Roger Sollenberger, Salon

When Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, bailed out for the balmy climes of Cancún while the worst winter storm in recent memory stranded millions of his constituents without power, he hired a security guard to watch his home and care for his poodle, Snowflake. But the way the senator chose to pay for that help may attract the attention of the Federal Election Commission, which has not sanctioned the use of campaign funds for personal security.

Cruz appears to have tapped into both campaign funds and his taxpayer-backed Senate allowance for security expenses, some of them related to travel. The FEC bars candidates and elected officials from using political contributions for their own personal use, and Cruz may have violated this rule if he used donations to pay for a security guard for his Houston home or at other times outside his capacities as a candidate or officeholder. It would also appear to be a violation of the personal use prohibition if Cruz dipped into his campaign account to pay the guard to do household chores, such as caring for Snowflake. Last year, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo triggered an internal investigation for a similar alleged misuse of taxpayer funds, such as paying an aide to walk his dog.

Salon reported earlier this month that in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, the two Republican national congressional committees filed a joint advisory ruling request asking the FEC to allow lawmakers to fund personal protection details with campaign donations, but the issue is unsettled. While candidates can and do expense electronic security systems for their homes, the FEC has not ruled on whether the exemption extends to bodyguards....

The FBI has opened an investigation into the activities of a pro-Trump group that appears to have engaged in an off-the-books foreign influence campaign and violated IRS rules regulating the political activity of nonprofit organizations, Salon has learned.

The probe's scope includes two officials affiliated with the Urban Revitalization Coalition, a now-defunct organization which made headlines last year with suspicious cash giveaways to Black voters and subsequently lost its tax-exempt charity status, a person familiar with the investigation told Salon. The two men — Kareem Lanier and Darrell Scott, a Cleveland-area pastor and former Trump campaign official — also used the URC as a vehicle to "solicit donations" from foreign nationals, including influential Turkish businessmen, while they worked with Trump administration officials to attract new investment in "Opportunity Zones," economically disadvantaged areas targeted for new incentives under the former president's 2017 tax bill.

Salon reported the Turkish connections in a two-part series last September....

Last month, veteran political attorney Cleta Mitchell was forced to resign as a partner at the prominent Washington-based firm Foley & Lardner after it became clear she had secretly aided former President Trump's efforts to overturn the election results, in violation of the firm's policy.

It's been a rough few months for Mitchell: The firebrand conservative activist and political lawyer was listed as an officer on a nonprofit run by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, which is now part of a federal fraud investigation. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a friend and client of Mitchell's, has attracted legal scrutiny for allegedly misusing political contributions. Shortly after Mitchell's departure from Foley & Lardner, the firm appears to have taken steps to resolve newly-discovered issues with its own super PAC.

Cleta Mitchell was born Cleta Deatherage in 1950, in Oklahoma, where she served in the state legislature from 1976 to 1984 — as a Democrat focused on women's rights, believe it or not. In the 1990s, she changed her party affiliation to independent after the federal government investigated and convicted her husband, Dale Mitchell, of bank fraud, fining him $1.3 million in restitution and sentencing to five years' probation. Though the judge in the case suggested that Dale had lucked out by avoiding prison time, the episode convinced Cleta Mitchell that "overreaching government regulation is one of the great scandals of our times," and she soon became a registered Republican....

One day before the Georgia Senate runoff elections — and two days before the Capitol insurrection — a leadership PAC attached to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a mystery advertising company that had previously bought copies of Cruz's book, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission. The expenses raise questions about whether the controversial conservative senator (and Cancún frequent-flyer) used those political campaigns, and Donald Trump's attempt to subvert the democratic process, to raise money for himself. That could push the FEC to issue a ruling on a pending issue that could have consequences for former President Donald Trump's fundraising.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

Over the course of 2020, the Cruz-affiliated Jobs, Freedom, and Security PAC paid $1.2 million — nearly 80% of its operating budget — to a company called Reagan Investments LLC for "sponsorship advertising." The only other committee to register any disbursements to that company was Trump Make America Great Again, for a fundraising promotion for Cruz's books in December, according to The New York Times. ...

A political nonprofit with ties to longtime Trump associate Roger Stone, which was supposedly created to challenge the 2020 election results, has missed two federal deadlines to disclose how much money it spent and received before and after the election. Furthermore, the law firm that employed the group's registered agent told Salon that she no longer works there, and her LinkedIn page appears deactivated.

"Committee to Stop the Steal" was registered with the federal government as a 527 tax-exempt political organization on Oct. 16, a few weeks before the election, by a clerk at a Southern California personal injury firm called Jensen & Associates. The IRS does not require 527 groups to disclose their donors, but it does mandate that they publicize how much money they raise and spend, including in post-election and year-end reports. Committee to Stop the Steal has missed the deadlines for both.

Jensen & Associates is led by Paul Rolf Jensen, a friend of Stone's who has represented the right-wing provocateur in an array of matters for at least two decades. The firm's website appears to have been unattended in recent months, but an archived version from last February does not mention political work. While Jensen himself isn't listed on the IRS registration for the Committee to Stop the Steal, the group's listed address is a UPS Store mailbox located near the firm's physical address, and its custodian of records, Ashley Maderos, worked at Jensen for a time as a post-bar law clerk....