New Jersey GOP gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli said on Friday that he never saw Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill’s leaked military records, as his opponent has sought to attack him over its circulation.
“I never saw those files, nor did I put the request in. And anybody that states otherwise is lying,” Ciattarelli told anchor Dan Mannarino during a PIX11 News gubernatorial forum.
The New Jersey Globe and CBS News reported last month that Sherrill did not walk during her commencement ceremony at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994. Sherrill said she didn’t walk because she did not turn in some of her classmates caught cheating during a 1994 scandal.
CBS News also reported that the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) National Personnel Records Center made an error in releasing a largely unredacted copy of Sherrill’s military record, which included sensitive personal information, to Ciattarelli ally Nicholas De Gregorio.
Grace McCaffrey, the NARA acting director of congressional affairs, acknowledged in a statement that an NPRC technician made a mistake.
Sherrill’s campaign rebuked the release of that copy to De Gregorio, claiming it had been “distributed and weaponized by Jack Ciattarelli.”
A lawyer for the Ciattarelli campaign and one of its strategists, Chris Russell, told Sherrill’s attorney that they did not ask De Gregorio to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for her military records and that he did so on his own. The attorney for Ciattarelli and Russell, Mark Sheridan, noted that his clients didn’t even realize they were in possession of sensitive files until a reporter reached out to them.
“Any claim that [Ciattarelli for Governor] or Russell were part of a conspiracy to smear Sherrill with ill-gotten documents is completely false,” Sheridan said.
During the debate, however, Ciattarelli — who’s questioned whether Sherrill was being honest for the reason why she didn’t walk during her commencement ceremony — said he didn’t know whether the files had made their way to his campaign and were distributed to others, including the media.
“That I don’t know,” Ciattarelli said.
“There’s a team that’s responsible for opposition research. I don’t engage with that team,” he added.
Asked at one point if he was not saying that it was his campaign that had filed a FOIA request, Ciattarelli replied, “I don’t engage with my opposition research team, and I doubt my opponent engages with hers.”
