Jack Smith just pounced on Abby Grossberg’s secret Fox News recordings – and Ted Cruz should be panicking
When Fox News whistleblower Abby Grossberg appeared on the Nicolle Wallace show on MSNBC today, she revealed at least part of why Fox fired Tucker Carlson: his show was being run in the same kind of sexist manner behind the scenes that he was displaying on the air. That means Grossberg is likely to win big in her wrongful termination suit, and Fox is likely trying to minimize that by firing Carlson now. But there’s more. A lot more.
Grossberg said during the Nicolle Wallace show that she has about ninety total recordings from inside Fox News. An hour later, on the Ari Melber show, Grossberg’s attorney announced that Special Counsel Jack Smith has reached out in order to acquire some of those recordings. He didn’t specify which recordings.
It sounds like Smith’s interest isn’t necessarily in Tucker Carlson, but instead in other recorded conversations. One of them involved Ted Cruz and Fox host Maria Bartiromo discussing how to overthrow the 2020 election results before it even happened. Another recording involved Rudy Giuliani privately admitting to Fox News that he had no evidence the 2020 election was rigged.
Why would Jack Smith want these recordings? Giuliani is already clearly one of his criminal targets. Giuliani will likely try to use the reasonable doubt defense that he honestly thought the election was rigged, and that if he broke the law in trying to overturn the results, it was well intentioned. But a recording of him privately admitting that he had no evidence, at a time when he was breaking the law and publicly claiming he did have evidence, would destroy Giuliani’s defense.
As for Ted Cruz, it’s tough to say. For all of the widespread media reporting that Donald Trump and a number of his political advisers are criminal targets of Jack Smith, it’s still far from clear whether Smith is also targeting members of Congress. If so, it’ll be difficult for Smith to get convictions against anyone in Congress if he does pursue them. Merely pumping a fist in the direction of a crowd, or voting against certifying the results, is not going to get a criminal conviction against anyone. There would need to be additional evidence showing bad faith intent. This Ted Cruz recording could indeed provide that kind of evidence.
The key here is that Grossberg’s lawyer says Jack Smith reached out to him for these recordings, and not the other way around. That’s a more powerful thing than if Grossberg’s lawyer were merely saying that he called up Smith and offered him the recordings. It means Smith is all over this, and he’s acting in real time. There was no way he could have known of his own accord that Grossberg had these secret recordings up her sleeve. But now that Grossberg is talking, Smith is pouncing. Which is exactly what you want to see – unless you’re one of the suspects.
