Edited sentence: , wrote that McAuliffe's involvement with Global Crossing compromised McAuliffe's ability to attack Republican ties to the Enron scandal during the 2002 midterm congressional elections.By 1999, McAuliffe sold his investment, which was then valued at $18 million dollars.Frank Rich of The New York Times contrasted McAuliffe's characterization of Enron as "a web of greed and deceit" with Mcauliffe's defense of his investment in Global Crossing.Howard Kurtz of CNN reported that McAuliffe sold his shares years before there was "any hint of trouble with the company" thus clearing him of any wrongdoing.In 1997, McAuliffe purchased a pre-IPO $100,000 stake in Global Crossing.In April 2005, former executives agreed to pay fines for failing to disclose "material information" in the company's financial reports, settling a three-year inquiry by the Security and Exchange Commission.In March 2004, former Global Crossing executives paid $325 million without acknowledgment of wrongdoing to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging fraud.McAuliffe has been criticized by political commentators such as William Safire  and Arianna Huffington  for his ties to Global Crossing, a company that went bankrupt in 2002 amidst what The New York Times called "many of the same accusations that have made Enron into one of the largest corporate scandals in history.Republicans ended up winning a majority in the U.Rick Perlstein, in his book review of McAuliffe's memoir, What a Party