Ted Cruz, who urged the Republican National Convention to "vote your conscience" the day before Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, was being paid handsomely by his former arch-rival, a new report says.
Donald Trump received access to the expansive donor email list in June — months before Cruz changed his mind and endorsed him — paying the Texas senator "tens of thousands of dollars, and more likely hundreds of thousands, that can be used to bankroll the Texan's own political future," according to a Politico report.
The exact financial arrangement between Trump and Cruz is unknown, but an email rate sheet obtained by Politico shows that Cruz asks campaigns to pay more than $22,000 for the right to send emails to his list of 280,000 donors.
Trump began soliciting Cruz's list before the Republican National Convention, during a period when the real estate mogul was still insisting his campaign was self funded.
The Trump campaign encountered problems with its email list over the summer when it allegedly violated federal election law for soliciting donations from foreign nationals. Politicians from Australia, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, and the United Kingdom reported receiving donation requests.
Despite attacks against his wife and his father, Cruz apparently thought it was appropriate to assist Trump's solicitation efforts.
In defense of Cruz's decision to rent out his email list, the senator's spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told Politico, "Renting out email lists is a very common practice among all campaigns."
Over the weekend, Cruz relented his public opposition to Trump, and formally endorsed the Republican nominee.
Reprisals from this announcement continue, including a heated interview on Glenn Beck's radio program today.
Beck, an adamant anti-Trump conservative, admonished Cruz after the interview, "I think I have to apologize and say, maybe, perhaps, those of you who said Ted Cruz is calculating and a smarmy politician, I think I may have to slightly agree with you and apologize for saying, ‘No, he wasn’t.'"
Watch the Beck-Cruz interview below, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
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