EXCLUSIVE — Ben Carson: Ted Cruz’s ‘Dirty Tricks’ To Affect Primary Voters

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson suggested that the controversy over Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign action during the Iowa caucus might be on the minds of voters ahead of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

“I suspect it may well,” Carson told Breitbart News. “We were in church this morning and the minister sort of alluded to it, talking about Christian values and politics.”

Just ahead of the vote, the Cruz campaign sent out notes and voicemails to precinct captains telling them to tell Carson voters that he would be suspending his campaign and to support Cruz instead. The Cruz campaign has said it only passed along a news report from CNN.

“I’ve said all along that the evidence is pretty clear and it should be very easy for people to make a judgment on this,” Carson said in response to a CNN statement, which it issued Saturday night that said Cruz “knowingly misstated” CNN’s pre-caucus report.

“The only issue is, is this acceptable behavior to voters? Obviously, it’s acceptable behavior to Washington politicians,” he said.

The Washington Post reported Cruz approached Carson during a commercial break during the debate Saturday night and requested a private meeting.

Carson told Breitbart News that he hopes Cruz dismisses the staff that was involved in spreading the false report.

“I would like to see something happen that would more or less ensure that this kind of thing does not continue to happen,” Carson explained when asked what he would like to see come out of a private meeting with Cruz.

“I kind of look at it when you find a problem, you fix it, you just don’t sort of sweep it under the rug,” Carson explained. “If it were me, I would find who the people were who disseminated this kind of thing who made no effort what so ever to verify it and I would dismiss them.”