of this is going to be rejecting the Articles of Impeachment."
When asked about witnesses on the Joe Pags Show, Sen. Cruz said:
"There is a division of opinion on whether additional witnesses are needed or not. But what I have said is look if there are 51 votes, if 51 senators decide they want to call additional witnesses, then at a minimum, we need reciprocity. Which means if the prosecution gets a witness, the defense should get a witness. That means if 51 senators say for example that they want John Bolton to testify, then the President should be able to call Hunter Biden to testify and it needs to be fair. We need to do better than the House and not have it one-sided. But give the defense all of the protections that due process demands."
He concluded:
"These articles don't meet the standards of the Constitution. Which means at the end of this, every Senator is going to vote on each of the two articles and you vote either guilty or not guilty. And to remove a President takes two thirds of the Senate, it takes 67 Senators. That is not going to happen, the Democrats know that, this has all been about attacking the President and it is an abuse of the Constitution to do so. So I, for one, will be very glad when this farce is over."
Read Sen. Cruz's statement on the House vote here.
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