“If @tedcruz doesn’t clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen,” Donald Trump tweeted. | AP Photo Trump warns he has 'standing to sue' Cruz on eligibility

Donald Trump on Friday issued a warning to Ted Cruz, alleging that he has “standing to sue” the Texas senator over questions of his birth and constitutional eligibility to serve in the White House.

“If @tedcruz doesn’t clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen,” Trump tweeted.


The broadside was an escalation in the accusations that the real estate mogul has been lobbing Cruz’s way this week. Trump called Cruz a liar in a series of tweets beginning Thursday that stem from allegations that the Texas senator’s campaign created push polls against Trump. Cruz has denied his campaign has any affiliation with such polls.

“Cruz caught cold in lie after denial of push polls like lies w/ @RealBenCarson. How can he preach Christian values?” Trump asked, tweeting out a link to a POLITICO story headlined “Cruz denies Trump accusation over ‘push polls.’”

Trump continued his criticism, adding that his campaign has been “getting reports from many voters that the Cruz people are back to doing very sleazy and dishonest ‘pushpolls’ on me. We are watching!”

Cruz won the Iowa caucuses last week, but his campaign and surrogates had spread false information to caucus-goers that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was suspending his campaign and encouraged his supporters to caucus for Cruz. His campaign initially denied any wrongdoing before Cruz issued an apology.

Trump accused Cruz of cheating and called for new caucuses in Iowa.

Last month, he also raised the birther issue regarding Cruz, telling The Washington Post that Cruz’s birth in Calgary, Canada, could be “very precarious” for Republicans, should he win the nomination. Trump and his campaign have since maintained that they have no problem with where Cruz was born but that Democrats would likely sue if he were to become the nominee.

“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” he told the Post.

Cruz has dismissed the chatter as “political noise,” insisting that it’s settled law that a child born abroad to a U.S. citizen is considered natural-born. While Cruz’s father is a Cuban immigrant, his mother is from Delaware.