This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 29 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
Only two states, New Jersey and Virginia, have gubernatorial elections this year, so whatever happens in those races is almost automatically going to turn into a big national story. But with just over a month until Election Day, something has happened in New Jersey that is a legitimate bombshell — and it involves the Trump administration.
Unavoidably, the federal government has access to lots of information about you — lots of data that you trust the government to handle well, because it is really sensitive.
As you know, the administration has already repeatedly used data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency to go after people such as Sen. Adam Schiff of California, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
Along with using mortgage data to target Donald Trump’s political enemies, the administration has started using Internal Revenue Service and Social Security data to target immigrants. It has also demanded records from states of everyone registered to vote and said outright that it will use that data to bring criminal investigations against people whose information is included on the voter rolls.
Here’s where the New Jersey gubernatorial race comes in: Last week, the Trump administration released unredacted versions of Democratic candidate Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s military records, documents that include the congresswoman’s Social Security Number, along with other sensitive information.
Trump’s National Archives released those records to Nicholas De Gregorio, an ally of Sherrill’s Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli. De Gregorio is a donor to Ciattarelli’s campaign and someone the Republican candidate is reportedly considering as his lieutenant governor.
CBS News was first to report that “the National Personnel Records Center, a wing of the National Archives and Records Administration charged with maintaining personnel records for service members and civil servants of the U.S. government, released Sherrill’s full military file — almost completely unredacted.”
According to CBS News, the documents included the former Navy helicopter pilot’s “Social Security number, which appears on almost every page, home addresses for her and her parents, life insurance information, and Sherrill’s performance evaluations.”
On Monday, Sherrill hit back at her opponent and the Trump administration in a new ad, alleging that they broke the law. The federal government released Sherrill’s unredacted file to De Gregorio after he had requested the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. However, such records are not supposed to be made available in full to the public until decades after someone has completed their military service, making the release potentially a violation of privacy laws.
The National Personnel Records Center admitted it screwed up and said it made a “serious error.” The agency claims it received a FOIA request for publicly releasable information about Sherrill’s military record and then a technician incorrectly sent the full, unredacted file. In a letter, the agency also asked De Gregorio not to disseminate them.
Now, maybe that is what happened — maybe a technician made a mistake, even a “serious error.” But you know what? The Trump administration does not have a super strong claim to the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this.
The Ciattarelli campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but a lawyer for the campaign has said they did not realize the file contained information that should not have been released. The lawyer said once they learned that, they ceased disseminating the material.
With five weeks to go till Election Day, this is the kind of unpredictable thing that can shake up a race.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
