he Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, already facing scrutiny for not disclosing a Goldman Sachs loan he used for his 2012 Senate campaign, also failed to disclose a second loan, from Citibank, for the same race, according to a letter he sent Thursday to federal election officials. The one-page letter said that the “underlying source” of money for a series of personal loans Mr. Cruz made to his Senate campaign in Texas included both bank loans, which totaled as much as $1 million. Both loans were “inadvertently omitted” from the required filings, the letter said. Previously, Mr. Cruz had acknowledged only using the loan from Goldman for his campaign.
The latest disclosure casts further doubt on his oft-stated story of having liquidated his entire family savings of slightly more than $1 million to fuel a come-from-behind win in the Republican primary. The tale has become part of a campaign narrative of a populist, scrappy Mr. Cruz putting everything on the line to overcome a wealthy establishment opponent.
His letter to the Federal Election Commission came after The New York Times reported that at least some of the “personal funds” Mr. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, put into his campaign actually came from a large loan from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz works. The loan, for up to $500,000, was secured by holdings in a brokerage account at Goldman Sachs. The Cruz campaign called the failure to disclose the loan an honest mistake and said it would contact the election commission for guidance on how to amend its filings.
The Citibank loan, also for as much as $500,000, was a line of credit, and it is not clear from Mr. Cruz’s letter what collateral, if any, was used to obtain it. Mr. Cruz’s presidential campaign has declined to answer questions from The Times about the Citibank loan.
Kent Cooper, a former election commission official, said the letter from the Cruz campaign was still “lacking critical information” that candidates must report, including the exact amount of the loans and whether there were any co-signers. Federal law required that those details, and more, were to be reported during the primary and general election campaigns.
“This failure to disclose to the public,” Mr. Cooper said, “meant voters in Texas did not have the required information.”
The Times report about the Goldman Sachs loan surfaced in the Republican presidential debate Thursday night, when Mr. Cruz was asked how he could have overlooked disclosing it. Mr. Cruz suggested that the issue was overblown, dismissing it as a “paperwork error” and saying he had disclosed the loans in another public filing.
That filing is the annual personal disclosure, where members of Congress list their assets and income. On those reports, he listed the bank loans — without indicating that they were used for his campaign.
It is the other type of report, which campaigns must file with the Federal Election Commission, that is at issue. On those reports, Mr. Cruz failed to disclose any bank loans he obtained to finance his Senate race. So, while it is true that Mr. Cruz listed the loans in his Senate reports, he has never disclosed in any report that they were used for his campaign.