Pablo Manríquez, a Capitol Press congressional reporter, created a sensation when he posted a series of briefing documents about Ted Cruz’s donors on X on Tuesday. However, the posts were soon deleted because they violated the X rules.
The papers were related to Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, and contained details of upcoming meetings with potential donors’ families and professional backgrounds, political interests, and past donations. Manríquez’s posts contained unredacted pictures of the documents and also featured personal information such as addresses and telephone numbers.
In recent times, Ted Cruz has emerged as a diehard supporter of Donald Trump, his party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee. Interestingly, he had run against him ahead of the 2016 election in a bitter primary campaign. Ted will be crossing swords with Democratic Representative Colin Allred. A survey by YouGov and the University of Texas put him ahead of his opponent, with him getting 46% approval while his opponent managed 33%.
On X, Manríquez wrote, “Someone, presumably a staffer, left a folder full of briefing documents on TED CRUZ donors in the Senate Refectory.”
The documents reveal that Ted was scheduled to meet eight donors who had collectively pledged $19,500. The pledged amount has not been paid, and the documents posted on X gave biographical information for the eight attendees along with their pictures.
The documents said that Cruz was scheduled to meet Ronald Lauder, a billionaire businessperson and former U.S. ambassador to Austria under President Ronald Reagan. The meeting was to take place at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. at 12 p.m., and Cruz was seeking to contribute $119,200 to his senate campaign.
The paper also detailed more meetings that are scheduled in the future, which included James and Barbara Reibel, from whom the Senator is seeking an $11,600 campaign donation, as well as Peter Thoren, who is the associate of Ukrainian-born businessperson Sir Leonard Blavatnik. He is expected to contribute $59,600.
However, the posts were deleted by X because they violated X rules, which prohibit posting anyone’s private information, such as home phone numbers and addresses, without their permission.
After his posts were deleted, Manríquez posted a 17-second video addressed to his detractors.
He said in the clip, “Just a quick message to my haters who are calling me names on the internet for publishing Ted Cruz’s donor itinerary for the next couple of days,” before showing his middle finger to the camera.
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