(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Republican 2022 congressional candidate and combat veteran Jennifer-Ruth Green has sued the Air Force for leaking sensitive records about a sexual assault she suffered in Iraq, alleging that the illegal disclosure cost her the tightly contested race for Indiana’s first congressional district.
As detailed in Green’s lawsuit, which she filed last Thursday in federal court, she was in the Air Force full time for seven years before working in the Indiana Air National Guard from 2015 to 2023. She currently serves in the Nevada Air National Guard as the executive officer to the assistant adjutant general (air) of Nevada.
Green won the Republican primary in May 2022, and looked to be a strong candidate to win a district historically dominated by Democrats.
But weeks before the election on Oct. 7, 2022, Politico reported on confidential records that documented an instance in which Green was sexually assaulted by an Iraqi serviceman while she was on assignment in Iraq.
Those records were provided to Politico by the Due Diligence Group and its co-founder, Abraham Payton—paid opposition researchers for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Due Diligence and Payton, in turn, had obtained the records from the Air Force through an illegal disclosure.
Green ended up earning 47.2% of the vote in Indiana’s heavily Democratic first congressional district in 2022—the best a Republican candidate performed there since 1946.
But if her campaign hadn’t been sent into chaos by the illegal Air Force disclosure, she may have won her race, she argued in her lawsuit.
“The Air Force’s disclosure, and Payton and Due Diligence Group’s subsequent leak, of Green’s confidential records forced Green to speak publicly about her sexual assault to the media during a politically charged, partisan congressional election,” she stated in her lawsuit.
“Green was even accused of leaking the records herself for political gain during the final weeks of the campaign, which, given that Green had diligently kept the matter of her sexual assault private for a decade, was a monstrous and obviously false accusation,” she said.
“When the Politico article was released, Green was required to turn her attention away from her campaign and dedicate time speaking publicly about one of the worst moments in her life—all because the Air Force unlawfully disclosed her confidential service record.”
Green alleged that the Air Force violated the Privacy Act. She seeks damages.
The Air Force has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
