Democrats must answer for researcher who acquired Air Force records of GOP candidates
Zachary Faria
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The Air Force improperly released the records of multiple GOP House candidates during the 2022 midterm elections, a scandal that includes Politico and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. How is this not a bigger scandal?
Last October, before the midterm elections, Politico published a piece about Indiana GOP candidate Jennifer-Ruth Green. The Politico piece, using records the outlet should not have had access to, outed Green as a survivor of sexual assault. “I am being forced to share this information outside of my own timeline and for the first time publicly,” Green said as a result of the piece.
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Green blamed her Democratic opponent, Rep. Frank Mrvan. For its part, Politico claimed that the information was provided by “a person outside the Mrvan campaign.” Brad Dayspring, the vice president of marketing and communications at Politico, claimed that the records were “publicly available documents that can be obtained by a standard FOIA request.”
Dayspring has since been proven wrong. The records are not available through a standard FOIA request and require the signed permission of the service member in question.
We now know that the Air Force also released the records of then-candidates Sam Peters and Kevin Dellicker. The records were released as part of a request by Abraham Payton, a background investigation analyst with Due Diligence Group. Payton previously worked as a research director for American Bridge, the Democratic Party’s largest opposition research group. Payton also made multiple requests for the records of Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE).
The Air Force claims that “Air Force employees did not follow proper procedures” because those records should not have been released without the signatures of the targets in question but that “there was no evidence of political motivation or malicious intent on the part of any employee.”
This all raises far more questions than it answers. Politico now claims it “was told by the person who gave it Green’s military records that they were obtained through a public records request.”
It would appear that Politico took the word of a Democratic researcher at face value and, at best, unwittingly misled its readers about the nature of the documents it used to out a victim of sexual assault.
The Air Force’s assertion that there was “no evidence of political motivation or malicious intent” is dubious at best, given that five of the 11 targets revealed were Republican House candidates. Of course, the Air Force would deny any political intent, given the record of executive agencies targeting Republicans and the justified outrage that would cause. Bacon and Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) (whose records were also released) are calling for an investigation.
And then, there is the question of Payton and the DCCC. According to the Federal Election Commission, the DCCC paid Payton’s Due Diligence Group over $110,000 between January 2021 and December 2022.
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The Air Force’s claim that this wasn’t politically motivated is not good enough, and neither is the silence from the DCCC and the Democratic Party. This was a crime, and there must be a thorough investigation. Politico’s original hit job was indefensible as well, and the outlet now admits its defense of the article was based on a false premise. This is yet another scandal of government and media trust, and it should be a far bigger story than it has been so far.