“We’re also going to give the president a full and fair opportunity to defend himself”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, on Sunday appeared on NBC-Dallas-Fort Worth’s ‘Lone Star Politics’ with Julie Fine and Gromer Jeffers to discuss what Texans can expect as the Senate prepares to receive the House Democrats’ Articles of Impeachment.
On what the American people should expect the Senate impeachment trial for President Trump to look like:
“The trial in the Senate is going to be fair. It’s going to respect due process. Now what does that mean? It means that it is going to be very, very different from the one-sided partisan show trial that we saw in the House for the last several months. The last several months House Democrats did an entirely one-sided hearing, presentation. They did not follow the precedent from the Clinton impeachment. They didn’t follow the precedent from the Nixon impeachment. They didn’t allow the minority to call witnesses. They didn’t allow the White House to cross examine those witnesses. So, they presented only one side of the case. The Senate’s going to be very different. We are going to allow both sides to present their case. We’re going to give them a full and fair opportunity – the House managers, a full and fair opportunity to present their case. But we’re also going to give the president a full and fair opportunity to defend himself. We’re going to respect due process — which is the right way to do it.”
On the House Democrats’ baseless Articles of Impeachment making President Trump the first president in American history to be impeached without any violation of criminal law by the president:
“And, at the end of that proceeding, if you look at the Articles of Impeachment the House has voted out they are facially deficient. The House Democrats don’t allege any violation of criminal law by the president. In fact, they don’t allege any violation of any federal law by the president – the first time in history any president’s ever been impeached without an allegation of criminal conduct. They don’t go so far as alleging he committed a speeding ticket. And so, I believe after a full and fair trial in the Senate, that the Senate applying the constitutional standard for impeachment, which is high crimes or misdemeanors, are going to reject these Articles of Impeachment because on their face they don’t meet that constitutional standard.”
During the interview, Sen. Cruz also praised President Trump for taking bold and decisive action to keep America safer discussed his efforts in the Senate to honor the members of the military and intelligence community who eliminated Iran terror chief Qasem Soleimani:
“The past week has been a very good week for the safety and security of Americans. Taking out Soleimani — Soleimani was the most dangerous terrorist on the face of the earth. He was directly responsible, according to the Department of Defense, for the death of over 603 American servicemen and women. He had led active terrorist attacks against Americans, working close by with Hamas, with Hezbollah, both proxies of Iran. And taking him out was a very positive step for keeping our country safe.”
He added:
“I introduced a resolution in the United States Senate praising the soldiers, and sailors, and airmen, and marines, and the intelligence community that led to taking Soleimani out. That resolution has [43] co-sponsors. It is modeled, almost word for word like the resolution that the Senate passed praising the Obama administration for taking out [Osama] bin Laden, in a comparable circumstance where they took him out. And in that instance, the bin Laden resolution praising the Obama administration it passed the Senate unanimously. Every single Republican, every single Democrat in the Senate voted for it. The Soleimani resolution I’ve introduced is almost word for word identical to the Bin Laden resolution, it ought to be bipartisan. I hope that we will vote on it. But, as of right now, every one of the co-sponsors is Republican because Democrats, Congressional Democrats are so driven by anger and hatred towards Trump that many of them are unwilling even to admit that Soleimani was a terrorist.”
Watch the full interview here.