Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, shown at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, helped pay for his 2012 election campaign in part by taking out personal loans from Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 
 
 Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, shown at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday, helped pay for his 2012 election campaign in part by taking out personal loans from Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Photo: Ryan McBride/ Zuma Press 
 
 WASHINGTON—Texas Sen. Ted Cruz didn’t disclose to election officials a pair of loans he took from Wall Street banks when he first ran for the Senate in 2012, an omission that could violate campaign rules. 
 
 Mr. Cruz, a Republican, helped pay for his 2012 election campaign in part by taking out personal loans from Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that were eventually worth a total of between $500,001 and $1 million, according to financial disclosure forms that he filed with the Senate. Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, worked for Goldman Sachs at the time. There is no indication that his wife was involved with the loan. 
 
 Mr. Cruz disclosed those loans to Senate officials as required by congressional rules but didn’t tell federal election authorities about the loans, as required by election rules. 
 
 The omission was first reported by the New York Times on Wednesday. 
 
 Kenneth Gross, a campaign finance lawyer for Skadden Arps and a former Federal Election Commission general counsel, said that if a “candidate borrows funds to finance his campaign and puts those funds in his campaign, the candidate must disclose the original source of those funds.” 
 
 Mr. Cruz told reporters late Wednesday that “those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings. If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we’ll amend the filings. But all of the information has been public and transparent for many years and that’s the end of that.” 
 
 A spokesman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Citigroup also declined to comment. There is no allegation that the banks did anything improper. 
 
 Under the Senate’s financial-disclosure rules, senators and candidates for the Senate must make public information about their assets, income and debts. Under Federal Election Commission rules, candidates must disclose the source of funds for their campaigns. Mr. Cruz disclosed to the FEC at the time that he had put roughly $1 million in personal funds into his election campaign, but he didn’t disclose that the source of that money may have been the loans he received from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs at about the same time. 
 
 At the time of the 2012 Senate race, Mr. Cruz was being outspent by Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who was considered the favorite and spent more than $20 million of his own money on the race. 
 
 Mr. Cruz first disclosed the loans on his congressional financial disclosure forms in July 2012, a few months before the election. Those filings show that he took out a “margin loan” of between $100,001 and $250,000 from Goldman Sachs earlier in 2012. Mr. Cruz had a brokerage account with Goldman Sachs and he told reporters Wednesday that he took out a margin loan from that account. 
 
 Mr. Cruz’s July 2012 financial report to the Senate also shows that he took a “line of credit” from Citigroup of between $250,001 and $500,000. 
 
 The loan from Goldman was later increased to between $250,001 and $500,000, according to subsequent financial disclosure reports for 2012 that Mr. Cruz made after being elected to the Senate. 
 
 The senator’s financial statements for 2012 show that he paid off both the loans from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup by the end of that year. ||||| Play Facebook 
 
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 Ted Cruz on Wednesday night dismissed a New York Times report that he failed to properly disclose a loan from Goldman Sachs during his 2012 bid for the U.S. Senate, calling the matter merely a "filing error." 
 
 "It is an inadvertent filing question," he told reporters at a press conference in Dorchester, S.C. "The facts of the underlying matter have been disclosed for many, many years. It is not complicated. Our finances are not complicated." 
 
 The Times reported that the Cruz family took out a hefty low-interest loan from the bank, from which the candidate's wife took a leave of absence as a managing director at Goldman Sachs at the launch of the Texas senator's presidential run. That loan did not appear in the reports Cruz filed with the Federal Election Commission during his 2012 run. 
 
 "If it was the case that it was not filed exactly as the FEC requires, we'll amend the filings," Cruz said. "But all of the information has been public and transparent for many years." 
 
 Earlier Wednesday, the Cruz campaign called the charge an "issue of semantics." 
 
 "The campaign is going to ask the FEC what to do," a campaign aide said, noting the loan was previously disclosed as part of Cruz's personal financial disclosures when he entered the Senate. 
 
 The loan, which was for just under $500,000, was from his own assets, "not borrowed money," the campaign said. 
 
 But a story often part of Cruz's speech on the road is his family's decision to invest in the campaign with the family's own finances. 
 
 Cruz says on the stump that he and his wife "liquidated" their life savings to put into the Senate run. 
 
 The campaign says he personally fronted a $1.43 million of his campaign's financing from personal savings, sold stock, and this particular loan. 
 
 It also said on Wednesday night that Cruz ultimately repaid the loan in full but did not specify how. 
 
 The campaign said Cruz was not aware at the time the loan was taken out that he had to file the loan with the FEC and was just made aware of it by the New York Times' inquiry.
– Banks loaned Ted Cruz as much as $1 million during his first Senate campaign in Texas back in 2012, but you wouldn't know it from campaign finance reports. While Cruz eventually disclosed the loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs—each valued at $250,000 to $500,000—to Senate officials, he failed to inform the Federal Election Commission as required, reports the New York Times. At the time, Cruz spoke of how he and his wife put "our entire net worth" into the campaign. NBC News reports he used $1.43 million in personal funds. But "a review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign," per the Times. A Cruz rep admits the Goldman Sachs loan was used for the Senate race and a failure to disclose it was "inadvertent." She didn't comment on the Citibank loan, which the Times notes would have freed up other assets even if it wasn't used on Cruz's campaign. The Times notes, too, that disclosing the loans might have hurt Cruz's campaign, given that he was criticizing Wall Street bailouts and big banks. Cruz, who says the loans were borrowed against the couple's own assets, cites a "filing error," per NBC. "Those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings," he adds, per the Wall Street Journal. "If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we'll amend the filings."