Verdict with Ted Cruz - Democrats Throw Biden Under The Bus

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.420 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.480 Senator, let me get this straight.

00:00:07.140 House Democrats are impeaching the president for threatening to withhold money from Ukraine

00:00:12.300 if they didn't investigate Joe Biden for threatening to withhold money from Ukraine

00:00:18.260 if they didn't stop investigating his son for corruption.

00:00:22.920 Is that about right?

00:00:23.920 That's about right.

00:00:25.260 We'll get into it.

00:00:26.040 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:37.360 I'm Michael Knowles, joined by the man himself, straight from the Capitol and the impeachment trial.

00:00:43.060 Senator, I want to get into Burisma, Ukraine, Hunter Biden, this really opaque story at the heart of impeachment.

00:00:52.840 Before I do that, though, I want to brag and congratulate you on becoming a rising podcast star

00:01:00.080 because this podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, is now in the top ten podcasts in the world after just two episodes.

00:01:07.320 Congratulations.

00:01:07.760 Well, thank you, and thank you to the great job you're doing, and thank you to everyone who's subscribed and downloaded.

00:01:15.780 I will say, driving from the Capitol over here, I was talking to my daughter, Caroline, who's 11, and I was kind of excited about it.

00:01:23.020 And I tried to brag to her about it, and she's like, Dad, I really don't care.

00:01:27.920 So it didn't – I don't know that 11-year-olds are our target audience.

00:01:32.080 You know, maybe 11-year-olds are not our target audience.

00:01:34.380 I think the real thing we can brag about is not even just being in the top ten in the world.

00:01:38.700 We're beating Ben Shapiro.

00:01:40.120 That's a big win, personally.

00:01:42.280 I have to text him.

00:01:43.800 Anyway, that's – talk about turning lemons into lemonade for this absolutely tedious impeachment trial.

00:01:50.260 Really, maybe we can get something out of this because I think people's eyes are glazing over when we talk about impeachment and Burisma and Hunter Biden and Ukraine, and it's just so opaque.

00:02:00.380 So I want you to break that down first.

00:02:03.740 Did anything significant happen today?

00:02:06.940 So I actually think today was a very significant day in terms of this impeachment trial because today the House Democrats effectively threw Joe Biden under the bus.

00:02:17.780 I don't know if they did so deliberately, but that's the effect of what they did today.

00:02:21.260 How so?

00:02:22.100 Well, they doubled down on something they had started yesterday in Adam Schiff's opening statement.

00:02:27.240 The House Democrats, the House managers, they built their entire case on the proposition that investigating Burisma, this Ukrainian natural gas company, is completely unfounded, completely without merit, is a sham, is bogus.

00:02:45.620 There's no basis whatsoever.

00:02:47.360 And Burisma is the Ukrainian natural gas company that Joe Biden's son worked for that was on the board of, that he was on the board of, and we'll get into all that.

00:02:57.200 They're saying that any call to investigate this well-known corrupt natural gas company is baseless, and it's just a way for President Trump to get a leg up on Joe Biden in the election.

00:03:10.160 So, yes, yesterday Adam Schiff began in his opening laying out that standard that it was a fraud, that it was a sham, it was bogus, and today—

00:03:19.400 And Adam Schiff, I don't want to be too slow about it.

00:03:21.960 He is the lead House manager for the Democrats.

00:03:24.140 Yes.

00:03:24.400 Do you know, the reason I have to clarify who he is, there was just a question on Jeopardy where they asked who this man was, and it was a picture of Adam Schiff.

00:03:32.720 Nobody got it right.

00:03:34.060 So Adam Schiff is leading the impeachment charge in the Senate trial right now.

00:03:39.080 That is absolutely right.

00:03:41.580 So he laid this out yesterday.

00:03:44.040 Today, the House manager spent, I think, over an hour trying to make the case that there was no reason to investigate Burisma, that the only possible reason to want to investigate is for nefarious political purposes because you want to smear your political opponent. 0.93

00:04:02.260 And I got to tell you, that is, number one, ridiculous. 0.98

00:04:05.180 It's just ridiculous on its face. 0.97

00:04:06.300 And actually, this show, we're going to talk a lot about the substance of it. 0.80

00:04:09.520 Yeah.

00:04:10.080 But number two, the consequence of that is the media's got to talk about Burisma as much as they don't want to.

00:04:16.400 They've got to talk about the evidence of Joe Biden's corruption.

00:04:19.260 But it also means that when President Trump's lawyers get to present their case starting on Saturday, that right at the heart of it is now going to be this is the evidence of Joe Biden and Burisma's corruption.

00:04:33.200 So the Democrats, by talking about why we don't need to talk about Burisma, have inadvertently made us all talk about Burisma.

00:04:40.860 And the standard they've set that it's completely baseless, completely meritless, it's a sham, it's bogus, is absurd.

00:04:50.500 So let's walk through some of the specifics and details.

00:04:53.040 And we're going to walk through in a little bit of real detail because I think it matters.

00:04:58.120 What is Burisma?

00:04:58.900 Burisma, well, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who's one of the sort of star witnesses for the Democrats, Vindman described it as, quote, a corrupt entity.

00:05:08.880 Now, why did he call it that?

00:05:10.300 Let me give you a little bit of the history of Burisma.

00:05:11.760 It's the biggest natural gas company in Ukraine.

00:05:14.800 It grew under an oligarch, one of these Ukrainian billionaires.

00:05:20.760 Who was at the same time the minister of natural resources.

00:05:25.700 So he was granting his company natural gas licenses and then getting rich.

00:05:31.340 And it became the richest company, the richest natural gas company, because he was the government official in charge of deciding who gets the license.

00:05:38.720 That's nice work if you can get it.

00:05:40.340 So Burisma is not a natural gas company in the way that you think of, like, ExxonMobil.

00:05:47.780 Not remotely.

00:05:48.900 Burisma was built on, hey, our founder is in charge of giving away the licenses,

00:05:53.740 which means they knew a lot about buying government influence, because that's what they were built on.

00:05:57.820 It's crooked from the very beginning.

00:05:59.920 Exactly right.

00:06:01.280 Now fast forward early 2014.

00:06:04.060 Early 2014, Joe Biden's vice president.

00:06:06.880 Joe Biden stepped forward and said he would be the point person for the Obama administration on Ukraine.

00:06:12.880 He became the face of Ukraine.

00:06:14.520 He was talking to its president over and over again.

00:06:17.500 He was the focal point by his own description.

00:06:21.220 Then, April, so this is early 2014.

00:06:25.400 Okay.

00:06:25.760 Biden's the point.

00:06:27.320 Then in April, a guy named Devin Archer, who's business partners with Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, gets named to the board of Burisma.

00:06:38.180 So you've got, this is not Hunter Biden.

00:06:43.400 This is Hunter Biden's business partner and associate.

00:06:46.040 And by the way, he's also business partners with John Kerry's stepson.

00:06:52.180 John Kerry's the secretary of state.

00:06:54.840 So I'm seeing a lot of swampiness in this whole association.

00:06:58.280 It gets worse.

00:06:59.040 So this guy, Devin Archer, gets on the board.

00:07:01.420 Okay.

00:07:01.700 That is on April 13th.

00:07:05.700 On April 28th, Britain's serious fraud bureau freezes 23 million in accounts controlled by the oligarch in charge of Burisma.

00:07:18.780 That's just a few days after Devin Archer is on the board.

00:07:24.680 And then on May 12th, Hunter Biden gets named to the board.

00:07:28.680 May 12th.

00:07:29.760 So Hunter Biden gets named to the board of Burisma less than three weeks after Britain's fraud department freezes Burisma's assets.

00:07:41.360 Yep.

00:07:41.500 And let's talk about, all right, so who is Hunter Biden?

00:07:44.600 So he has zero expertise in oil and gas.

00:07:47.400 He's not a geologist.

00:07:48.280 He's not a geophysicist.

00:07:50.620 He has no background that anyone knows of in Ukraine.

00:07:55.620 Doesn't know anything about Ukraine.

00:07:56.260 I don't think he speaks the language.

00:07:58.040 There's no, you know how much they paid him?

00:08:02.500 I know it's a large amount, but I, how much?

00:08:05.140 So actually you don't know how much he paid him because nobody knows how much they paid him.

00:08:08.680 They paid him anywhere from, some of the reporting has said $50,000 a month.

00:08:14.240 A month, a month, not a year.

00:08:15.460 A month, not, so the baseline that we think they started him at was $600,000 a year.

00:08:21.820 But that's not the limit.

00:08:22.940 How much, how high could it have been?

00:08:24.120 It went up to $83,333 a month, which is a million bucks a year.

00:08:32.140 Now, that's a lot of money.

00:08:34.000 That's good, that's good work.

00:08:35.200 To put that in perspective, do you know what a director of ExxonMobil makes?

00:08:41.040 A million dollars a year.

00:08:42.440 Cash compensation, $110,000.

00:08:45.140 Hunter Biden was getting nearly 10 times as much as a director of ExxonMobil gets in cash compensation.

00:08:51.720 And I think it requires a little bit more in the way of a resume to get on the board of ExxonMobil

00:08:59.040 than Hunter Biden had to get on Burisma's board.

00:09:01.360 Well, and we actually know exactly why Hunter Biden was on the board.

00:09:05.800 And for that, let me not tell you, let's take it in his own words.

00:09:10.120 Listen to what Hunter Biden said when he was asked why he got put on the board.

00:09:12.680 Hunter Biden gave an interview not that long ago where he admitted that the reason he got on the board was nepotism.

00:09:21.080 If your last name wasn't Biden, do you think you would have been asked to be on the board of Burisma?

00:09:25.360 I don't know. I don't know. Probably not. I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life that if my last name wasn't Biden.

00:09:34.060 He said the part out loud that he was not supposed to say if they wanted to hide this corruption.

00:09:39.640 But look, it's obvious. He was put on the board because daddy was vice president.

00:09:44.860 Right.

00:09:44.960 Let me tell you what what the head of Ukraine's anti-corruption action action center said, and this is a quote.

00:09:51.760 If an investigator sees the son of the vice president of the United States is part of the management of a company,

00:09:57.940 that investigator will be uncomfortable pushing the case forward.

00:10:03.340 That's why Hunter Biden was on that board.

00:10:06.540 Right.

00:10:07.020 Now, I mentioned that Hunter Biden was business partners with John Kerry's stepson, guy named Chris Hines.

00:10:13.400 Yes. Chris Hines actually cut his business ties with Hunter Biden because of and this is this is Chris Hines, his own words, lack of judgment.

00:10:22.960 Hunter Biden's lack of judgment. And when his other partner, Devin Archer.

00:10:29.140 Joined the Burisma board, he said working with Burisma was unacceptable, unacceptable.

00:10:33.920 So John Kerry's stepson said, I ain't going to be a part of this.

00:10:36.780 I don't know what you guys are doing, but I'm not part of John Kerry's stepson, who's an associate of Hunter Biden, says this is too far.

00:10:42.200 You shouldn't do it. Actually, in that same interview that that we just heard from Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden admits that he had a conversation with his father at the time when he joined the Burisma board.

00:10:53.180 And his father, Joe Biden, said, you better know what you're doing.

00:10:58.200 Well, here's what The Washington Post said he was doing.

00:11:01.340 The Washington Post reported that, quote, the appointment of the vice president's son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst.

00:11:15.260 So that's The Washington Post.

00:11:18.140 That's The Washington Post.

00:11:18.840 It's not exactly a conservative outlet.

00:11:20.980 I saw another headline.

00:11:23.520 This was from The New York Times.

00:11:25.120 I wrote it down.

00:11:26.520 The New York Times headline, 2015.

00:11:28.640 Joe Biden, his son, and the case against a Ukrainian oligarch.

00:11:33.600 Even The New York Times admitting this is an oligarch's company.

00:11:37.700 It's crooked and it involves the Bidens.

00:11:40.400 Now, it'll be interesting to see tomorrow if The New York Times or Washington Post are willing to remember that they wrote those stories because, you know, they've shown a real pattern, especially The Times, of just echoing whatever the House Democrats say.

00:11:53.680 So they may suddenly forget all about this evidence of corruption.

00:11:57.680 But, you know, it wasn't just The Washington Post, New York Times.

00:12:00.900 It was also members of the Obama administration.

00:12:03.180 So when Hunter Biden was named to the board, Obama's special envoy for energy policy, quote, raised the matter with Biden, with Joe Biden, with Joe Biden, because he was so concerned about the conflict of interest.

00:12:20.640 Not only that, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kent, another one of the Democrats' star witnesses of this impeachment hearing,

00:12:26.800 He testified that he, quote, raised his concerns, that he had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody the U.S. government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back, and that could create a perception of a conflict of interest.

00:12:43.920 You don't say. I think that's the understatement of the year.

00:12:46.380 Do you know what he was told?

00:12:47.680 What?

00:12:47.860 When he raised it, he was told that the vice, the vice president, vice president Joe Biden, didn't have time to deal with it.

00:12:57.120 I bet he didn't.

00:12:58.280 So you've got Obama appointees saying, wait, this is kind of a problem that this guy's on the board of Burisma.

00:13:05.300 So.

00:13:06.000 So here's what I want to know, because obviously there's so many people.

00:13:09.220 It's such a swampy story. 0.94

00:13:11.080 It's corrupt. 0.75

00:13:12.200 It's so obviously corrupt. 0.94

00:13:13.720 The whole arrangement with Hunter Biden, the whole company is corrupt.

00:13:16.900 When the Obama administration raises the concerns, which we've seen them do in writing, do we get an investigation into corruption here?

00:13:27.460 Well, we get exactly the opposite.

00:13:29.740 Okay.

00:13:30.040 Which is that Joe Biden publicly comes out and calls for the firing of the prosecutor that was investigating Burisma.

00:13:40.980 Of course.

00:13:41.960 And actually, because it's the Bidens, because they just can't control what they say.

00:13:48.820 Joe Biden bragged about this last year at a Council on Foreign Relations event.

00:13:56.360 He said in no uncertain terms, he went over there and he threatened to withhold money to Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor investigating his son for corruption.

00:14:07.920 Here's Joe Biden.

00:14:08.440 I remember going over convincing our team or others to convincing us that we should be providing for loan guarantees.

00:14:17.400 And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kyiv.

00:14:22.140 And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee.

00:14:27.140 And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor.

00:14:36.100 And they didn't.

00:14:37.260 So they said they had, they were walking out to the press conference and said, no, I said, I'm not going to, we're not going to give you the billion dollars.

00:14:43.960 They said, you have no authority.

00:14:45.540 You're not the president.

00:14:46.360 The president said.

00:14:47.160 I said, call him.

00:14:47.880 I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.

00:14:52.040 I said, you're not getting a billion.

00:14:53.420 I'm going to be leaving here.

00:14:54.420 And I think it was, what, six hours.

00:14:55.780 I looked, I said, I'm leaving in six hours.

00:14:57.740 If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money. 1.00

00:15:00.840 Oh, son of a bitch. 1.00

00:15:03.040 You got fired. 1.00

00:15:04.040 And they put in place someone who was solid.

00:15:07.120 You know what that sounds like to me, Senator?

00:15:10.500 That sounds like a quid pro quo.

00:15:13.140 That sounds exactly like what the Democrats are accusing President Trump of doing in this impeachment trial. 1.00

00:15:20.600 As Joe Biden put it, son of a bitch, they fired it. 0.98

00:15:24.820 Look, it was, when you look at the timeline, and I'll tell you, I'm tweeting out tonight a timeline, a detailed timeline. 0.99

00:15:35.400 That is worth looking at.

00:15:37.760 It's worth printing out.

00:15:39.280 I'll be tweeting it from at Ted Cruz.

00:15:41.420 But I'll say, you should see the timeline and also that video.

00:15:45.580 If you haven't watched the video of Joe Biden bragging about getting this prosecutor fired, you need to watch the video.

00:15:51.980 Because the news does not want to show that video.

00:15:54.040 It's even worse than that.

00:15:55.060 Because I hadn't really looked over this case in a while, all of the details about it, all of the videos, all of the timeline.

00:16:02.260 What the mainstream media and what the House Democrats are telling us is that this allegation of corruption in the Bidens and Burisma has been debunked.

00:16:13.440 Debunked, frivolous, a sham.

00:16:15.580 Let me walk through the timeline quickly.

00:16:17.120 I'm going to go back through it.

00:16:18.460 But it's worth seeing these dates one after another.

00:16:20.540 I encourage you to do that because it's so many names, it's so many dates, it's like all things that are corrupt, it's so confusing.

00:16:29.800 I think what the House Democrats are relying on is how confusing the whole thing is so that we don't pay attention to it, so we ignore the corruption.

00:16:37.220 So it starts early 2014.

00:16:39.220 Joe Biden is the point person for President Obama on Ukraine.

00:16:42.600 April 13th, 2014, Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's business partner, joins the board of Burisma.

00:16:50.960 April 28th, Britain's serious fraud unit freezes $23 million for money laundering from the oligarch who founded Burisma.

00:17:01.580 May 12th, just a couple of weeks later, Hunter Biden is named to the board of Burisma.

00:17:06.400 December 8th, the New York Times article says that the Prosecutor General, Victor Shokin, is investigating Burisma Holdings and the oligarch in charge.

00:17:19.380 Victor Shokin, this is the prosecutor that Joe Biden is going to wind up getting fired.

00:17:24.180 Right, and that House Democrats spent all day long attacking relentlessly today.

00:17:29.260 Here's one, and we didn't mention this before.

00:17:30.960 February 2nd.

00:17:34.080 February 2nd, 2016.

00:17:36.400 The oligarch's home is raided and his assets are seized.

00:17:42.420 This is February 2nd.

00:17:44.940 Joe Biden calls the president of Ukraine on February 11th, February 18th, and February 19th.

00:17:53.440 So three calls a little over a week after the oligarch's home is raided and his assets are seized.

00:18:01.020 February 21st, Burisma's lobbyist contacts the State Department and says, hey, we want a meeting with the deputy secretary of state.

00:18:14.320 And by the way, did I mention Hunter Biden's on our board?

00:18:17.940 This is in writing.

00:18:19.840 So just to pause for a moment, what it sounds like here from all the Joe Biden phone calls, we're talking about the waning days here of the administration.

00:18:27.980 What this sounds like to me is desperation.

00:18:32.880 So Devin Archer, March 2nd, a week later, Devin Archer sits down and meets with John Kerry, the secretary of state.

00:18:40.040 This is the other board member.

00:18:41.820 Then on March 15th, the assistant secretary of state calls for the prosecutor to be fired.

00:18:50.360 Then on March 22nd, during a call with President Poroshenko, Vice President Biden calls for the prosecutor to be fired.

00:18:59.580 So you've got a guy who's on Burisma's board.

00:19:05.380 Two guys on the board.

00:19:06.120 Two guys on the board.

00:19:08.200 You've got...

00:19:09.120 Making millions of dollars.

00:19:10.240 Making millions of dollars.

00:19:12.240 They then meet with the Obama administration.

00:19:15.100 And then all of a sudden, you get people in the administration calling for the prosecutor who's investigating Burisma to be fired.

00:19:21.060 And then on March 31st, Biden arrives in Ukraine, he's there personally, and he releases $1 billion in loan guarantees because the week earlier they had fired the prosecutors as he demanded.

00:19:38.360 You get the quid pro quo.

00:19:40.720 He delivers on it entirely.

00:19:43.220 Now, look, let me be clear.

00:19:44.500 Do I know for a fact that Joe Biden was corrupt and in on the corruption?

00:19:52.220 No.

00:19:53.680 You know why I don't know for a fact?

00:19:55.700 Because we don't have enough of the facts.

00:19:57.500 There's no investigation.

00:19:58.360 Nobody has investigated.

00:19:59.700 Think about the Mueller probe.

00:20:01.280 Think about the thousands and thousands of hours, the millions of dollars, the thousands of pages produced to investigate the president, to go after the president,

00:20:13.740 and the position of the House Democrats is for anyone to say, hey, investigate this and see if there was corruption.

00:20:22.380 That is fraudulent and a sham.

00:20:24.680 It is absurd.

00:20:28.000 I'm just trying to process all of this because you had two and a half years of the Mueller investigation into Russia based on very, very flimsy evidence that fell apart day by day over those two and a half years.

00:20:40.800 Then you had the impeachment inquiry into Ukraine corruption by the Trump administration because President Trump suggested that Ukraine investigate the corruption of the past administration that we've just been talking about for 15 minutes.

00:20:55.540 Yet the government has dedicated virtually no resources to investigating the actual corruption that is at the heart of this whole shame.

00:21:08.620 It's worse than that.

00:21:09.520 House Democrats blocked investigating it.

00:21:11.860 So among the most absurd moments were today, one of the House managers who was making the argument that there's no basis for investigating Burisma said, of the 17 witnesses we had, nobody testified that there was a reason to investigate Burisma.

00:21:27.320 Now, number one, that's not true.

00:21:28.660 A number of them said there was at least an appearance of conflict of interest.

00:21:31.700 But number two, the reason they didn't have witnesses testifying to that is because the House Democrats blocked all the witnesses when House Republicans tried to call them.

00:21:42.780 They only called prosecution witnesses.

00:21:45.020 They refused to call Hunter Biden.

00:21:48.320 They refused to call Devin Archer, so they couldn't ask them.

00:21:51.280 Do you know nobody has asked under oath a very simple question?

00:21:55.720 So, Hunter, a million bucks a year.

00:21:59.300 What did you do for that?

00:22:00.540 How did you earn that money?

00:22:01.800 Let me zoom out for a second here, because we now see, incontrovertibly, Burisma, corrupt.

00:22:09.500 Whatever deal landed Hunter Biden on the board, corrupt.

00:22:12.800 The actions of the Obama administration sure do look corrupt.

00:22:17.020 And even members of that administration said this all has a really bad appearance to it.

00:22:21.900 We don't want this sort of thing getting out.

00:22:24.200 And this all goes ultimately to Joe Biden.

00:22:26.960 What did he do?

00:22:28.560 Right.

00:22:28.700 Because his son was getting a million dollars.

00:22:31.700 You know, in the opening statements yesterday, Jerry Nadler is one of the House managers who leads the House managers.

00:22:37.040 He said there are hundreds of thousands of companies in Ukraine.

00:22:40.060 Why was Trump focused on this one?

00:22:44.400 Well, because it was the only company that we know of that had the son of the U.S. vice president make it a million dollars and impacting impacting potentially U.S. policy.

00:22:55.580 Look, Trump wasn't interested in the abstract in every form of corruption in Ukraine.

00:22:59.540 It wasn't like he was worried about someone sticking up a 7-Eleven.

00:23:02.120 Listen, this is corruption in the United States.

00:23:05.120 This is potential corruption of the vice president of the United States.

00:23:09.080 And it is always legitimate.

00:23:11.580 And in fact, it's the responsibility of the president to ensure you investigate serious corruption.

00:23:16.520 You know, just put simply, what it looks like from the outside is that the Democrats are accusing the president of doing what they themselves did.

00:23:26.680 That's exactly right.

00:23:28.720 They're accusing the president of withholding aid to Ukraine.

00:23:32.500 I mean, Joe Biden did directly withhold or threatened to withhold a billion dollars in loan guarantees to Ukraine.

00:23:39.580 And bragged about it on video.

00:23:40.760 And bragged about it on video.

00:23:43.740 They're accusing the president, by the way.

00:23:46.980 You know, one of their arguments is, well, you know, it's always improper to want to investigate a political rival.

00:23:55.240 Really?

00:23:55.720 Like the Obama administration did in 2016, sending in spies with wiretaps and tapping the phone and going after Donald Trump.

00:24:03.500 Like, they did it, by the way we know from the Inspector General report, based on all sorts of lies and deception from the FBI and DOJ.

00:24:12.740 But they did that.

00:24:13.960 They went after their political rival.

00:24:16.920 Okay, then here's what I want to know.

00:24:18.400 And hold on, hold on.

00:24:19.180 Final point.

00:24:19.760 One of their talking points that they said over and over again today is, cover up, cover up, cover up.

00:24:26.820 The Democrats are covering up Burisma like crazy.

00:24:31.240 They don't want to ask the question.

00:24:34.300 Why didn't they at least bring him in and ask the question, what did you do for the money?

00:24:39.640 Why didn't they, why don't they want to ask the question?

00:24:42.020 Because they don't want anyone to know.

00:24:43.400 Well, here's what I want to know then.

00:24:44.460 I've watched not as much of this impeachment trial as you have, because that's not possible.

00:24:49.760 But I've watched most of it.

00:24:51.940 Why is this not the only thing that the Trump team is talking about?

00:24:57.000 Why is it that if you went outside right now and polled 100 people, probably one of them, if that many, would have ever heard of Burisma?

00:25:05.320 Well, look, to be fair, the president was given no opportunity to call witnesses, no opportunity to cross-examine witnesses in the House.

00:25:14.040 So it was all a kangaroo court.

00:25:16.000 It was all one-sided.

00:25:16.780 It was all just the Democrats.

00:25:18.120 They covered up all the evidence of Burisma corruption. 0.89

00:25:22.620 But in the House, we're in day two of three days of the House's never-ending opening argument.

00:25:28.800 So for two days, the president's lawyers have been sitting there silently not allowed to speak.

00:25:34.900 So they're going to speak finally on Saturday.

00:25:37.220 And I hope and expect this to be a big, big part of what they say.

00:25:43.100 What I hope to see, I hope to see the president's lawyers walking through each step of that timeline calmly, carefully.

00:25:50.580 You know, the two clips we played on this show, I hope and expect to see the president's lawyer play both of those clips. 0.97

00:25:56.940 And in fact, I'd like to see the Joe Biden son-of-a-bitch clip played at least as much as the clips that the House managers have been playing over and over and over again until you want to run out and scream. 0.98

00:26:09.580 Of course. 0.98

00:26:10.200 I mean, what it seems like to me, I had done some research into Burisma and Hunter Biden and all of this, and I probably didn't know half of what we were just talking about tonight.

00:26:21.500 I hope that Burisma is the word that constantly is coming out there from Republicans, from the White House, from the president's defenders.

00:26:29.960 It's just so much to digest, and yet, simply put, the facts of it seem so clear.

00:26:37.720 You've got a corrupt Ukrainian company. 0.96

00:26:39.580 You've got a corrupt son of Joe Biden.

00:26:43.020 You've got a lot of evidence of corruption from the Obama administration.

00:26:46.640 And then the minute that President Trump wants to investigate the corruption, they accuse him of doing what they did and they impeach him for it.

00:26:52.980 That is exactly right.

00:26:54.700 And look, why did Joe Biden, he traveled to Ukraine over and over again, he jumped out front to lead and get this prosecutor fired.

00:27:03.260 Why was he the point?

00:27:04.400 Once he knew that his son was doing this, you know, it wouldn't have been that hard for Joe Biden to say, you know, I'm just going to recuse myself from Ukraine.

00:27:12.380 I'm just not going to be involved.

00:27:13.380 I'll let some, I'll let John Kerry worry about Ukraine.

00:27:15.980 I'm not going to be involved.

00:27:17.380 There's the whole rest of the world.

00:27:19.620 You know, he could have easily done that.

00:27:21.820 He made the choice to go forward, even though he knew that his son was making a whole bunch of money.

00:27:27.960 If that's not corruption, that's at a minimum, a whole lot of basis to investigate and at least find out what was going on.

00:27:37.340 Right.

00:27:38.080 We have to leave it there tonight.

00:27:39.740 I think there's, there is so much in that to digest so much that people probably haven't heard of before.

00:27:47.000 And yet that really ought to be the basis of what we're talking about, because that lies at the heart of impeachment.

00:27:52.980 It is the reason President Trump is innocent, and it is the reason President Trump will be acquitted by the Senate, is because a president has the authority to investigate corruption, and there was more than enough evidence of corruption to ask that it be investigated.

00:28:08.160 I want to get to one mailbag question at the very least.

00:28:11.320 You know, we now have a mailbag email address.

00:28:14.520 You can email mailbag at verdictpodcast.com.

00:28:19.820 So email your questions in.

00:28:21.000 We've been taking them on Twitter.

00:28:22.100 And you've got to make the pitch to subscribe and rate the podcast.

00:28:24.820 You've absolutely got to do that.

00:28:26.440 When you go to verdictpodcast.com, of course, subscribe.

00:28:29.760 And it really helps us if you leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

00:28:34.180 Please do that.

00:28:34.940 We're so pleased to now be in the top ten podcasts in the world.

00:28:38.720 So let's try to push it even higher.

00:28:40.860 Let's try to get the word out, because I think there's a lot of misinformation.

00:28:45.560 There's a lot of fake news going on on all the major networks when it comes to this impeachment trial.

00:28:50.700 And the senator is being gracious enough and hardworking enough to come straight from the Capitol here in the dead of night.

00:28:57.820 We're pushing one o'clock right now to get this information out.

00:29:01.280 And I think it's very, very important we do that for the country and for the truth.

00:29:05.360 So before we go, one mailbag question.

00:29:07.700 All right.

00:29:08.140 Fire away.

00:29:08.260 This is from Norman.

00:29:10.480 Hi, Senator Cruz and Michael.

00:29:11.900 I'm a big fan of your verdict podcast.

00:29:13.560 I have a question.

00:29:14.780 Can Ted circulate a Republican pledge to call Hunter Biden if Democrats vote for more witnesses?

00:29:21.080 I want to know who won't sign it.

00:29:22.620 I want to know who the rhinos are and vote them out. 1.00

00:29:25.480 Well, look, I appreciate that.

00:29:27.280 You're going to know.

00:29:28.400 So next week, we're going to vote.

00:29:30.360 The first vote we're going to have is whether there need to be additional witnesses at all.

00:29:33.880 And that's just a yes or no.

00:29:35.140 If we vote no, if there are 51 senators who say we've got enough, we don't need additional witnesses,

00:29:40.360 then we'll move to final judgment.

00:29:42.820 The president will be acquitted and this thing will be over.

00:29:45.020 So that's one outcome.

00:29:45.960 If, on the other hand, 51 senators say we want additional witnesses, then we're going to have debate and argue about who to call.

00:29:54.480 The case I've been making to the Republican conference is the principle of reciprocity, which is we're not going to do a one sided show trial.

00:30:01.660 If the prosecution gets a witness, the defense gets a witness, which means if the prosecution gets, say, John Bolton, who they've been talking about, then the defense ought to get Hunter Biden or whoever they want to call.

00:30:13.080 And I got to say, I think there is widespread agreement, if not complete consensus in the Republican conference.

00:30:20.020 But you'll see the vote next week, hopefully, if we go down that road.

00:30:24.180 Because in the House, you didn't get witnesses for both sides.

00:30:27.840 It was all stacked for the Democrats.

00:30:29.580 The president didn't get a single voice up there.

00:30:31.800 And the Senate Republicans are not wanting to make that mistake.

00:30:35.920 They want it to be fair because I think, as we've heard tonight, the truth is very damning for the Democrat case.

00:30:44.140 And it seems to be pretty good for the president.

00:30:48.000 Well, look, the Democrats, to coin a line, they can't handle the truth.

00:30:52.700 But we can here on the show.

00:30:54.440 So thank you very much, Senator Cruz.

00:30:56.480 We will have even more tomorrow.

00:30:58.220 In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:30:59.980 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:31:01.620 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:31:31.620 My Heart Podcast.

00:31:33.400 Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - January 25, 2020

Democrats Throw Biden Under The Bus

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