Factz

Ted Cruz Paid Himself $555K After Challenging Political Spending Law at the SCOTUS

Ted Cruz is no one’s paragon of honesty and integrity, probably not even his own.

So it’s no real surprise that he proudly used campaign money to pay himself $555K to cover old personal loans to his Senate committee.

This comes after Cruz successfully challenged a law that capped how much money candidates could repay themselves by taking the fight to the Supreme Court.

Ethics advocates warned that the decision could lead to corruption, and Cruz proudly proved them correct.

When Cruz first ran for Senate in 2012, he loaned his campaign over $1M of his own money.

The 2002 bipartisan Campaign Reform Act set a $250K limit on how much candidates could raise after the election to pay themselves back from loans to their campaign committees.

Cruz lost $545K of his own money after the campaign (although whether he “lost” it is up to speculation – since he successfully won the Senate seat, an investment in his own career that most people would consider well spent).

In 2018, Cruz lent his campaign $260K – $10K over the limit, which opened up a chance for him to challenge the act with a lawsuit, and it eventually made its way up to the SCOTUS.

In a 6-3 decision this week, the SCOTUS ruled the limit unconstitutional.



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