One journalist, Texas Monthly senior editor Erica Grieder, said she’d heard the rumors for months. She tweeted Friday that a reporter from a different tabloid outlet asked her in January about the rumor involving Cruz and the Texas-based Pierson. She found the rumor — that the pair had sex in a closet at a Republican event — to be dubious. “If the controversial Cruz had snuck off with the controversial [Pierson] at a public event in 2012, I’d have heard about it, years ago,” she tweeted.

Grieder heard the rumor again from a journalist while reporting in Iowa and put the claim before Cruz sources, none of whom found it credible. She added that given several outlets were chasing the rumor, one would presumably “have the evidence by now.”

“So, overall: those of you hyping #CruzSexScandal are pushing a smear against 5 innocent woman,” Grieder tweeted. “That’s pathetic & you should be ashamed.”