I hear Cancun is nice
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a money-in-politics watchdog group, has filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee alleging that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz violated the upper chamber’s ban on members taking honoraria for speeches or other appearances.
The complaint, filed Wednesday, argues a deal Cruz struck with San Antonio-based radio group iHeartMedia to distribute his The Verdict With Ted Cruz podcast violates a federal law that only permits corporations of making charitable donations of $2,000 or less in lieu of directly giving an honorarium to a senator.
Those payments also can’t be made to political action committees, or PACs, according to the law.
[…]
The CLC’s filing follows a separate complaint filed last week in which the group and fellow watchdog End Citizens United asked the Federal Elections Commission to look into the same transaction between Cruz and iHeartMedia. The groups said the deal violates a U.S. law that says federal candidates can’t “solicit, receive, direct, transfer, or spend funds” on behalf of super PACs. .
The CLC filed its Senate Ethics Committee complaint separately because the committee has oversight of the upper chamber’s honoraria rules, [Danielle Caputo, the CLC’s legal counsel for ethics] explained. End Citizens United was not a party to that particular complaint.
See here and here for the background. I don’t think the likelihood of actual consequences is any greater with this complaint than the previous one, but I favor anything that annoys Ted Cruz. It’s right to do on principle, and while that may end up being its own reward, it’s still the right thing to do.
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