The Time Ted Cruz Watched Hard-Core Porn With Two Supreme Court Justices

Sen. Ted Cruz once viewed hard-core pornography with two justices of the Supreme Court.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

That's one of the anecdotes in the Republican presidential contender's new book, "A Time for Truth."

The Washington Post has this early look:

Cruz served as a law clerk to then Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. One day, he was standing behind Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"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.'"

Cruz clerked for Rehnquist in 1996 after graduating from Harvard Law.

(H/T: Washington Post)