Air Force identifies more GOP members in military records leak

Two additional GOP candidates for Congress have been identified in the leak of military records to a pro-Democratic research group. This comes less than a week after the House Judiciary Committee initiated an investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of the records.

According to a letter by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), an audit found that 11 people’s records were leaked in total from January 1, 2021, to January 3, 2023, with nine of them being unauthorised. Of the 11 people, seven were candidates or elected to Congress, with all of their information being released to Due Diligence Group.

The two newly-identified candidates are J.R. Majewski of Ohio and Robert “Eli” Bremer of Colorado, both Republicans. Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Zach Nunn (R-IA), Kevin Dellicker, Jennifer-Ruth Green, and Samuel Peters were already known to have had their records leaked.

The leak of Majewski’s records caused controversy during the 2022 primary election cycle, as he claimed he was deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The leaked records indicated he was actually in Qatar. Bremer lost the 2021 GOP primary election for Sen. Michael Bennett’s (D-CO) seat.

The House Judiciary Committee has launched an investigation and requested information from Kendall regarding the leak.

Due Diligence Group requested records from the Air Force Personnel Center on November 9th, and Abraham Payton, a background investigator analyst, said the records were needed for employment records. Payton already had the Social Security numbers of all the candidates, according to the Air Force.

According to Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek, the leak was not politically motivated or intended maliciously, and was a result of employees not following the correct procedures. The Air Force is dedicated to preventing any such unauthorised disclosures from occurring again.