The National Archives’s watchdog determined Tuesday that the mistaken release of Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s (D-NJ) military records during her gubernatorial campaign last fall was due to human error, not partisan maneuvering.
The National Archives released Sherrill’s unredacted military records, including sensitive information such as her Social Security number and home addresses, in 2025, explaining that the release occurred due to a technician’s mistake during a routine records request. But Sherrill and her Democratic allies blamed the release on her rival, Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli, and the Trump administration, suggesting they deliberately leaked the information to sabotage her 2025 campaign for New Jersey governor.
The National Archives’s inspector general launched an investigation amid the allegations of partisan warfare last September. The investigation concluded that the archives technician assigned to handle the request should have notified his supervisor to escalate the request for a higher level of review, according to a report published by CBS News on Tuesday. The mistake was likely “caused by being distracted and not focusing entirely on the task at hand,” the Archives technician told federal investigators.
“Based on the gravity of the improper release, on December 16, 2025, supervisory staff proposed the Archives Technician for removal from Federal service for Neglect of Duty,” the investigation found.
The records were released last year to a Ciattarelli ally amid allegations that Sherrill was implicated in a 1994 Naval Academy cheating scandal. They indicated that the then-congresswoman and war veteran was barred from walking in her 1994 Naval Academy graduation because she did not report classmates who had cheated on an exam.
Sherrill noted that she did not cheat herself and suggested the Trump administration, along with the Ciattarelli campaign, coordinated the release of records to derail her career. At the time, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) pushed for a criminal investigation into the records’ allegedly “unauthorized and illegal release.” Ranking member of the House oversight committee Robert Garcia (D-CA) called the release of the information about Sherrill an “illegal and likely politically motivated disclosure.”
“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. This is a breathtaking, disturbing leak that must be thoroughly investigated. Once again, the Trump administration is targeting political opponents with an absolute disregard for the law, this time in concert with the Ciattarelli campaign,” the Sherrill campaign said last September.
Ciattarelli’s camp stood by their claims that the records request was ethical and that the sensitive information was released due to the National Archives’s error.
“The National Archives provided documents in response to a legitimate and perfectly legal FOIA request. Documents, btw, that had NOTHING to do with the cheating scandal. The National Archives then apologized to the requester and took full responsibility for their error,” political operative Chris Russell, who was a spokesman for the Ciattarelli campaign, said in a post to X. “Sherrill was implicated & punished in the largest cheating and honor code scandal in Naval Academy history and has lied about it for years. Now she is trying to distract from that with more lies.”
Ciattarelli’s allies heralded the results of the National Archives’s investigation into the debacle as a vindication this week.
“As we said all along, the Ciattarelli campaign did nothing wrong. Now that the phony ‘Trump did it’ smokescreen — which most of the NJ press corps fell for — has been proven false, Governor Sherrill should come clean and release the records about her involvement in the Naval Academy cheating scandal,” attorney Mark Sheridan, who represented Ciattarelli’s campaign, told CBS News.