Not Ted Cruz
In a formal complaint sent to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today, Texans for Public Justice (TPJ) urged the agency to audit and investigate the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee’s failure to disclose to voters that Goldman Sachs and Citibank secretly financed his hotly contested 2012 U.S. Senate race.
Cruz campaign disclosures filed with the FEC during the 2012 election cycle reported that Ted Cruz loaned his campaign more than $1.4 million. Under federal election law, the Cruz campaign was legally obligated to promptly disclose the real source of these campaign funds: two large personal loans that mega-banks Citibank and Goldman Sachs made to Ted Cruz. Those bank loans would have been legal if the Cruz campaign disclosed them promptly. But Cruz ran in 2012 as a conservative populist who denounced the political power of the big banks that played lead roles in the 2008-2009 market collapse. Cruz broke federal law by not disclosing his huge Citibank and Goldman loans until well after the 2012 election was over. (Together Goldman and Citi have agreed to pay more than $12 billion to settle federal charges related to their roles in the mortgage-securities meltdown.)
As the New York Times recently reported, Ted Cruz first disclosed up to $1 million in Citibank and Goldman loans in a personal financial disclosure that he filed with the U.S. Senate on May 15, 2013. This belated disclosure came more than six months after Cruz’s election to the Senate. Meanwhile the Cruz campaign did not disclose this big-bank cover up to the FEC until January 14, 2016—more than three and a half years after he was legally required to disclose the loans to this agency.
“Ted Cruz lied to Texas voters to hide his campaign financiers on Wall Street,” said TPJ Director Craig McDonald. “Not wanting Tea Party voters to know that he was bankrolled by Citibank and Goldman Sachs, he concocted a fairy tale about his family liquidating its assets to finance his campaign. Politicians can lie to voters, but federal election law prohibits candidates from hiding the true source of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The FEC could impose civil penalties for Cruz’s non-disclosure violations in an amount up to 1,000 times the unreported loans. The FEC complaint process is detailed here.
Here’s the Chron story. A copy of the complaint is here. I hadn’t followed this story before – there’s plenty of linkage out there if you need a refresher – but it just got real now. I’m sure there’s no love for Ted Cruz in TPJ’s office, but as Ken Paxton and Rick Perry can attest, it’s no joke when they come after you. Maybe Goldman Sachs can spot you some money for attorney’s fees, Ted. Trail Blazers has more.
Big-time sleaze bag. Everyone raves about how smart this gob of spit is. Not seeing it. As a legislator, his instinct is to burn Washington if he doesn’t get his way. In a sane world, that crap would lead to his marginalization. But I’m sure he’s very nice.