Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill is launching a digital ad in which her campaign claims the Trump administration and her Republican opponent's campaign violated the law by releasing her unredacted military records.
The issue has taken over the New Jersey governor's race in recent days, with Republicans advertising on a cheating scandal that took place at the U.S. Naval Academy when Sherrill was a student and with Sherrill focusing on the release of her personal information.
"It’s not just a scandal. It is illegal," a narrator says in Sherrill's ad, shared first with NBC News. "The Trump administration illegally releasing respected Navy helicopter pilot Mikie Sherrill’s private military records to Jack Ciattarelli’s campaign, records containing Mikie’s Social Security number, even her retired parents’ home address. Jack’s campaign distributed her records anyway — breaking the law."
The narrator goes on to say the Ciattarelli campaign "refused to return" the records, adding: "They broke the law to attack a veteran. Just think what Jack Ciattarelli might do to you."
Chris Russell, a strategist for Ciattarelli’s campaign, wrote on X last week that the documents were released in response to “a legitimate and perfectly legal” Freedom of Information Act request, noting that the National Archives apologized for the error.
In a statement Monday night, Russell said that Sherrill's campaign ad "again tries to conflate an unfortunate clerical error by the National Archives with the very real scandal that is engulfing the Sherrill campaign. She needs to come clean and release her records now."
CBS News reported that, while it was investigating Sherrill's potential role in a cheating scandal that occurred while she attended the Naval Academy, it obtained documents from a branch of the National Archives that included her "full military file," which were released to a Ciattarelli ally.
The documents included "Sherrill’s Social Security number, which appears on almost every page, home addresses for her and her parents, life insurance information, Sherrill’s performance evaluations and the nondisclosure agreement between her and the U.S. government to safeguard classified information." Sherrill's former superiors' Social Security numbers were redacted.
Ciattarelli ally Nicholas De Gregorio told CBS that Russell had asked him to dig into Sherrill and that he submitted a FOIA request for her records. The Sherrill campaign's legal counsel has sent cease-and-desist letters to the Ciattarelli campaign, Russell and De Gregorio to stop the dissemination of her military records, and it has demanded that the National Archives preserve information relating to the release.
The Ciattarelli campaign, meanwhile, has focused on Sherrill's alleged ties to the cheating scandal, calling on her to authorize the release of her disciplinary records from the Naval Academy. CBS News and the New Jersey Globe reported that Sherrill did not walk with her 1994 graduating class, which Sherrill explained as a consequence of her not reporting who was involved in the cheating scandal.
“I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk, but graduated and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving for nearly ten years with the highest level of distinction and honor,” Sherrill said in a statement to the outlets.
Ciattarelli's campaign has also launched a digital ad about the cheating scandal, highlighting lines from the New Jersey Globe's report.
"If there’s nothing to hide, why not be transparent? Voters deserve the truth. #ReleaseTheRecords," Ciattarelli wrote in an X post sharing the ad.
