title:  Bitter Cruz Claims He ‘Doesn’t Know’ John Boehner, Forgets Boehner Once Hired Him To Sue A Democrat
text: Sen. Ted Cruz is attempting to stop the bleeding after a brutal dress down by his former colleague John Boehner became headline news.Boehner, who resigned as Speaker of the House last year and thus has absolutely nothing left to lose, told a Standford University gathering that he disliked Trump but absolutely reviled Ted Cruz. How much does Boehner hate Ted?The deeply Catholic former politician accused Cruz of being  Lucifer in the flesh.  He explained that his hatred of Cruz transcends politics:  I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.  John Boehner HATES Ted Cruz.This isn t exactly surprising. Most human beings seem to come to the same conclusion at one time or another. In fact, the more you get to know Ted Cruz the more likely you are to despise him. His old college roommate famously hates him.As a freshman, I would get into senior parties because I was Ted's roommate. OUT OF PITY. He was that widely loathed. It's his superpower.  Craig Mazin (@clmazin) January 10, 2016People might think Craig is exaggerating. He's not. I met Ted freshman week and loathed him within the hour. https://t.co/2ZrbTdjHJh  Geoff (@gacohen) January 20, 2016His former law colleagues famously hate him.In interviews with nearly two dozen of Mr. Cruz s former colleagues on the court, many of the clerks working in the chambers of liberal justices, but also several from conservative chambers, depicted Mr. Cruz as  obsessed  with capital punishment. Some thought his recounting of the crimes    dime store novel  was how one described his style   seemed more appropriate for a prosecutor persuading a jury than for a law clerk addressing the country s nine foremost judges.His fellow politicians hate him. I don t know how he s going to deal with Congress,  Bob Dole recently remarked.  Nobody likes him. When it comes to the junior senator from Texas, ignorance is bliss.Cruz s response to Boehner s blistering assessment of him was as telling as it was weak. When asked about it, Cruz pretended to not know the guy. Truth of the matter is I don t know the man,  Cruz said, adding that he d be surprised if he s said more than 50 words to him.  I ve met the man two or three times. Cruz wants us to believe that he has never spoken to the guy he worked closely with to shut down the government in 2013. Yikes.But more damning still, Cruz actually knows Boehner very well. He was his lawyer.Back in the  90s, Boehner needed a young conservative lawyer to help him destroy the political career of a Democratic rival. Ted Cruz was just the guy for the job.Per The Washington Post:The year was 1998. Shania Twain and Savage Garden were all the rage. Boehner was House Republican Conference chairman. He had decided to sue Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) for allegedly violating wiretapping laws.At issue was a recorded phone conversation in 1996 involving Boehner and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, among others. A Florida couple intercepted the call on a police scanner. The couple gave a recording of the call to McDermott, then the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee. (Gingrich was facing ethics sanctions.) McDermott shared it with the New York Times. And, well, Boehner wasn t happy.Cruz was hired, and even wound up publicly speaking in support of Boehner after   as was his plan all along   he used the publicity from the lawsuit to fundraise for his re-election campaign.It s hard to imagine that Cruz and Boehner didn t share more than a few late night gab sessions during that period. The relationship was certainly mutually beneficial. Boehner won his re-election and Cruz got to brag about taking down a Democrat and use that persona to sell his Tea Party agenda when he eventually got around to running for office.Lyin  Ted, indeed.Featured image via Win McNamee and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images