Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) seemed to have moved on from a story in 2016 alleging that his father helped Lee Harvey Oswald assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
In 2016, the National Enquirer published a photo showing Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz with Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump told Fox News at the time. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”
“I mean, what was he doing, what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.”
Under questioning from Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday David Pecker, the former CEO of the Enquirer’s parent company, indicated that they faked the photo at the center of the story to help Trump in the 2016 GOP primary.
“We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald. And mashed the two together. And that’s how that story was prepared — created I would say,” Pecker said.
Pecker testified that running negative stories about Trump’s opponents was part of a deal he reached with him in 2015 during a Trump Tower meeting that also included running positive stories about Trump.
At the time the story was published Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar” after he promoted it.
“He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth,” he added. “And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everyone else of lying.”
After Tuesday’s testimony Cruz told NBC News he is “not interested in revisiting ancient history.”
Pecker is the first witness in Trump’s ongoing criminal hush money trial in New York. Trump is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The National Enquirer’s “catch and kill” scheme —where the magazine buys rights to stories and decline to publish them— is central to the case and prosecutors allege that the hush money payment Pecker helped facilitate was part of a conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election.
