Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign team is calling on the New York Times to either apologize for removing his book, A Time for Truth, from their best-seller list or provide something more substantive than the lame excuse it offered yesterday.

In a press statement released on Friday, the Cruz campaign noted that “this week’s #1 and #2 books on Bookscan are also #1 and #2 on the NYT list. But the #3 book, Cruz’s A Time for Truth, has been omitted altogether from the top twenty spots on the New York Times list.”

The campaign notes, “Cruz’s book sold more copies last week than 18 of the 20 books on the list.”

The statement put forward by the Times yesterday to explain the failure to place Cruz’s book on the list, the campaign says, is not credible:

The Times’s initial explanation was cryptic: “We have uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold.”

When the Times was roundly condemned for its obvious political bias, they issued a revised statement: “In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”

This statement is false, and the Times knows it.

As the Cruz campaign notes, “[t]here were no ‘strategic bulk purchases.’ Cruz spent last week on a nation-wide book tour, signing copies of his book at multiple locations. Booksellers at each event had long lines—sometimes over 400 people per event.”

“The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out. But their response—alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’—is a blatant falsehood,” Cruz campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler said in the statement.

“The evidence is directly to the contrary. In leveling this false charge, the Times has tried to impugn the integrity of Senator Cruz and of his publisher Harper Collins,” Tyler added.

“We call on the Times, release your so-called ‘evidence.’ Demonstrate that your charge isn’t simply a naked fabrication, designed to cover up your own partisan agenda,” Tyler demanded.

“If you cannot do so,” Tyler said, “then issue a public apology to Senator Cruz and Harper Collins editor Adam Bellow for making false charges against them.”