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.
Cruz's podcast deal came under intense scrutiny this month after iHeartMedia reported in federal filings that it's contributed some $630,000 derived from "digital revenue" into a super PAC whose stated goal is "ensuring that Ted Cruz is re-elected to the United States Senate in 2024."
"This deal has seemed questionable since it was announced, and as more information has come to light, it's raised even larger concerns," Danielle Caputo, the CLC's legal counsel for ethics, told the Current.
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, Caputo explained. End Citizens United was not a party to that particular complaint.
Both Cruz's office and representatives for iHeartMedia were unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Congress passed the honoraria ban in 1989 as an addendum to the Ethics in Government Act, Caputo said. It passed amid outrage at the enormous speaking fees lawmakers were collecting from deep-pocketed interests.
"The reason this was banned was that people became aware their elected officials were collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from public interest groups for speeches and appearances," she said. "That raised serious questions about the kind of influence those groups have over them."
In other recent news about Cruz's iHeartMedia deal, the senator this week asked to delay making a federal filing that may shine more light on the transaction. In paperwork, he asked to move back the May 15 filing deadline for his U.S. Senate Financial Disclosures until Aug. 13.
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Sen. Ted Cruz hit with another federal complaint over his podcast deal
The new complaint, which follows a separate filing last week, accuses Cruz of violating the federal ban on honoraria for senators who give speeches.
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