BUCK: Right now, as I speak to you, Senator Ted Cruz is hammering Attorney General Merrick Garland and pressing him to withdraw that memo that he put out. Wanted to play for you… This was a highlight from just a few moments ago, Ted Cruz going at Biden’s attorney general.

The Biden DOJ has embraced Critical Race Theory.

AG Garland’s son-in-law makes big money from a company involved in teaching CRT. So I asked the AG if he sought an ethics opinion.

He refused to answer my question.

Apparently ethics aren’t a high priority in the Biden admin. pic.twitter.com/sxDG0gIpOT

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 27, 2021

CRUZ: Your son-in-law makes a very substantial sum of money from a company involved in the teaching of critical race theory. Did you seek and receive a decision from an ethics adviser at the Department of Justice before you carried out an action that would have a predictable financial benefit to your son-in-law?

GARLAND: This memorandum is aimed at violence and threats —

CRUZ: I just asked the question. Did you seek an ethics opinion?

GARLAND: It has no —

CRUZ: Did you seek an ethics opinion? Judge, you know how to ask questions and answer them. Did you seek an ethics opinion?

GARLAND: You asked me whether I sought an ethics opinion about something that would have a predictable effect on something. This has no predictable effect in the way that you’re talking about.

CRUZ: So if critical race theory is taught in more schools, does your son-in-law make more money?

GARLAND: This memo has not —

CRUZ: If critical race theory is taught in more schools, does your son-in-law make more money? Yes or no.

GARLAND: This memorandum has nothing to do with critical race theory or any other kind —

CRUZ: Will you answer if you sought an ethics opinion?

GARLAND: I am answering the best I can.

BUCK: I love it. Ted Cruz. Just so you know, Ted’s a… I like the senator from Texas. When he gets en fuego, you better watch out and this is one of those moments. He knows. What is this, the attorney general who puts out this bizarre memo that now, Ted Cruz, asking him to withdraw it… His son is involved in an education discriminatory of sorts that teaches CRT in schools, you know, part of this diversity and inclusion apparatus, Clay, where people get paid 10 grand to show up and tell some kids they’re oppressed and other kids they’re oppressors.

CLAY: That is a fantastic bite. Did you hear Merrick Garland quivering? You could basically hear his voice quivering as he got quizzed there. And this is what we need, right? We need aggressive questioning of people in positions of power at what their underlying motives might be. Now, I think Merrick Garland blew it, and we’re gonna play for you another clip when we come back in this next segment analyzing what exactly is going on as it pertains to that memo that you’re referencing for the Department of Justice.

But Merrick Garland I think what you said is significant, Buck. He was sold to us as a very moderate choice for both the Supreme Court and the attorney general. And what has happened, I believe unfortunately, is we are seeing this guy has no backbone, and he is terrified of the woke element of his own party turning on him. And so when he has an option to pick a rational, reasonable, adult choice.

Which would be saying to people, “Hey, the Department of Justice and the FBI don’t need to be involved in contentious local school board election,” he made the opposite decision. He knows that constitutionally there’s no basis for the letter that he wrote. It was entirely politics based.

And he is getting lit up — justifiably — for that decision. And I love to see it. And I hope maybe this will help him have a little bit more steely spine. But based on the way he was collapsing under that questioning from Ted Cruz, I ain’t too confident this guy’s got a spine to stand up for anything right now, Buck.

BUCK: Come back into more of this in a moment with the fiery exchanges on Capitol Hill with the attorney general.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: There is an absolute filleting going on up on Capitol Hill right now with Merrick Garland getting destroyed over the memo the Department of Justice was involved in, the FBI was involved in, saying that they needed to be investigating parents based on the statements that they were making at schoolboards.

That is an absolutely incredible fireworks display as Merrick Garland, like I said, just getting filleted. I want to play a lot of people these different cuts. We just heard Ted Cruz going avenue Attorney General Merrick Garland. I want you to hear Senator Cornyn, also from Texas, going after Merrick Garland on Capitol Hill this morning. Let’s play cut 24.

CORNYN: Can you imagine the sort of intimidation, the sort of bullying impact that a memorandum from the Department of Justice would have and how that would chill the willingness of parents to exercise their rights under threat of federal prosecution?

GARLAND: The only thing this memorandum is about is violence and threats of violence.

CORNYN: Did you consider the chilling effect your memorandum might have on parents exercising their constitutional rights? I think you can answer that yes or no.

GARLAND: I don’t believe it’s reasonable to read this memorandum as chilling anyone’s rights. It’s about threats of violence. It’s in a rising tide of threats of violence. That’s the reason that we responded as quickly as we did.

CLAY: He’s quivering during this testimony, Buck.

BUCK: He knows that there’s no way to explain this and make people who are being honest think anything other than this was essentially, “Nice free of speech you got there parents; be a shame if something happened to it.” What is he even talking these threats against parents?

First of all, I think a school board member recently attacked a person parent at one of these meetings so keep that in mind. This can go both ways. And any violence or threats of violence that would happen at any local meeting or counsel, city council, you know, the voting for dogcatcher, doesn’t matter. That can be handled by local law enforcement. The attorney general’s office put this out.

Why? Because they got pressured by some left-wing activists that obviously have some hooks into the Biden administration to make parents think twice about showing up and not just speaking, but videotaping and having things go viral, and show what a bunch of feckless little commie bureaucrats are actually running a lot of these school systems across the country. They want to shut this down.

Clay, the Democrats remember the Tea Party movement and what it did in the second year of the Obama administration and was a game-changer. This parental revolution of concern has the same kinds of political implications if it continues to move the way that it is right now, and this was — to anybody who’s looking at it honestly — an effort to chill this. Kind of like when Lois Lerner started doing special audits and slowdowns of Tea Party groups going into the 2012 election, I might add.

CLAY: Let’s also not forget that Garland claimed he didn’t know anything about the cover-up of a Loudoun County rape that we’ve been talking about where Loudoun County is ground zero in Virginia not only for the gubernatorial election but also for this larger school board uprising as parents are frustrated, fed up with what they are seeing from their local school board.

Here is Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton ripping Merrick Garland over the Loudoun County issue. Listen to this, cut 26.

Merrick Garland’s performance as Attorney General has been shameful. He should resign in disgrace. pic.twitter.com/oyRg9Sc2NV

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) October 27, 2021

COTTON: Scott Smith, whose 15-year-old daughter was raped.

GARLAND: (silence)

COTTON: She was raped in a bathroom by a boy wearing girls’ clothes, and the Loudoun County School Board covered it up because it would have interfered with their transgender policy during Pride Month. And that man, Scott Smith, because he went to a school board and tried to defend his daughter’s rights, was condemned the internationally. Do you apologize to Scott Smith and his 15-year-old daughter, Judge?

GARLAND: Senator, anyone, uh, whose child was raped as (sputtering) is a most horrific crime I can imagine and is certainly entitled and protected by the First Amendment to p-p-protest to their school board about that.

COTTON: But he was cited by the school board association a domestic terrorist which we now know that letter and those reports were the basis for your —

GARLAND: No. No, Senator. That’s wrong.

COTTON: Judge, this is shameful. This testimony, your directive, your performance is shameful.

GARLAND: That’s not —

COTTON: Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court.

GARLAND: (sputtering)

COTTON: You could resign in disgrace, Judge.

BUCK: Wow. It’s like he’s dunking on him the ball, stealing it back, and dunking on him again.

CLAY: You know that cut deep when he said, “Thank God you aren’t on the Supreme Court.” And then he follows it up by saying, “You need to resign in disgrace.” And you know what? I think Merrick Garland… Now, we know nobody in the Biden administration is actually gonna suffer consequences ’cause nothing happened to anybody in Afghanistan with the God-awful performance there. But Merrick Garland really should have to resign over that letter about school boards. It is such an unconstitutional abrogation of his responsibilities, and it’s so unacceptable that I can’t believe that he did it, and I can’t believe there’s not gonna be any sort of significant consequence for his job.

BUCK: Eric Holder didn’t resign over Fast and Furious; you can be assured this Democrat AG isn’t gonna resign over this one. But I’m with you. He should.