Ted Cruz 'didn't do anything' to get Texas' Trevor Reed out of Russia, dad says

Ex-Marine’s family doesn’t buy Cruz claim he worked behind the scenes to avoid angering Putin.


WASHINGTON — When Trevor Reed returned to Texas after more than two years in a Russian prison, his parents gushed about the Texas lawmakers who’d pressed for his release: Sen. John Cornyn and Reps. August Pfluger and Michael McCaul, among others.

Sen. Ted Cruz was notably absent from the list, and that was no accident, it turns out.

“He didn’t do anything,” said Joey Reed, a Granbury resident whose son, a former Marine, was freed as part of a prisoner swap at an airbase in Turkey. “He’s an embarrassment to the state of Texas, let me just say that. I don’t care what or who runs against him, I will work for their campaign to defeat that son of a b***h.”

Cruz’s office partly confirms the Reeds’ account. The senator refrained from taking a public stance on Trevor Reed’s captivity out of concern for antagonizing Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. But, aides said, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t working behind the scenes.

“We were repeatedly advised by Administration officials that my taking a public role in this specific case would be counterproductive, and that because of my role fighting to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, leaders in Russia may well have linked the two issues,” Cruz said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News. “That would have endangered Trevor and delayed his release.”

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2022/05/09/ted-cruz-didnt-do-anything-to-get-texas-trevor-reed-out-of-russia-dad-says/