I hear Cancun is nice
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is facing a formal campaign finance complaint over money sent from the company that syndicates his podcast to a political action committee supporting his reelection bid.
The complaint, filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission, alleges Cruz may have improperly directed radio distribution and marketing firm iHeartMedia to send over $630,000 to the Truth and Courage PAC, a group dedicated to Cruz’ reelection effort. The amount would exceed the $5,000 limit an officeholder is permitted to solicit for a super PAC.
End Citizens United and the Campaign Legal Center filed the complaint and are seeking a formal FEC investigation into the payments.
The terms of iHeartMedia’s payments are unclear. The company’s agreement with Cruz for distributing his podcast is not public. But the complaint asserts that Cruz could have violated campaign finance laws if he directed iHeartMedia to give to the super PAC by exceeding the solicitation limit.
The complaint also asserts the payments were improperly reported as “other receipts” rather than campaign contributions. “Other receipts” is generally reserved for interest or income on assets already owned by a PAC.
“By soliciting or directing $630,850.08 of iHeartMedia’s corporate funds to or on behalf of TCP in connection with his 2024 election, Cruz appears to have brazenly violated these federal campaign finance laws,” the complaint reads.
See here for the background. No one should get excited over the filing of an FEC complaint; the gridlocked-by-design nature of the FEC generally ensures that it can’t do much of anything, and even if it could the most likely outcome would be a modest fine. Still, this does accomplish the objective of extending the news cycle and giving the Allred campaign the chance to refer to the alleged violations in its advertising. There’s also an easy off ramp for Cruz if he wants to take it: Either tell iHeartMedia and his PAC to knock off the payments, or resign from the Senate and podcast full time, since that’s clearly something he actually cares about, unlike Senatoring. All problems should be this easy to solve. The Current has more.
Go for it! One reason the FEC is paralyzed is it’s still stacked with commissioners like the Trump apparatchik from Texas, Trey Trainor. The Trump stain is stubborn–it needs another cycle of strong bleach.