Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is up for re-election later this year, is playing defense as Texas Democrats have targeted his ties to Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm that has come under fire for allegedly improperly harvesting data from tens of millions of Facebook users.
Prior to working with President Trump’s 2016 campaign, Cambridge Analytica conducted business with Cruz’s presidential campaign from March 2015 to June 2016.
But while the data firm’s connection to the Trump campaign has come under intense scrutiny, the Cruz camp said that the company assured his presidential campaign that the data it provided was legally obtained.
“The campaign relied upon those representations throughout our engagement, which were reiterated by Cambridge Analytica upon inquiries of the media back in 2015, when they assured us the claims made in the press were false,” Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The statement comes in response to Texas Democrats criticizing Cruz on Monday for his ties to the firm.
“Ted Cruz will stop at nothing to weasel his way into power, even if it means weaponizing stolen information to manipulate people to like him,” deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party Manny Garcia said in a press release.
“Cruz’s campaign exploited personal information to create psychological profiles on millions of Americans,” he added. “All to keep lining the pockets of Cruz’s billionaire super PAC donors — like Robert Mercer, who funded this propaganda machine.”
Facebook announced on Friday that Cambridge Analytica, its parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories, former employee Christopher Wylie, and others would be suspended from Facebook in response to the reports that not all data that had been obtained had been properly deleted.
Cambridge Analytica has denied that it did anything improper with Facebook data.
The data firm has also been tied to other prominent Republicans, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
