Did Ted Cruz lie in January about overturning the election? Or did he lie about it in May?: newspaper

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has changed his tune about why he voted against accepting the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

"Sen. Ted Cruz was not about to let an upstart like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) outmaneuver him in pandering to President Donald Trump's base of support. So when Hawley announced a few days before Congress met to affirm the 2020 electoral college votes that he would object to the vote totals from Pennsylvania, Cruz put together a contingent of senators to make the same promise," The Washington Postreported on Friday. "The group, Cruz's office explained in a statement, was 'acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.' That assurance, buried at the bottom of the lengthy missive, was meant to address the obvious concern that blocking the counting of electoral votes ran the (infinitesimal) risk of derailing the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who, by all objective accounts, had clearly won the race."

"Let me be clear," Cruz said in his speech after the insurrection. "I am not arguing for setting aside the result of this election."

On Thursday, Cruz was claiming the opposite.

"Wondering why you didn't do more to fight for President Trump on Jan. 6," Cruz was asked by a woman while campaigning for Glenn Youngkin in Virginia.

"Well, I led the objection but the Senate voted it down," Cruz replied.

"But you could have done more. I mean, we all know that Joe Biden didn't win this election," the woman falsely claimed. "I know in my heart of hearts that Joe Biden did not win this election."

"I led the fight," Cruz argued. "At the end of the day, you've got to have the votes on the floor of the Senate."

The newspaper's Philip Bump fact-checked the Texas Republican.

"Senator, this is not the claim you made on Jan. 6. On that day, you were very clear that you were not objecting to Biden's election but, instead, hoping to spend more time addressing the concerns of voters. You were very clear that you were not simply trying to enact the will of Trump's supporters by introducing a barrier to the counting of electoral votes. You said then that your desired outcome was solely to assuage the unfounded concerns of people like that woman in Virginia," Bump wrote. "When that woman approached him on Thursday, Cruz could have objected to her false claim that Biden didn't win. He could have clarified for her that his goal on Jan. 6 was simply to spend more time evaluating the sanctity of the vote, even though there was no reason to do so. But instead Cruz tried to leverage his actions that day in exactly the way that he'd always intended: they were his way to tell Trump voters that he'd fought on their behalf. And so he did."

Read the full report.