Sherrill campaign slams release of military records to opponent’s ally

The campaign of New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill criticized the Trump administration on Thursday for releasing her military records, which included sensitive personal information, to an ally of her gubernatorial opponent.

“The Trump administration blatantly violated federal law by releasing Mikie Sherrill’s unredacted personal military records to an agent of the Ciattarelli campaign — which were then distributed and weaponized by Jack Ciattarelli,” Sherrill campaign spokesperson Sean Higgins said in a statement. “This is a breathtaking, disturbing leak that must be thoroughly investigated.”

Grace McCaffrey, the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) acting director of congressional affairs, confirmed in a statement that its National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) released Sherrill’s military records to Jack Ciattarelli’s ally, Nicholas De Gregorio, “in error.”

De Gregorio made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to NPRC, and the “technician that responded to the request did not follow NPRC’s standard operating procedures,” McCaffrey said.  

“The technician should have extracted and released from the record only FOIA-releasable information. The technician should NOT have released the entire record,” she added.

She noted that officials found out about the data breach on Monday, and NARA reached out to Sherrill’s congressional office to remedy the situation. 

CBS News was the first to report about Sherrill’s largely unredacted military record breach, which the news outlet noted included her Social Security number, performance evaluation and addresses for her and her parents, among other sensitive details.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said he supported a probe into how the military record got leaked and called the New Jersey congresswoman “a patriot and a hero.”

“It’s outrageous that Donald Trump and his administration, and political hacks connected to them, continue to violate the law,” Jeffries said. “And they will be held accountable. The statute of limitations — I remind all of the sycophants out there — is five years. This Justice Department will be long gone before the statute of limitations expires.”  

Mark Sheridan, a lawyer representing the Ciattarelli campaign and one of its strategists, Chris Russell, wrote to Sherrill’s legal team, that Russell and the campaign would “take all steps necessary to protect Representative Sherrill’s personally identifiable information” but refused to commit to destroying the documents that had been obtained.

Sheridan noted that De Gregorio submitted the FOIA on his own and that the campaign didn’t request him to do so. The attorney also noted that the campaign didn’t realize it had received materials they shouldn’t have from NARA until they were contacted by a reporter.

“Any claim that [Ciattarelli for Governor] or Russell were part of a conspiracy to smear Representative Sherrill with ill-gotten documents is completely false,” Sheridan said.

Sherrill is running against the former New Jersey assemblyman to replace term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy (D), with a recent poll from Emerson College Polling, PIX11 and The Hill showing the two tied at 43 percent support each. 

CBS News noted that some Republicans had been looking into a 1994 cheating scandal at the Navy Academy, as well as Sherrill’s military record. Both CBS News and the New Jersey Globe reported that Sherrill did not walk at her commencement ceremony, with Sherrill attributing that to not turning in her classmates who cheated.

“Jack Ciattarelli continues to try and use any avenue he can to execute the MAGA playbook of smearing military service. Now, his latest attempt is to go after a 30-year-old widely reported incident when I was an undergraduate at the Naval Academy,” Sherrill said in a statement.

“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,” she continued. “That Jack Ciattarelli and the Trump administration are illegally weaponizing my records for political gain is a violation of anyone who has ever served our country. No veteran’s record is safe.”

But Ciattarelli’s campaign used the controversy to attack the New Jersey congresswoman.

“Yesterday, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of her name not appearing in the 1994 US Naval Academy Commencement Ceremony program, Mikie Sherrill was forced to admit she was implicated and punished as part of the massive cheating and honor concept scandal that involved her graduating class, and has since tried to distract attention away from that fact with false accusations and half-truths about what amounts to a clerical error by the National Archives which they took responsibility for and apologized for publicly,” Ciattarelli and the campaign said in a statement.

Updated at 11:14 a.m. EDT on Sept. 27, 2025