Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) voiced his disapproval on Thursday of the January 6 Committee’s highly publicized primetime hearing set to air on multiple news networks Thursday night.
“The event tonight is a Democratic campaign ad,” Cruz told reporters outside the U.S. Capitol when asked about the hearing.
The hearing will feature the nine committee members — seven Democrats and two Republicans appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — who will present findings from their months-long investigation into the riot that occurred at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Cruz alluded to the committee enlisting former ABC News President James Goldston to help with preparations for the hearing.
“Democrats have hired a Hollywood producer to put on a campaign ad. They’re not seeking the truth. They’re not interested in what actually happened,” Cruz said. “They’re engaged in politics, and the reason they’re engaged in politics is they desperately want to change the subject because the Democrats’ policies have been [a] miserable failure.”
Cruz became a target for Democrats and the committee after he led a group of Republican senators in objecting to certifying the 2020 electoral college votes. The Washington Post noted Cruz’s communication with former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election and characterized Cruz’s actions at the time as a “last ditch effort” to overturn the election results.
As quoted in the Post and as Cruz has explained on numerous occasions, however, Cruz sought to “conduct an emergency 10-day audit and consider on the merits the evidence of voter fraud” in response to concerns, mainly from Republicans, that alleged widespread voter fraud had occurred in the election.
Despite Cruz’s efforts to address such concerns in a constitutionally sound manner, Democrats berated him at the time, accusing him of abetting “a violent insurrection” and calling for his resignation or expulsion from Congress.
Cruz indicated the committee’s hearing Thursday night, which will be the first in a series of public hearings, is “designed” to distract from issues that polls show the majority of Americans care most about, such as inflation and the rising cost of gas and basic necessities like groceries.
“The American people are understandably unhappy with those results. … Tonight’s hearing, it’s a kangaroo court designed to change the subject,” he said.
The New York Times published a revealing report this week headlined, “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message.” The outlet noted, “With their majority at stake, Democrats plan to use the six high-profile hearings to refocus voters’ attention on Republicans’ role in the attack.”
That headline “made me laugh out loud,” Cruz said, adding the outlet was “exactly right. It’s politics, but I don’t think it’s going to be very effective politics.”
The committee, whose work is costing millions of dollars in taxpayer money, says its Thursday hearing is intended to summarize its investigative findings to the public “about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.”
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.