In an explosive new piece, the New York Times reports that Republican Sen.Ted Cruz failed to disclose a six-figure loan from Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank where his wife Heidi works, that he used to support his successful upset bid for Senate back in 2012. Cruz was required to report the loan (and another similar one from Citibank)—which may have been worth as much as $500,000—in filings with the Federal Elections Commission but never did so.
Instead, he reported putting some $1.2 million in unspecified "personal funds” into his campaign, claiming to the Times several years ago that he and his wife had “liquidated our entire net worth” to support his quest for public office. This turns out to have been a deception, uncovered because Cruz later filed personal financial disclosures with the Senate that detailed the two low-interest loans.
And, explains former FEC attorney Kenneth Gross, that’s a serious problem:
“They’re two different reporting regimes. The law says if you get a loan for the purpose of funding a campaign, you have to show the original source of the loan, the terms of the loan, and you even have to provide a copy of the loan document to the Federal Election Commission.”
In other words, reporting the loans on his Senate disclosures at some later date didn’t and can’t fix the fact that Cruz failed to report the loans on his FEC reports at the time they were made—something the campaign claims was “inadvertent.”
But you can ask yourself: Does it seem more likely that Cruz was just careless and “forgot” he’d taken out huge sums from Goldman and Citibank—money he badly needed, seeing as his GOP primary opponent, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, was busy spending $24 million of his own money on the race? Or did Cruz, a fire-breathing tea partier who constantly railed against the Wall Street bailout on the campaign trail, have a reason for not wanting to tell the public that he’d borrowed money from some of the very same entities that had just destroyed the economy?
I can’t wait to see what Donald Trump thinks.