Former GOP Candidate Wants Answers After Air Force Improperly Released His Military Records
In J.R. Majewski’s telling, the conditions were perfect for a mixup.
“I was in the car on my way home from Washington, D.C., driving with one of the folks who worked for me,” he said in a March 23 interview with The Epoch Times.
It was late September 2022, and the Republican running to fill Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s (D-Ohio) seat in the 9th District was on his way to a GOP dinner in Toledo.
Majewski suddenly found himself on another tight deadline when the Associated Press reached out to his office at 10:30 a.m. with questions about his U.S. Air Force record. They wanted answers by 5 p.m.
It would later become clear the AP had been working on the story for months.
Majewski, who first gained attention in 2020 for painting a giant Trump flag on his triangular yard, had spoken about serving in Operation Enduring Freedom on the campaign trail. He’d mentioned spending time in Afghanistan.
“My orders were to Qatar and not Afghanistan, but I flew in and out of multiple areas within the Operation Enduring Freedom theater during my deployment,” Majewski told The Epoch Times.
He says he was flying sorties full of “goods, troops, weapons, you name it.”
Majewski, a burly, bearded man with a thick Great Lakes accent, looks, walks, and talks like the prototypical Midwestern Trump supporter–the group that swung the 2016 election to the former president.
Left-wing podcaster Sam Seder dubbed Majewski “Ohio’s Biggest MAGA Chud.”
Months after the midterms, the former candidate still sees himself as part of a new GOP, at odds with the establishment that dominated the Republican Party before Trump.
“I think it can be argued that there’s a neocon or globalist group in the Republican Party that certainly wants us to get back to those days,” he said.
Majewski believes some in that old GOP have “this level of resentment and spite” toward what he called America First Republicans.
Air Force Service Questioned
Back in September, on the road to Toledo, Majewski’s immediate challenge was recollecting the specifics of his military record nearly two decades earlier.
“I call my wife, and my wife starts digging through all my records,” he said.
Majewski says he sent pictures of those documents to the AP, which then responded with “a flurry of questions.”
“Then they published their article on the 22nd and accused me of misrepresenting my military service.”
Citing military records from the Air Force, the article says those documents do not show Majewski was in Afghanistan.
They instead indicated he “completed a six-month stint helping to load planes at an air base in Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally that is a safe distance from the fighting.”
Reached by The Epoch Times, the Air Force could only confirm Majewski’s deployment to Qatar. They could not verify that he spent time in Afghanistan.
Majewski has argued that comments to the AP from the Air Force Personnel Office aren’t inconsistent with his claims regarding Afghanistan.
In a July 28 email, Michael Dickerson of that office told the AP they “don’t have visibility on” where Majewski did or may have gone from Qatar.
In comments to the Toledo Blade, Dickerson disclosed just how much the Air Force doesn’t know.
“You have to recognize that this is the Air Force,” he said. “People do fly in and out of places all of the time. We can’t confirm or deny that he served in Afghanistan because we [can’t see] that in our databases.”
The AP questioned Majewski’s account of spending 40 days in Afghanistan without a shower.
Majewski sticks to that story too.
“We used water bottles and baby wipes. I was on the flight line or flying. We didn’t have all the amenities that eventually came,” he said.
Majewski’s self-description as a “combat veteran” also came under scrutiny.
He has produced pay stubs showing he received “imminent danger pay.”
The Epoch Times has examined those stubs.
The Veterans Administration says they’re enough to prove “service in a theater of combat operations,” as shown in the VA “Combat Veteran Eligibility” (pdf) criteria.
The Air Force Personnel Office could not authenticate those paystubs for The Epoch Times, citing the fact that they contained personally identifiable information.
“I’ve never claimed to be Rambo. What I’ve said is that I’m a combat veteran, and that’s defined by the military and the Veterans Administration,” Majewski said.
In addition, National File and One America News interviewed an anonymous fellow servicemember who said he saw Majewski in Afghanistan.
The Epoch Times could not independently interview that individual or confirm his service as of press time.
AP also pointed out that Majewski didn’t have the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal.
An Air Force webpage on the criteria for that medal indicates that it can be won by “service members who, as a regularly assigned crew member [flew] sorties into, out of, within or over the area of eligibility.”
In addition, the medal was only created in 2003, after Majewski left the Air Force.
Majewski believes he would meet the qualifications for that award. He expects to receive it soon. First, though, he has to modify his DD-214, the core documentation of veterans’ service.
Majewski posted a letter from the Air Force on Twitter, granting his request to change his record to show his service time in Qatar.
“Did you literally fake this?” one anonymous Twitter user asked the Air Force veteran.
“Call them and find out,” Majewski replied.
The Air Force has independently authenticated that letter to The Epoch Times.
Second Story Raises Questions on Document Access
On Sept. 28, the AP published a second article headlined, “Records contradict Majewski’s account of military punishment.”
That story linked to Majewski’s non-judicial punishment for drunk driving at Kadena Air Base in Japan–the reason for a demotion during his service.
While stuck in traffic on his way to Toledo, Majewski recalled being demoted for fighting in a dormitory.
“It was a mixup because these things happened back to back,” he said.
Majewski says he wrote to the AP to explain his mistake but has yet to hear back.
The AP did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
As soon as the AP published its second story, Majewski knew something wasn’t right.
Without his signature, the information about his non-judicial punishment shouldn’t have reached the public.
In his words, he told, “everyone who would listen that they had a copy of [his] records illegally.”
The National Republican Campaign Committee canceled advertisements in support of Majewski.
Majewski pointed out that a top Republican, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), actually went on to campaign for him in his district after the AP stories appeared, suggesting that the GOP did not abandon him.
Still, he reflected, “at the end of the day, them pulling that money from me hurt me more than anything.”
Majewski lost to incumbent Kaptur, who ran ads showcasing the AP’s reporting.
But some questions didn’t abate after Election Day: who got hold of Majewski’s non-judicial punishment record, and how?
Some Answers Emerge
The answers, when they came, would involve what the Air Force claims was its error in response to a less visible partisan actor than Majewski.
On March 23, the veteran received a letter from the Air Force dated Feb. 8, 2023, stating that a man named Abraham Payton, with an organization called Due Diligence Group, had repeatedly requested Majewski’s service records in June 2022.
The letter showed he had done so under the stated pretense of “employment and benefits.”
He also had a copy of Majewski’s Social Security Number.
“Department of the Air Force employees did not follow proper procedures requiring the member’s authorizing signature consenting to the release of information,” an Air Force spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email authenticating Majewski’s letter.
Majewski was one of seven Republican congressional candidates whose records were improperly released to the Due Diligence Group by the Air Force in 2021 and 2022.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) paid Due Diligence Group more than $110,000 in 2021 and 2022, according to records from the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
FEC records show the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also paid it $173,000 during that period.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall detailed those leaks in a March 17 letter to House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.)
Reps. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) also had their records improperly released.
“Veterans deserve peace of mind knowing their information is safe and will be protected from political dirty tricksters,” Bacon said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Another candidate, Jennifer-Ruth Green, had the record of her sexual assault leaked.
“I said at one point in my life to my assailant, ‘No, please stop, don’t,’ and he did what he wanted to do. And so this is the exact same situation all over again, all because there was a man who wanted some sort of gratification,” Green told Fox News Digital regarding Politico’s decision to publish details of the incident.
Kendall’s response came after Rogers and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Feb. 13 about the release of documents to the Due Diligence Group.
“This conduct by the Air Force is, at a minimum, unacceptable. The conduct by the research firm is quite possibly criminal,” the representatives stated.
Payton and Due Diligence Group may have run afoul of the Privacy Act.
According to that law, “any person who knowingly and willfully requests or obtains any record concerning an individual from an agency under false pretenses shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000.”
Agency employees and officers could face similar penalties for knowingly or willfully improper disclosures.
Comer and Rogers warned in their Feb. 13 letter that the Privacy Act, internal Department of Defense policy, and the Freedom of Information Act are all at play.
In a March 23 letter following up on Kendall’s response, Comer and Rogers set a March 31 deadline for more information from Austin, including records released from every service, not just the Air Force.
They also asked for the names of anyone involved in releasing the records and information on any Due Diligence Group criminal referrals.
Payton, of Due Diligence Group, appears to have served on the alumni board of St. Olaf College, a possibility Majewski raised in a T
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