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WASHINGTON – Sen. Ted Cruz is facing a formal campaign finance complaint over money sent from a company that syndicates his podcast to a political action committee supporting his reelection bid.
A complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission alleges that Mr. Cruz ordered the radio distribution and marketing company iHeartMedia to send more than $630,000 to Truth and Courage PAC, a group dedicated to Mr. Cruz's re-election campaign. He claims that he may have given inappropriate instructions. This amount would exceed her $5,000 cap allowed for officers to recruit super PACs.
End Citizens United and the Campaign Legal Center have filed a complaint and are seeking a formal FEC investigation into the payments.
iHeartMedia's payment terms are unclear. Mr. Cruise's contract with the company to distribute his podcast has not been made public. But the complaint alleges that Mr. Cruz may have violated campaign finance laws when he directed iHeartMedia to donate to super PACs in excess of solicitation limits.
The complaint also alleges that the payments were improperly reported as “other receipts” rather than campaign contributions. “Other receipts” are typically reserved for interest or income on assets already owned by the PAC.
“By soliciting or directing $630,850.08 in iHeartMedia corporate funds to or on behalf of TCP in connection with the 2024 election, Mr. Cruz appears to have brazenly violated these federal campaign finance laws.” The complaint states:
Mr. Cruz's podcast, “The Verdict with Ted Cruz,” has been at the center of ethics questions against Republican senators for years. The Election Legal Center filed a separate complaint against Cruz in 2022, alleging that iHeartMedia violated rules prohibiting lobbyists from giving gifts to senators when it featured his podcast. The San Antonio-based company spent more than $4 million on lobbying that year.
Mr. Cruz is also the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees communications, media and broadcasting.
Mr. Cruz claims he does not earn money from his three-times-a-week podcast and instead volunteers his time, much like a guest speaker on network news. The Senate Ethics Committee notified the Election Law Center last February that it had found that Mr. Cruz had not acted improperly.
But when Forbes and the Houston Chronicle reported on the company's payments to Truth and Courage PAC earlier this year, Mr. Cruz's claims appeared to be contradicted.
Truth and Courage PAC says on its website that it is “focused on ensuring that Ted Cruz is re-elected to the United States Senate in 2024.” The group has raised and spent more than $7 million since its founding, including more than $2 million raised this election cycle. The group operates independently of Mr. Cruz's campaign and is legally prohibited from coordinating strategy with him.
Mr. Cruz faces stiff competition from U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-Dallas), who has raised more than $21 million to unseat Mr. Cruz. Democrats are eager to flip Texas. This cycle, many Republicans are up for re-election in comfortably red states and face a difficult situation in the Senate.
Mr. Cruz and his supporters are wary after his narrower-than-expected victory over former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke in 2018. Mr. Cruz has raised more than $46 million this term through official campaign committees.
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