Things are seeming a little fishy in Ted Cruz’s camp. It all has to do with a leadership PAC connected with Sen. Cruz (R-Texas), a mystery company, and some likely unwelcome attention from the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

I’ll explain. It all begins in the days before the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Only one day before the Georgia Senate runoff — and the failed insurrection two days away, the leadership PAC paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the aforementioned mysterious company that had previously bought copies of Cruz’s book, Salon reports. That’s what recent filings with the FEC. This has resulted in questions as to whether Cancun aficionado Cruz used these political campaigns and Donald Trump’s attempts to destroy democracy to fatten his wallet. And this may very well push the FEC to issue a ruling on an issue that’s in the works that could impact former President Donald Trump’s fundraising.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear about something that might hamper Trump, I’m a happy camper.

Throughout 2020, the Jobs, Freedom, and Security PAC, which has ties to Cruz, paid $1.2 million — almost 80 percent of its operating budget — to a company called Reagan Investments LLC for “sponsorship advertising.” Trump Make America Great Again was the only other committee to register disbursements to the investment firm, as it carried on a fundraising promotion for Cruz’s books in December, according to a report from The New York Times. But here’s where things get a little gummed up: The Trump group clearly marked the payment for “collateral: books,” and those who know a thing or two about campaign finance told Salon that the PAC’s payment classifications, which were all marked for “sponsorship advertising” were peculiar and opaque.

Then Cruz did a bit of traveling on January 4, 2021 — trekking to Georgia before the runoff elections, and his leadership PAC reported a $240,000 expense for “sponsorship advertising” to Reagan Investments. And that, Salon reports seem to correlate with another set of small donations that flooded the PAC in the days following. How much of the funds raised, if any, made their way to Republican runoff campaigns, is unclear. Cruz’s PAC spent a piffling few thousand dollars to support Sen. Kelly Loeffler (who fortunately lost). The fact is, most of the contributions rolled in after the runoffs had ended and the January 6 insurrection had begun. At the time Cruz had also joined a handful of GOP Senators to oppose the counting of the Electoral College votes.

But the situation gets even fishier from here.

Salon interviewed legal experts, and they said if the money went to promotional book sales, which is what the filings suggest, then the leadership PAC may be using Reagan Investments as a pass-through, enabling Cruz to keep the royalties, which range between 10 percent and 15 percent for hardcover books. Paperbacks are generally about half that. But, political candidates aren’t allowed to do that through their campaign committees. And there’s the fact that the identity of Reagan Investments is, well, murky.

How murky? Well, according to Salon, this murky:

“The PAC’s filings claim that Reagan Investments LLC is located in an office building across the street from the Texas state Capitol in Austin. The company does not appear in Texas business registries. Open Corporates records, however, show that a company by that name was organized in Missouri on Jan. 23, 2020 — two days after the PAC reported its first-ever payment to the company, of about $57,0000. The agent on that registration, James Thomas III, was involved with a scheme that unlawfully funneled dark money from a conservative nonprofit to a political committee, resulting in a $350,000 FEC fine in 2018.”

Writing for Salon, Roger Sollenberger interviewed Thomas, who went on to claim that he was simply the organizing agent and couldn’t remember who operated the company, or even what its purpose really was.

Then there’s a few more twists.

The company lists its address as in Austin, however, that address matches that of an office suite occupied by the Missouri-based consulting firm, Axiom Strategies. That company was founded in 2005 by Jeff Roe, the manager of Cruz’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign and served as an adviser to his successful 2018 reelection contest against Democrat Beto O’Rourke. Roe has also been tied to the dark money scheme, although the FEC didn’t cite him for a violation. Thomas told investigators he took the bulk of his instructions from Roe.

I’m going to cut to the chase here because the real story is very extensive and I just don’t have the room here to touch on all of it. There are key details I’m leaving out, so I really suggest you give the Salon story a read. I’m going straight to Cruz’s book, 2015’s A Time for Truth.

Sales for that book, drew scrutiny when The New York Times refused to place it on the bestseller list, noting “strategic bulk purchases,” and appeared inorganic. This prompted pushback from Amazon about the paper’s claim. HarperCollins, the book’s publisher, said at the time that it had “investigated the sales pattern” but found “no evidence of bulk orders or sales through any retailer or organization.”

As you might expect, the Cruz campaign got salty about it, putting out a press release demanding that the Times offer evidence or apologize.

“The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out. But their response — alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’ — said campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler at the time. “The evidence is directly to the contrary. In leveling this false charge, the Times has tried to impugn the integrity of Senator Cruz and of his publisher HarperCollins.

Seems to me that Cancun Cruz has done a good job of impugning his own reputation.

Salon queried the Cruz campaign for more information and it has not yet responded. However, an outgoing voicemail informs callers that book orders will take four to six weeks to fulfill, due to allegedly high demand.

I’m sure.