An Austin-based watchdog group filed a federal complaint on Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Texas senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz. The group urged the federal regulators to investigate Cruz's undisclosed bank loans taken by his 2012 senate campaign.
According to Chron, the complaint alleges that Cruz broke election law in 2012 when he borrowed $1.43 million from Goldman Sachs. Cruz used the loans to fund his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2012, but mentioned the money as personal funds on official documents.
In the first half of 2012, Ted Cruz put $1.2 million in total to finance his campaign, which Cruz listed as "personal funds" in campaign finance reports. Cruz mentioned the fund came from his personal savings and assetts liquidation.
However, a review of personal financial disclosure that Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of his assetts. The review showed that in the first half of 2012, Ted Cruz obtained the low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, where his wife, Heidi Cruz, is an employee. Cruz also took the second loan from Citibank. The loans totaled $750,000 and increased to a maximum of $1 million before being paid down later that year, New York Times reported.
Ted Cruz failed to disclose loans in reports for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns.
Cruz's 2016 campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said last week that the failure to disclose the loans on documents was a mistake. She said the campaign seeks to update the old reports, the Guardian reported.
Frazier added that Senator Cruz used his personal savings to help fund his senate campaign as he said before. Frazier said Cruz did so by liquidating his savings, selling stocks and borrowing against an equity account.
The spokeswoman said that the campaign was going to contact the FEC to determine if the issue is the case. "If necessary, we'll be happy to update the reports from the 2012 election cycle," she added.
Frazier asserted that Cruz has made no secret of the loans. She pointed to the loans disclosure later in separate financial reports required of all federal elected officials.
At a GOP presidential debate last week, Cruz called the financial report "a hit piece". He declined questions of the loan, saying it was a small oversight overblown in the media. The Senator asserted that the failure of disclosing the loans was a paperwork error.
