Fox's Chris Stirewalt deflected concerns raised in a New York Times report that GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) allegedly received two loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank during his 2012 Senate campaign that were not disclosed properly.
On January 13 The New York Times reported that Cruz “put 'personal funds' totaling $960,000 into his Senate campaign. Two months later, shortly before a scheduled runoff election, he added more, bringing the total to $1.2 million.” However, The Times reported that the Cruzes' took out “two bank loans, each valued at $250,000 to $500,000” from Goldman Sachs and Citibank during the first half of 2012 and that "[n]either loan appears in the reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission."
On the January 14 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, Fox News' digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt tried to downplay the lack of disclosure on Cruz's 2012 FEC form by saying that the loans were “essentially a loan from the Cruzes to themselves” and that Cruz had reported the loan on other documents:
CHRIS STIREWALT: Ted Cruz is right, this is stuff he did disclose. If he didn't disclose it on the FEC, he disclosed it on the ethics forms. But most importantly here, this was essentially a loan from the Cruzes to themselves. They borrowed against their investments so that they could take that, dump the money into the Senate campaign, and then pay it back later. So this was not money from somebody else. This was not favorable treatment from somebody else. This is in a way, like somebody borrowing against their 401k so they can take out a mortgage loan.
While The New York Times report does admit that “there would have been nothing improper about Mr. Cruz obtaining bank loans for his campaign, as long as they were disclosed,” he could be violating campaign finance laws by failing to disclose the sources of the loans -- Goldman Sachs and Citibank -- on the FEC form. Importantly, “other campaigns have been investigated and fined for failing to make such disclosures.” Even though Cruz disclosed these loans on other forms -- which Stirewalt points to in defense of Cruz -- as campaign finance law expert and former election commission lawyer Ken Gross explained in The New York Times report, that would not be enough to satisfy the FEC requirement:
Kenneth A. Gross, a former election commission lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law, said that listing a bank loan in an annual Senate ethics report -- which deals only with personal finances -- would not satisfy the requirement that it be promptly disclosed to election officials during a campaign.
“They're two different reporting regimes,” he said. “The law says if you get a loan for the purpose of funding a campaign, you have to show the original source of the loan, the terms of the loan and you even have to provide a copy of the loan document to the Federal Election Commission.”
The New York Times speculates that to disclose these big bank loans “might have conveyed the wrong impression for [Cruz's] candidacy,” as Cruz had spoken out about “the political clout of Goldman Sachs in particular” when he said, “Like many other players on Wall Street and big business, they seek out and get special favors from government.”