Ted Cruz recalls watching hardcore porn with some Supreme Court justices

The Republican presidential hopeful says he learned about tube sites with William Rehnquist & Sandra Day O'Connor

Published June 30, 2015 2:00PM (EDT)

GOP presidential hopeful Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has written a book, and it is apparently full of fun little anecdotes. The Washington Post got a sneak peak at the conservative manifesto-cum-political memoir, “TK,” which comes out on Tuesday and charts some of the key points in Cruz’s history — such as, for instance, that one time he watched porn with some Supreme Court justices.

Cruz, who clerked for then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist after graduating from law school, recalls learning about the prolificacy of free porn online in some very special circumstances: While he was standing with his colleagues, his boss, and Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Via Washington Post:

"We were in front of a large computer screen gazing at explicit, hard-core pornography," Cruz wrote.

The reason? The court was considering a case challenging a law that regulated online porn. The clerks were older and not well-versed in the Internet, so court librarians set up a tutorial for the justices and their clerks on how easy it was to find porn online. Cruz watched as the librarian typed in the word "cantaloupe," though it was misspelled.

"A slew of hard-core, explicit images showed up onscreen," he wrote. "As we watched these graphic pictures fill our screens, wide-eyed, no one said a word. Except for Justice O'Connor, who lowered her head, squinted slightly, and muttered, 'Oh, my.'"

Oh my, indeed.


By Jenny Kutner

MORE FROM Jenny Kutner