'He admits it': 'Damning' recording shows Ted Cruz discussing how to challenge Joe Biden's election win

MSNBC's Ari Melber on Tuesday said that he had acquired a "damning" new recording of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) discussing how to potentially overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"I think that the country deserves to have a credible assessment of these claims and what the evidence shows and the mechanism to try to force that is denying certification on the sixth," Cruz told Fox host Maria Bartiromo on Jan. 2, 2021.

"'Forcing this reassessment,' as he so dryly put it, of [Joe] Biden's actual win," alleged Melber, "was for Cruz one step in a larger coup plot. And that's what the next tape I'm going play for you shows after the violence on Jan. 6th, there was, of course, the ongoing process of trying to overthrow the election Cruz early in that day right before the Capitol was breached was one of 11 senators denying. I should point out, the majority of senators didn't go that far. That's just one thing. Then there's step two, which you can hear yourself tonight."

"Who's deciding who gets inaugurated?" Bartiromo asked.

"It would be the results of the commission and what they find, and if they found credible evidence of fraud that undermines confidence in the electoral results in any given state they would report on that," Cruz told her.

Melber explained that this is a tape of Cruz thinking that he was talking in secret.

"He admits it," Melber continues. "You heard the question — who decides who gets inaugurated that's what this is all about. You have a certified winner. You have the courts having passed up any potential challenge. So, at that point, it was President-elect Biden, and Cruz answers this fake, made-up commission he and his Trump buddy were planning to create to bureaucratize a coup. That's what they were trying to do. That was his answer. That's how they were trying to steal the race. The references to fraud, we know, one, he didn't believe in those we have that on tape. B. more importantly, the judges and fact-finding we have in the country didn't find there was that kind of fraud and then 3. that's all just talk anyway because they're literally trying to steal it for Trump, so all the words in the middle are just the words to get there."

Hear the recordings below or at the link here.