Thread: Ted Cruz made $1 million as lawyer while campaigning for Senate in 2012

Ted Cruz made $1 million as lawyer while campaigning for Senate in 2012

Ted Cruz wows conservative crowds, such as at the 2012 Republican National Convention, with some of the same speaking skills he used in the courtroom and is now using on the Senate floor.

By EMILY WILKINS ewilkins@dallasnews.com

Washington Bureau
Published: 04 August 2013 11:32 PM
Updated: 04 August 2013 11:34 PM

WASHINGTON — In between the fundraisers, debates and campaign stops for his successful Senate race, Ted Cruz earned $1 million as a lawyer last year.

Among his final clients were a businessman who pleaded guilty to bribery, a drug manufacturer that fired an employee who refused to break the law, and a company that illegally copied another’s tire design.

In 2012, Cruz argued one case at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and worked on three others. In 2011, he made $1.57 million as a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. Cruz argued four cases and worked on three others — and launched what was then a long-shot Senate run early that year.

The seven-figure salary from 2012, reported in Cruz’s first financial disclosure report as a senator, isn’t unusual for a lawyer of Cruz’s caliber, legal experts say. The income, earned before he was elected, clears congressional ethics rules.

But some of the values Cruz touted on the campaign trail seemed to contrast with positions he took in his final months as a hired advocate.

Cruz came under fire for some of his work during the hard-fought Republican runoff against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Dewhurst aired ads attacking Cruz for defending a Chinese tire company in December 2011 against charges that it unlawfully obtained blueprints from a Florida businessman.

Two months before he argued that case, Cruz defended a pharmaceutical company that had fired a sales representative for refusing to promote Accufuser, a pain control pump, for nonapproved uses. Cruz argued before a federal appellate court that the jury had not been asked to determine if the medical company, B. Braun Medical, had told the spokeswoman to break the law.

Deborah L. Gordon, who argued the case for the fired saleswoman, said attorneys at large firms tend to be “hired guns” more concerned with the hours they can bill for a case than questions of right or wrong.

“We all knew the vice president of sales [in the spokeswoman’s region] sat in on the meeting where all the sales personnel were told to sell a product in a way the FDA never approved,” she said.

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and I see how these defense lawyers act, and how they find ways to churn the file to make as much money as they can.”

Cruz’s side lost. The appeals court determined that, regardless of whether the original jury looked at whether the employer demanded or requested the spokeswoman break the law, there was enough evidence otherwise to show her termination had been illegal.

Final client

The final client Cruz argued for in court was Robert K. Mericle, who pleaded guilty to bribing two judges to give minors harsher sentences, helping his juvenile detention centers profit. Cruz argued before a federal appeals court that Mericle’s insurance company should provide Mericle legal representation.

Mericle lost, but Cruz couldn’t have had much time to dwell on the case.

Just two days after the arguments, Cruz faced Dewhurst and other primary candidates in their first debate, a task that consumes most candidates for weeks beforehand.

Not every case evoked controversy. A month after Cruz announced he was running, he argued a patent case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a French-based company. The company’s designs for a deep fryer were copied by a company based in Hong Kong. Cruz won the case.

Cruz’s courtroom prowess should come as no surprise to those who have heard him debate in the Senate. His speaking skills have helped him wow Republican crowds, and he’s considered a potential 2016 presidential candidate.

Cruz is no longer affiliated with the law firm, as Senate rules require.

Compared to other partners at his firm, Cruz earned slightly more than average in 2011, $1.57 million compared with the average $1.5 million. In 2012, he earned about two-thirds of the average $1.55 million that partners in his firm made, according to The American Lawyer magazine.

He made much more than his fellow Senate freshmen. The closest is Maine independent Sen. Angus King, whose income of $383,455 mostly came from an estate commission.

Cruz’s Senate salary this year is $174,000.

Not surprising

Though Cruz’s commitments on the campaign trail kept him from working full time, his high salary is not surprising, said Jan Baran, an ethics lawyer in Washington whose clients have included members of Congress. Baran estimated that someone like Cruz, who has argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court and served as solicitor general for Texas, could probably charge $800 to $1,000 an hour.

“Cruz was a better-known, more senior partner than the average,” Baran said, “You could easily argue that if he were working full time, he would have earned $2 million.”

Partners at law firms have their salaries and duties to the firm mapped out before the year begins. The payments aren’t based on work alone, Baran said.

While running for Senate in 1991, former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh’s law firm paid him $250,000 to be available for meetings and continuing to have his name attached to the firm.

Cruz’s contract was not so lenient. From the announcement he was running in January 2011 to his victory last November, Cruz was involved in at least 12 cases on the federal level and two at the state level, Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said. For one case, he helped file a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Preparing a case for an appeal is an enormous time commitment,” said James Ho, a lawyer who succeeded Cruz as Texas solicitor general. “I try to set aside a huge amount of time where I’m thinking of nothing but the case — day-to-day, overnight, all night, all weekend, everything.”

Offered a settlement

Gordon, who represented the drug saleswoman, remembers Cruz as courtly and formal in court. His approach seemed to be to “go around in circles a couple times and not get too aggressive.”

Gordon suspects Cruz realized his arguments did not go well. He called afterward to offer a $400,000 settlement, less than half of the $900,000 the lower court said his client should pay. She declined, and weeks later, the judges upheld the full amount.

A representative for B. Braun Medical did not respond to repeated calls and emails asking for comment.

Regardless of the losses, Ho said, Cruz was “far and away the finest appellate litigator anywhere in the state of Texas.”

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/polit...te-in-2012.ece

Ted Cruz Failed To Disclose Ties To Caribbean Holding Company

An old college friendship led to financial entanglement with a Jamaican private equity firm and a British Virgin Islands holding company. Neither was disclosed during his 2012 campaign.

By Massimo Calabresi Oct. 18, 2013

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz potentially violated ethics rules by failing to publicly disclose his financial relationship with a Caribbean-based holding company during the 2012 campaign, a review of financial disclosure and company documents by TIME shows. The relationship originated with a $6,000 investment Cruz made more than a decade ago in a Jamaican private equity firm founded by his college roommate.

When Cruz later reported the financial relationship in 2013, he failed to comply with Senate rules requiring full identification of the holding company and its location, triggering an inquiry by Senate Select Committee on Ethics staff and a second amended disclosure. After additional inquiries by TIME this week, Cruz said he is now in the process making further corrections to his disclosure.

Cruz told TIME Thursday that the initial failure to report the financial relationship was an oversight that he corrected last May on his own initiative in his first filing after his election to the Senate. “It was an omission that was inadvertent,” Cruz said.

He said the later amendment to the May filing was part of the normal interaction with Senate ethics committee staffers. “There is a routine back and forth with the staff with whom you file the report where they make inquiries,” Cruz says. He provided TIME with copies of a number of relevant documents supporting his explanation of the incorrect disclosures.

The legally required disclosures arise from an apparently dormant business relationship, according to documents reviewed by TIME. When his wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, served in George W. Bush’s Treasury Department in 2003, Ted Cruz went to considerable lengths to disclose his positions to the government, and to divest himself of his Caribbean holdings. But there was one exception.

In an amended financial disclosure form filed Oct. 1, Cruz said he still holds a promissory note from a Kingston-based company called Caribbean Equity Partners Investment Holdings LTD, worth between $100,000 and $250,000. No company with that name is registered in Jamaica. There is however a dormant Jamaica-based private equity firm called Caribbean Equity Partners Limited of which Cruz was a founding director and preferential shareholder, according to documents filed with the Jamaican government and reviewed by TIME. The firm held $100 million in assets under management in the mid-2000s, according to local news reports, with a focus on service and tourism investments in Jamaica and the Caribbean.

Cruz says he has not had any relationship with the private equity firm since he cashed out an initial investment of $6,000 for a total return of $100,000 a decade ago in a private agreement with his former college roommate, a Jamaican Rhodes scholar named David Panton, with whom Cruz co-founded the firm. Cruz says the agreement yielded him $25,000 in cash and $75,000 in the form of a promissory note on the holding company. The agreement included an oral provision for the accrual of reasonable interest on the debt, Cruz says. He says he initially deferred and then paid capital gains taxes on his profits from the investment.

After inquiries from TIME, Cruz provided a copy of the promissory note, which gives the name of the holding company as CEP Investments Holdings Limited. Cruz says the agreement is effectively an IOU to him from Panton, who is the owner of the holding company. Cruz says that while the holding company operates out of Jamaica, it is in fact domiciled in the British Virgin Islands.

Cruz says he failed to include the promissory note among his assets on his first financial disclosure in July 2012 when he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate because he had forgotten about it. “In 2011, there was an inadvertent omission of this promissory note, and after a conversation with my college roommate I remembered it,” Cruz says. Cruz’s initial filing was made in the heat of his campaign. He was fined $200 for filing the document late.

On his financial disclosure form for the year 2012, filed in May this year, Cruz listed the promissory note and said he received no income from it or the company. Cruz identified the note as a non-publicly traded asset among other holdings, which he listed by their ticker symbols. Cruz said the asset was a “Promissory Note from CEP investments holdings LTD.” Caribbean Equity Partners has no connection to Constellation Energy Partners, the American company with the ticker symbol CEP.

Cruz then received an inquiry from the Senate ethics committee staff about the listing, Cruz and his staff told TIME. The ethics staff told Cruz to amend his filing to indicate the nature of the promissory note, the entity that had issued it, the city in which the entity was located and the date the note had been issued.

Cruz did so in his Oct. 1 amendment, but that filing also contained errors, misnaming the holding company, incorrectly saying it was domiciled in Jamaica, and giving the wrong date for the promissory note. In the filing, Cruz, a former lawyer and magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, lists a wide variety of assets held jointly with his wife, including mutual funds and blue chip stocks totaling between $1.5 million and $4 million. Heidi Nelson Cruz is now an executive at Goldman Sachs.

There are no absolute Senate prohibitions on being a director of a company or holding shares in, or notes on, a private equity firm or a holding company, according to the Senate ethics rules. However, Senators are not allowed to receive remuneration for directorships or any other positions outside of their government service. While some serve pro bono on the boards of charities, the Senate Ethics Committee advises Senators not to serve on any boards because of potential conflicts of interest that might arise during their service on Senate committees of jurisdiction.

The ethics committee requires [pdf] full disclosure of all financial holdings including any subsidiary investments held by private equity firms and holding companies. The committee requires Senators to provide sufficient information to indicate the locations and nature of the businesses in which they invest.

The Senate ethics committee, which is governed by the Ethics in Government Act, routinely and frequently reviews and requests clarification of public disclosure filings from Senators, and there is nothing unusual about their doing so in the case of Cruz’s May filing. But ethics experts and Cruz’s staff agree that the nature of the relationship Cruz disclosed is unusual.

Cruz’s relationship with Caribbean Equity Partners LTD stems from his long-time friendship with Panton, who was Cruz’s debating partner and roommate at Princeton and Harvard. Panton and Cruz co-founded the company in 1998, and Cruz took a large minority share in the company, according to the firm’s articles of association.

Earlier this year, Panton discussed the relationship in an interview with TIME for a magazine profile of Cruz. When Panton set up a business in Jamaica, he said Cruz was working for a small law firm and “wasn’t making a lot of money.” But, Panton added, “Ted invested a fairly sizable amount of money in my business.”

In 2003, Panton told an established Jamaican newspaper, the Gleaner, that the firm focused on buyouts and mergers and acquisitions in the Caribbean basin and had $100 million in investments under management. The firm’s investments included a $6 million stake in the “Atlantis” tourist attraction in the Caribbean, and positions in a Jamaica-based coffee distributor as well as a hotel chain, according to the newspaper.

Among the firm’s additional sources of capital, according to the paper, were international development organizations, including the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank, which contributed to an investment fund established by the Jamaican government that was managed by Caribbean Equity Partners. Other investors included Delta Airlines, according to the paper.

Cruz says that he was only involved in the management of the firm part-time at its early stages. Cruz remains one of four preferential shareholders in Caribbean Equity Partners, according to the firm’s last filing with the Jamaican Office of the Registrar of Companies, which was made on Dec. 31, 2001. Annual filings are required by Jamaican law, according to officials at the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce. Cruz says he does not know the current state of the private equity firm. Cruz says he has not had any relationship with the private equity firm in a decade, is no longer a director or a shareholder, and never received any remuneration other than the $25,000 and the promissory note.

Cruz says he severed his ties with the company when his wife went to work at the Treasury Department during the administration of George W. Bush. “I sold my interest in it years ago,” he says. He provided TIME with a letter from an official at the Office of Government Ethics certifying his divestiture from three blocks of shares in two separate firms. The letter allowed Cruz to defer taxes on the capital gains from his initial $6,000 investment when he rolled the cash profits into another investment, Cruz says. Eventually, he says, he paid capital gains on the profits, using a $6,000 basis for the calculation.

One of the firms listed on the divestiture certification was Caribbean Equity Partners Limited (Jamaica), the firm in which Cruz was a director and in which he held ordinary and preferential shares. The other was Caribbean Equity Partners Limited (British Virgin Islands), an entity about which little is known. Cruz says it is not the same as CEP Investment Holdings Limited, the company on which Cruz currently holds the promissory note.

Panton now lives in Atlanta, Ga., where he is a partner and co-founder of Navigation Capital Partners. He did not return repeated calls requesting an interview this week. Cruz said he spoke with Panton this week to clarify his disclosure. Company documents list two directors of Caribbean Equity Partners in addition to Cruz and Panton. Neither returned calls for this story.

With reporting by Alex Altman/Washington, D.C.

http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/18...lding-company/

Ted Cruz did not disclose major bank loans during his Senate run

By Theodore Schleifer and Dana Bash, CNN

Updated 8:39 AM ET, Thu January 14, 2016 | Video Source: CNN

Now Playing Ted Cruz explains...
Story highlights

Ted Cruz failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans from the nation's largest banks when he ran for the Senate in 2012

Cruz did not report to the Federal Election Commission two loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs

Washington (CNN)Ted Cruz failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans from the nation's largest banks when he ran for the Senate in 2012, a potential violation of federal election rules.

Cruz did not report to the Federal Election Commission two personal loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs, where his wife works, during his come-from-behind win in the Texas Republican primary, campaign spokesman Catherine Frazier confirmed Wednesday.

The New York Times was the first to report the error on Wednesday.

The senator did eventually list the loans on personal financial disclosures, but the Cruz campaign acknowledged the mistake after the New York Times report was published.

"These loans have been disclosed over and over and over again," Cruz told reporters quickly after the news broke. "It is an inadvertent filing question. The facts of the underlying matter have been disclosed for many, many years."

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Frazier said the loans from Goldman and Citi were borrowed against their own money -- the couple sold stocks and liquidated their savings to finance the bid. She estimated the total loans were less than $500,000, and said he did not receive any special terms and has now paid off the loan. They are planning on working with the FEC to amend their prior filings, Frazier said.

"Now we realize that we should have disclosed it, yes," Frazier told reporters in South Carolina. "It's a matter of semantics in terms of listing that that was a loan and we're asking the FEC what we need to do to update it, if anything."

The news, on the eve of the next Republican debate in South Carolina, could pose a political problem beyond the arcane campaign finance requirements. Cruz's brand of Republicanism is cold toward concerns of major financial institutions, and he has pitched himself as a populist, evangelical everyman who gained political power through hard work and an appetite for risk.

Cruz frequently shares with audiences the decision by his wife, Heidi, and him to empty their assets into the campaign bank account in order to compete with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the overwhelming favorite in the crucial Senate Republican primary who invested $25 million of his own money. But he has not spoken of the loans from the financial giants, which are still politically unpopular after the financial crisis of 2008.

When asked by CNN's Dana Bash how he squared his image with the large loan from Goldman Sachs, Cruz played up the hard decision to pour their income into the Senate run.

"The premise of your question is not right," he said. "Heidi and I when we ran for Senate, we made decision to put our liquid net worth into the campaign."

Federal election records show Cruz extended loans of more than $1 million to his campaign during the 2012 cycle. Personal financial disclosure forms later filed show loans in that period totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars and as much as an additional $1 million.

Campaign aides on Wednesday were publicly treating the fracas lightly, sharing other examples of #CruzCrimes on social media and downplaying it as nothing more than a clerical overlook. A top aide to a rival campaign described the revelations as a cheap shot and non-issue.

Trump hints he'll take up Cruz citizenship issue in debate

CNN's Abigail Crutchfield and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/13/politi...ns-senate-run/

Club for Growth, leading donor:

https://www.opensecrets.org/politici...?cid=N00033085

As a Private Lawyer, Ted Cruz Defended Companies Found Guilty of Wrongdoing

Two cases Cruz handled before joining the Senate could become an issue during his presidential bid.

—By David Corn
| Thu Apr. 9, 2015 5:30 AM EDT

In his bio on his presidential campaign website, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) boasts of what he did as Texas solicitor general to defend the Second Amendment, the Pledge of Allegiance, and US sovereignty—all conservative causes. But Cruz does not detail another important chapter in his legal career: his work as a well-paid private attorney who helped corporations found guilty of wrongdoing.

After serving over five years as the state of Texas' top lawyer, Cruz in 2008 joined the Houston office of the high-powered international law firm Morgan Lewis to lead its Supreme Court and national appellate practice. He stepped down as a partner in the firm after being elected a US senator in 2012. During his stint at Morgan Lewis, Cruz, who casts himself as a politician who stands on principle, handled several cases that cut against his political stances. He twice worked on cases in New Mexico to secure $50-million-plus jury awards (though, as a politician, he has called for tort reform that would prevent these sorts of awards). He assisted a lawsuit filed by a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and nearly executed (though, as a politician, he has insisted the criminal-justice system functions just fine when it comes to capital punishment). And in one case, he filed a brief supporting President Barack Obama's stimulus (though, as a politician, Cruz has slammed this Obama initiative).

But much of the time, Cruz represented corporate clients. He was a lawyer for Kraft in a major lawsuit against Starbucks. He represented Pfizer when a California county accused the drug manufacturer and other pharmaceutical firms of overcharging. (In a win for Big Pharma, the Supreme Court tossed out the case.) He defended Eagle Freight Systems when drivers sued the company seeking unpaid overtime wages and expenses. (Cruz lost a bid to uphold a lower court ruling that shut down the drivers' suit. Two years later, when Cruz was no longer involved in the case, the trucking company prevailed.) In a controversial move, he represented a Pennsylvania developer who was a central player in a corruption scandal that exploited juveniles, handling a dispute this crooked developer had with his insurance company.

Cruz, a tea party favorite who calls himself a "courageous conservative," has railed against "crony capitalism" and decried "corporate welfare." He has boasted that he authored "legislation to end federal dollars subsidizing corporate fat cats." Yet as a private legal gun for hire—who billed at least $695 per hour—Cruz sometimes defended corporations that engaged in sleazy practices to screw the little guy or gal. Here's a look at two of those cases.

Tire Engineering and Distribution v. Shandong Linglong Rubber Company and Al Dobowi Ltd.: In this case, Jordan Fishman, a Florida-based businessman whose company designed and developed specialized mining tires, claimed that a former employee conspired with competitors in China and the United Arab Emirates to steal his designs and trade secrets, including his customer lists and pricing information. Fishman contended that his company lost $36 million after Shandong Linglong, a Chinese manufacturer, and Al Dobowi, a Dubai distributor, began marketing versions of his tires that were based on his stolen blueprints. A jury found in favor of Fishman's claim and awarded him $26 million, a finding upheld by a federal judge in 2010. Fishman's lawyers called this "one of the largest individual copyright infringement awards in US history," and one of his attorneys, August Matteis Jr., noted, "This case should serve as a bellwether for foreign multinational corporations who believe they can act with impunity, stealing intellectual property from a small US business and then avoid the reach of our judicial system."

But the case was not over: Shandong Linglong and Dobowi appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, claiming that the district court in Virginia that had overseen the case did not have jurisdiction over these companies and that the jury's verdict had been wrong. The two firms contended that US copyright law did not cover their overseas actions. Cruz did not argue the case before the appeals court, but he worked on the appeals brief filed by Shandong Linglong.

His side did not triumph. In a June 2012 ruling, the appeals court noted it was not persuaded by the foreign companies' "creative interpretation of applicable case law," and it affirmed the jury's award. By that time, Cruz was running for the Senate and in a hotly contested Republican primary against David Dewhurst, Texas' lieutenant governor. Dewhurst's campaign pounced on the case, running ads that assailed Cruz for defending a Chinese company that had plotted to wipe out an American small businessman. The ads questioned Cruz's patriotism. (PolitiFact rated Dewhurst's contention that Cruz had represented a Chinese company found guilty of stealing the tire blueprints "mostly true.") In response to the Dewhurst attack, Cruz maintained that he had merely worked on the brief, and he claimed not a single American manufacturing job had been lost to China as a result of the case. That was accurate, but Fishman noted he had been forced to lay off 40 employees in sales, design, and distribution. Cruz's work for a Chinese firm that pilfered secrets from an American did not cost him the Senate election, but it could become an issue for him in the 2016 presidential race.

Lynn Morrison v. B. Braun Medical: Morrison was a medical sales representative for B. Braun Medical Inc., a Pennsylvania-based company that manufactured and sold pharmaceutical and medical products. From 1998 until she was fired in 2007, she sold pain control products to hospitals in Michigan. Some years, she was one of the top sales reps for B. Braun. But she also caused a problem for the company. She repeatedly informed officials at the firm that she would not promote the "off-label" use of the company's medical products—this is the practice, often illegal, of encouraging medical professionals to use a drug or medical product in ways other than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration. She also told supervisors she would not participate in any illegal kickback actions.

Several times Morrison raised concerns within the company that B. Braun was engaged in shady practices. At a company training session in 2000, she later testified, trainers instructed sales reps to push off-label uses of Pentaspan, a blood volume expander. At a 2003 sales meeting, Morrison noted, a sales rep told her and others how to circumvent anti-kickback laws. At another sales meeting in 2006 that Morrison attended, B. Braun managers and sales reps were told to promote off-label uses of Accufuser, a pain control pump. After Morrison expressed objections to company practices, she maintained, B. Braun imposed upon her sales quotas she considered unattainable. She was dismissed when she did not meet these goals.

Morrison sued the company, contending that B. Braun had fired her because she had refused to violate the law. "This was essentially a whistleblower case," says Deborah Gordon, Morrison's attorney. "She was willing to stand up for not having her company break the law. It was clear they were breaking the law."

B. Braun did not respond to requests for comment.

After a trial, a jury sided with Morrison and awarded her $880,000. B. Braun appealed and hired Ted Cruz to argue the case in 2011, before the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Cruz had two parts to his attack on Morrison. First, he asserted that she had failed to prove that B. Braun had directed her to violate the law and that a claim of wrongful discharge required proof that an employer had instructed the employee to break the law. Second, Cruz argued that Morrison had not presented sufficient evidence that her refusal to violate the law was why she had been canned.

According to Gordon, Cruz called her following the oral arguments and offered to settle the lawsuit. "He started telling me that oral arguments went well for him," she says. "But that was not what I remembered. 'Well,' he said. 'I got the transcript.'" Cruz offered to send Gordon a copy. "Sure," she recalls thinking, "since he paid for it." When Gordon received the transcript, she reviewed it and concluded that the judges on the appeals court had been tough on Cruz's arguments. She decided not to settle.

Cruz's Senate office did not respond to requests for comment.

The appeals court soon reached a decision and soundly rejected Cruz's argument. "B. Braun's proposed definition of wrongful discharge…is an inaccurate statement of the law," the court declared. It also noted, "Morrison introduced sufficient evidence from which a reasonable juror could have concluded that one of the reasons that made a difference in B. Braun's decision to fire Morrison was her refusal or failure to violate the law." Cruz lost; the $880,000 award for Morrison was affirmed. As with the Shandong Linglong case, Cruz was not able to get a corporate wrongdoer off the hook.

To Gordon, Cruz—who had already established a reputation as one of the nation's leading appellate attorneys—had not come across as impressive or unusual. "He was a run-of-the-mill corporate defense attorney," she says, "who'd defend anything anytime a corporation wants to defend something."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ndong-linglong

Club for Growth is largest contributor.
Big Oil second largest contributor.
Big Lawyers in top 5 contributors.
Goldman Sachs is in top 5 contributors.
Goldman Sachs employs Heidi Cruz.
Goldman Sachs loaned Cruz money on his brokerage account to run for Office.
Goldman Sachs gives Heidi Cruz leave to help Cruz run for President.
US Chamber of Commerce represented by Cruz and his law firm.
Big Pharma like Pfizer represented by Cruz and his law firm.
Bush Administration hired both Ted and Hedi Cruz.

Is this a typical Tea Party candidate?

Is this a typical Mark Levin candidate?

Is this a typical Evangelical candidate?

Is this a typical Steve King candidate?

Did they not know or know and not care?

Either way, it's very interesting.