An Annotated Guide to Senator Ted Cruz’s Fundraising Briefing

The documents, reported earlier this week by Pablo Manriquez, reveal Cruz groveling before a group of Washington bottom feeders in hopes of extracting cash from them for his campaign treasury.

A face even a mother could punch. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

On June 18, reporter Pablo Manriquez found a packet of briefing documents for Senator Ted Cruz that had been left in the Senate Refectory and concerned confidential fundraising matters, including an event planned for that very evening at the Capital Grille on Pennsylvania Avenue, which sits in the shadow of the US Capitol and not far from the White House. Manriquez posted the documents on Twitter, but the platform quickly banned them on the grounds that the documents included phone numbers and addresses. After redacting that information, Manriquez reposted the items at Capitol Press on Substack, which he writes with Arturo Dominguez.

I received images of some of the documents before they were blocked by Twitter and am publishing four pages specifically about the fundraising event, along with an annotated guide to the contents. The only thing Manriquez redacted that’s included here is the address of the Capital Grille, which is hardly Top Secret and can readily be found elsewhere.  

Page I of IV

• The cover page provides details about last Tuesday’s fundraiser at the Capital Grille, which was set to begin at 7:30 pm, and lists the names of the eight donors who were expected to attend and the minimum amount of money they had pledged to provide Cruz. The Capital Grille is one of the classic Washington restaurants whose menu prices are so high – $83 for the Bone-In Ribeye, $75 for the Tomahawk Veal Chop with sage butter, marsala jus and crispy prosciutto, and $35 for grilled asparagus if you can afford a side – that they deter the common riffraff and as a result are effectively sanctuaries for government officials, lawmakers, lobbyists and political donors. “It might as well be part of the Capitol complex,” The Hill once remarked of the restaurant, “like the Russell Senate Office Building or the Rayburn House Office Building, since you’re likely to run into almost as many members of Congress and staffers at the Capital Grille as you do on Capitol Hill.”

• The document was written on the letterhead of Fundraising Inc., which Cruz’s campaign and another of his political accounts, Ted Cruz Victory Committee, has paid more than $275,000 since January 1, 2023, the start of the current political cycle, Federal Election Commission records show. Shawnda Turner, who the fundraising firm assigned to staff the event, was an intern for Vice President Mike Pence in 2017 and subsequently worked for the Republican National Committee for about two years.

• Though not named here, Max Mallane, Finance Director at TAG Strategies, is another cog in the wheel of Cruz’s fundraising machine. Mallane authored most of the documents released by Manriquez, including tips to the senator on how to best extract the maximum donations at upcoming face-to-face meetings with Estée Lauder cosmetics company heir Ronald Lauder, ambassador to Austria during the Reagan administration and a top contributor to former President Donald Trump, who he pitched a plan to buy Greenland from Denmark; and John Loeb, ambassador to Denmark under Reagan and another Nepo Baby, whose grandfather Arthur Lehman was the founding president of Lehman Brothers.

  Mallane, who previously worked on the failed Pennsylvania senate campaign of TV personality Dr. Oz and as executive assistant to the late Foster Friess – a vile billionaire, even by the standards of vile billionaires – and huge donor to the GOP and Christian right, was also the president of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity at the University of Idaho, which somehow seems perfect. Cruz’s political committees have paid TAG Strategies roughly $1.1 million during the current cycle, which sounds like a lot on top of the $275,000 for Fundraising Inc., but it’s a pittance next to the roughly $55 million in political donations the senator has raked in during the past five years. 

Page II of IV

• As is the case with all eight donors who were expected at the Capital Grille, the nutshell bio of John Aymoth, the first on the list, which runs in alphabetical order, is heavily sanitized. Aymoth launched his PR firm EAW Group after working as a liaison with the business community during Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and it was retained by a number of corrupt, human rights abusing government clients in Africa, including Gambia, where the country’s then-leader Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh, who took power in a coup, retained him in May of 2000, a month after his security forces massacred 14 peaceful protestors; and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where his contract tragically ended the following year when President Laurent Kabila was assassinated. 

• There’s nothing as lurid regarding the two other donors named on this page, Kelly Cole and Wendy Donaho, but they’re both typical, banal Washington parasites. The former is a former Majority Counsel for the House Energy and Commerce Committee who managed communications and Internet issues and now lobbies for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, and the latter is Vice President of Government Affairs for Ericsson, and oversees dispensations from the company’s Political Action Committee. Cruz had strong grounds to believe he could squeeze Cole and Donaho for large sums of cash as, in the words of a factsheet his office put out last year, he’s “been a consistent advocate for fair telecommunications practices and champion of free enterprise to foster prosperity for businesses in this field.”

Page III of IV

• Greg Hynes is the National Legislative Director for SMART, the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail & Transportation Union, whose Political Action Committee shells out millions of dollars annually campaign contributions.

• Channing Pejic is Director of Political Programs for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and the former Deputy Campaign Manager and Senior Advisor to Arkansas Attorney General Lesie Rutledge, a demented crank who describes herself as a "Christian, pro-life, gun-carrying conservative woman" and has cited the biblical tale of Nehemiah, who constructed walls around Jerusalem, as justification for building a US border wall to keep out immigrants. Rutledge, who apparently is only superficially familiar with the Bible, didn’t seem to know that according to the original version of the story, Nehemiah emigrated to Jerusalem from Persia.

• David Planning joined Cornerstone Government Affairs two months ago after a long political career focused on larding taxpayer money on banks and small businesses. His roles included service in the Trump Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, Floor Director to House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, and Floor Assistant to former House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Cornerstone is a powerful lobbying firm that’s netted more than $90 million in fees during the past two years from hundreds of corporate clients, including a sizable swath of the S & P 500.

Page IV of IV

• Andrew Szente lobbies for Texas-headquartered Dell Technologies and, conveniently for Cruz, runs the firm’s cash-rich Political Action Committee. He briefly worked at  the House Ways and Means Committee in 2006 and has cashed in ever since, with long stints at Best Buy and the Retail Industry Leaders Association before taking his current position at Dell in 2022. 

• Brian Wild of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors previously served in the White House as Deputy Assistant for Legislative Affairs to Vice President Dick Cheney, held positions on Capitol Hill working under former House Speaker John Boehner and then-Whip Kevin McCarthy, and spent five years at the US Chamber of Commerce. “Brian is a ‘big picture’ strategist who has helped businesses and trade associations advance their policy priorities,” says his bio at the NAW’s website. “Known as a coalition builder, Wild has a track record of unifying third-party groups to create political momentum and achieve policy success.”

In other words, Wild, as with the other seven Cruz donors scheduled to be at last Tuesday’s fundraiser at the Capital Grille, is yet another denizen of the “Deep State” that Cruz professes to despise, even as he happily accepts lavish contributions from its leaders and foot soldiers – and does whatever he can to give them a good return on their investment and keep the money spigot flowing.