Texan senator Ted Cruz admitted to a “paperwork error” of failing to disclose a $1 million loan from Goldman Sachs and Citibank to finance his campaign, which bruised his image of being a self-financed Presidential candidate.
Mr Cruz has long claimed that he liquidated all his own assets - a total of $1.2 million - to finance his ultimately successful bid to participate in the 2016 Presidential election, as reported by The New York Times.
But Mr Cruz was discovered to not have publicly filed the loans from two banks - Goldman Sachs, where his wife Mrs Cruz is managing director, and Citibank.
During the sixth Republican debate in Charleston Thursday night, Mr Cruz was questioned on his spokesperson's comment that failing to file the loan was “inadvertent”.
Mr Cruz said: “When I was running for Senate, unlike [Hillary] Clinton, I didn’t have hundreds of millions in the bank.”
“My wife Heidi and I took a loan and invested everything we have,” he said.
Mr Cruz was accused of not filing the external financing for his federal campaign with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
“I disclosed that loan on one filing - a public filing - but not with the FEC,” he said. “Yes I made a paperwork error, disclosing one filing and not another. If that's the best hit I can get from the New York Times they can go back to the well.”
A new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll has found this week that Mr Cruz has slipped further behind fellow Republican Donald Trump in the polls, with 20% of the votes going to Mr Cruz while a third prefer Mr Trump. In December, Mr Cruz was only 5% behind Mr Trump.
