Trump raid was Biden ‘metastasizing’ Nixon-Obama tact of targeting political enemies: Ted Cruz

The Nixon administration compiled a political ‘enemies list’, while the Obama administration oversaw the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane project against former President Donald Trump, but President Biden ‘metastasized’ that tact with the raid of his Department of Justice on Mar-a-Lago, the senator said. Ted Cruz.

In an interview that aired Sunday on « Life, Liberty & Levin, » Cruz told host Mark Levin that Biden had taken the tactic of targeting political enemies with the power of the federal government to an unprecedented level.

« Democrats [have] turned to the Department of Justice,” he added. “They turned the FBI, they turned the intelligence community into political enforcers in a way that has never happened in the history of our country… In 230 years of our nation’s history this has never happened. never produced. »

« We have never seen the Department of Justice raid the home of a former president. It was done by a successor of the opposing political party. »

Biden’s Justice Department via the FBI raided Trump’s Palm Beach estate earlier in 2022, alleging the president illegally took classified documents with him when he left the White House.

Trump responded by criticizing the FBI’s politicization under Biden, pointing in part to a court case denying National Archives officials access to former President Bill Clinton’s White House audio tapes stored in the middle of his socks.

« [The raid and ensuing legal action] is done because they want to attack Donald Trump,” Cruz said. “And that was a fishing expedition. Each former president has taken documents from his administration. Barack Obama did. Bill Clinton did. George W. Bush did that. »

Trump recently criticized both Presidents Bush over the claim, with former Florida Republican Governor Jeb Bush joking to Fox News « blessing his heart » when asked about the 45th president’s comments.

In this March 11, 1989, photo of Donald Trump shakes hands with former President Richard Nixon during a gala honoring Nellie Connally at the Westin Galleria Ballroom in Houston, Texas.
(AP)

Speaking to Levin, Cruz said Biden’s lines of attack go back to the tactics of former President Richard Nixon, who enlisted White House adviser Charles Colson to produce a « list of enemies. »

Amid guilty plea for obstruction of justice in Watergate scandal, Nixon’s White House attorney John Dean reveals ‘enemies list’ and payments made to intelligence officer E. Howard Hunt linked to the infamous political heist.

Dean, now a staunch Trump critic who appears on various news channels, recently reflected on that time, saying he was « honoured » to make what he called Trump’s « enemies list » amid from a Twitter tiff on the Russia investigation.

Dean had described the Nixonian Enemy List as a way « to use the federal machinery available to fuck our political enemies » in a 1971 letter to Republican political activist Lawrence Higby.

Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton.
(Reuters/Larry Downing)

Cruz said the Biden administration’s actions are « as corrupt » as those on the original enemies list.

However, he added that in Nixon’s case, « the system worked. »

‘They stood up and said no,’ he said – referring to the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre in which Attorney General Elliot Richardson, Deputy William Ruckelshaus and Solicitor General Robert Bork resigned sequentially instead of following Nixon’s order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.

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« What Richard Nixon tried to do, Barack Obama succeeded in doing, » Cruz said. « And now under Joe Biden it has metastasized, where the institutional resistance of the DOJ and the FBI has been worn down. »

“They put tough supporters in the upper career levels of these institutions, and they now see themselves as the kicked thugs of the DNC,” he said. « And that’s not what the Justice Department is supposed to be. That’s not what the FBI is supposed to be. »