I want to welcome everyone to the beat.

I'll tell you we actually have more on that newsmaking interview we were just discussing.

We are going to get into that later tonight.

Our top story right now is a beat exclusive.

New, previously secret recordings of Senator Ted Cruz discussing an explicit strategy to overthrow

the election in advance of January 6th.

So there's some stuff that's familiar here because we all lived through January 6th.

What I have for you tonight is new.

It's secret until the night.

It's exclusive and it goes to the advanced plotting specifically four days prior.

So airing for the first time tonight are tapes I'm about to play for you.

They come on the heels of something that might be familiar.

Other Ted Cruz recordings that we recently reported would show how he himself doubted

that there was hard evidence that would win in court of Trump challenging the election.

And no, Trump did lose all those court challenges.

So when Cruz was saying that, it turned out that what he saw as weak evidence was weak

evidence.

Trump lost those cases.

Cruz knew it.

But by January, Mr. Cruz, Senator Cruz was not only bending to Donald Trump's plan

to vote against certifying the Biden winp on the 6th.

Senator Cruz was actively out plotting and selling a plan in advance as these secret tapes

...