Ted Cruz responds to false claims he supports defunding the FBI: 'Leftie Twitter is gonna lie'

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation needs a "complete housecleaning" and that the IRS should be defunded in comments captured on video by an undercover left-wing activist.

Lauren Windsor, a political activist and founder of the web-based show "The Undercurrent," posed as a conservative and spoke to Cruz at rally in Atlanta hosted by Truth and Courage PAC on Saturday. Cruz attended the rally to support Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia who is facing incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in the November election.

Windsor secretly recorded their conversation and posted the video to Twitter, claiming that Cruz agreed to "defunding the FBI." But it is clear from the video that Cruz said no such thing.

Windsor began their interaction by thanking Cruz for "all you're doing to fight for Herschel Walker and to take back the Senate. And I just think it's so important that, like, you guys are actually going to defund all those IRS agents." Cruz did agree with that statement, responding, "Absolutely." He has previously called for the IRS to be abolished.

She continued, "I think it's imperative that you really have to defund the FBI after all the witch hunts that are going on." But Cruz started to shake his head side to side.

"It is horrific, the abuse of power at the FBI, and its wrong. And there needs to be a complete housecleaning that happens at the FBI," Cruz told Windsor. She followed up, asking, "Are y'all gonna be able to do that when you retake the Senate?" And Cruz said, "I think we need to fight to do that and we need to fight to have real oversight."

Cruz never agreed with the idea of defunding the FBI or said anything about defunding the bureau.

Steve Guest, a special advisor for Cruz's communications team, accused Windsor of "brazen dishonesty" for her framing of Cruz's remarks.

Cruz responded himself after several people shared Windsor's videos and accused him of being anti-law enforcement.

"Leftie twitter is gonna lie — it's what they do — but every word I said is true," Cruz tweeted Tuesday afternoon.

The senator's call for a "housecleaning" at the FBI is consistent with his criticisms of the FBI execution of a search warrant at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home on Aug. 8. The FBI has accused Trump of illegally taking classified materials with him to Mar-a-Lago and refusing to turn those documents over to the National Archives.

Cruz called the FBI raid on Trump's home "unprecedented" and echoed the former president's accusations that the Biden administration had "weaponized" the Justice Department against its political opponents.

"Congress must demand answers. We need hearings; we need subpoenas. Dems in charge will refuse, but the American people deserve to know why Biden is using the FBI as his political enforcers. Tin-pot dictators do that, but that's not how America works," Cruz tweeted on Aug. 8.

President Joe Biden has denied having any advance knowledge of the FBI plan to raid Trump's home, which was personally approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland. The FBI presented to U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart evidence of probable cause that Trump violated a law before the judge approved the warrant.