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Cruz on Trump lawsuit threat: Bring it on

SENECA, S.C. — Ted Cruz on Wednesday said Donald Trump's campaign had threatened legal action over a campaign ad. His response: Bring it on.

Cruz, the former solicitor general of Texas and an ex-Supreme Court clerk, was in full lawyer mode as he stood before a hotel conference room packed with reporters and cameras and challenged Trump to file a lawsuit, relishing the prospect of personally deposing his Republican rival.

The senator, armed with an easel that displayed Trump's campaign contributions to Democrats and a video of the ad in question, held forth for 40 minutes, seeking to steal the spotlight in South Carolina days before Saturday's primary, after being repeatedly hammered with criticisms from both Trump and Marco Rubio.

"Donald, if you want to file a lawsuit challenging this ad, claiming it's defamation, file the lawsuit," Cruz told reporters here after playing the ad, which shows clips of Trump espousing more liberal positions on issues like abortion from an interview with Tim Russert more than a decade ago.

Cruz, a Harvard-educated lawyer, went on to say he might conduct legal proceedings against Trump in court himself. And he warned that should Trump proceed, he and his lawyers would be "sanctioned in court for filing frivolous litigation."

Cruz's press conference comes as he seeks to recapture some momentum in the final days before Saturday's primary in a deeply conservative state that should be friendly territory, but where he instead lags well behind Trump.

Trump, always eager to throw a counterpunch, fired back at Cruz with a sharp statement. "He is a liar and these ads and statements made by Cruz are clearly desperate moves by a guy who is tanking in the polls — watching his campaign go up in flames finally explains Cruz’s logo," Trump replied in a statement. He went on to pledge, "If I want to bring a lawsuit it would be legitimate. Likewise, if I want to bring the lawsuit regarding Senator Cruz being a natural born Canadian I will do so. Time will tell, Teddy."

A new poll shows Trump blowing away the rest of the field in South Carolina ahead of Saturday’s primary. The real estate mogul boasts 35 percent of likely primary voters, according to the Monmouth University survey, while Cruz comes in second with 19 percent.

"One of the things I look forward to most of all is deposing Donald Trump," Cruz said. "And for that particular endeavor I may not use outside counsel. I may take the deposition myself. And I will say this: Whether in a deposition or in a court of law, getting Donald Trump under oath, under penalty of perjury, answering these questions? Well I'll point out, it didn't work out very well for Bill Clinton. Donald Trump does not want to be under oath answering questions about his own record."

But before that happened, Cruz said, the defamation case would be tried on the "substance" of whether Trump had a pro-abortion rights record, and he proceeded to argue that Trump did.

He laid out four points that, in his view, buttressed that argument: the Russert interview; Trump's offhand comment that his sister, a judge with a liberal record, would make an excellent Supreme Court justice; a list of donations to Democrats dating back decades, and his comment on the debate stage on Saturday that Planned Parenthood does have useful women's health programs.

"Donald Trump is a direct cause of Obamacare passing," he charged. "Donald helped fund the Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress."

At the event, which was a far more formal affair than Cruz's typical press gaggles, Cruz at times read from notes and read aloud the letter from Trump's lawyer. He also veered into into wonkish political territory, taking shots, for example, at Trump for retweeting an inaccurate tweet from his social media director, and explaining in detail the meaning of push polls.

Cruz also took the opportunity to tear into rival Marco Rubio, whom he dismissed as "behaving like Donald Trump with a smile."

Most polls show Rubio trailing Cruz in South Carolina, but the Florida senator has regained some strength here after a disastrous performance in New Hampshire. Rubio is receiving the endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Wednesday and has gained significant media attention for claiming that Cruz is running a negative campaign.

"It's unfortunate, his campaign has not gotten the traction he wanted," Cruz swiped, accusing Rubio of being the one to push nasty robocalls, push polls and false statements. "I recognize the Rubio campaign is disappointed with his third-place finish in Iowa, they're disappointed with a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire. The consultants running his campaign have apparently made the decision that their one hope for doing well is to make false attacks with no basis whatsoever."

In keeping with Cruz's lawyerly approach to the press conference, the event ended with his team passing out manila file folders, featuring what in a trial would be considered "exhibits." The folders contained the letter from Trump's lawyer, which warned that unless the Cruz campaign stopped running the ad, "we will...hold you jointly and severally liable to the fullest extent of the law for any damages resulting therefrom...and will look forward to doing it." Also included in the packets was Cruz campaign lawyer Chris Gober's response.

"To the contrary," he wrote, "We now plan to air the ad with greater frequency."

