Ted Cruz on Wednesday night dismissed a New York Times report that he failed to properly disclose a loan from Goldman Sachs during his 2012 bid for the U.S. Senate, calling the matter merely a "filing error."
"It is an inadvertent filing question," he told reporters at a press conference in Dorchester, S.C. "The facts of the underlying matter have been disclosed for many, many years. It is not complicated. Our finances are not complicated."
The Times reported that the Cruz family took out a hefty low-interest loan from the bank, from which the candidate's wife took a leave of absence as a managing director at Goldman Sachs at the launch of the Texas senator’s presidential run. That loan did not appear in the reports Cruz filed with the Federal Election Commission during his 2012 run.
"If it was the case that it was not filed exactly as the FEC requires, we'll amend the filings," Cruz said. "But all of the information has been public and transparent for many years."
Earlier Wednesday, the Cruz campaign called the charge an “issue of semantics.”
“The campaign is going to ask the FEC what to do,” a campaign aide said, noting the loan was previously disclosed as part of Cruz’s personal financial disclosures when he entered the Senate.
The loan, which was for just under $500,000, was from his own assets, “not borrowed money,” the campaign said.
But a story often part of Cruz’s speech on the road is his family’s decision to invest in the campaign with the family’s own finances.
Cruz says on the stump that he and his wife "liquidated" their life savings to put into the Senate run.
The campaign says he personally fronted a $1.43 million of his campaign’s financing from personal savings, sold stock, and this particular loan.
It also said on Wednesday night that Cruz ultimately repaid the loan in full but did not specify how.
The campaign said Cruz was not aware at the time the loan was taken out that he had to file the loan with the FEC and was just made aware of it by the New York Times’ inquiry.
