The Washington Post has recently revealed how Texas senator Ted Cruz was "dangerously" involved in working with former U.S. President Donald Trump to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as U.S. president.

The newspaper examined Cruz's actions between election day and the day rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The examination shows just how deeply Cruz was involved, working directly with Trump to concoct a plan that came closer than widely realized to keeping him in power, said The Washington Post.

He proposed objecting to the U.S. presidential election results in six swing states and delaying accepting the electoral college results on January 6 in favor of a 10-day "audit" – thus potentially enabling GOP state legislatures to overturn the result, according to the newspaper.

"It was a very dangerous proposal, and, you know, could very easily have put us into territory where we got to the inauguration and there was not a president," Liz Cheney, a member of U.S. House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, said earlier this year.

"And I think that Senator Cruz knew exactly what he was doing. I think that Senator Cruz is somebody who knows what the Constitution calls for, knows what his duties and obligations are, and was willing, frankly, to set that aside," she said.

Former U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, whom Cruz worked for 27 years ago and regarded as someone "like a father," told The Washington Post that he believes that Cruz played a paramount role in the events leading to January 6.

"Once Ted Cruz promised to object, January 6 was all but foreordained, because Cruz was the most influential figure in the Congress willing to force a vote on Trump's claim that the election was stolen," Luttig said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Carly Fiorina, who Cruz said he would have picked as his 2016 running mate, tweeted on January 6, 2021, that "we must hold people to account," not just those who stormed the Capitol, but also "those who actively enabled this clearly unacceptable behavior like Senators," including Cruz.

She told Washington Post Live in May 2021 why she thought Cruz and others who aided Trump had spread unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.

"My only explanation is they're focused on short-term political gain, political expediency and clinging to power."

According to The Washington Post, Cruz is now making all the moves of a likely 2024 presidential candidate appealing to the Trump base.

(Cover: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, speaks during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 8, 2022. /CFP)