Cait Conley insists she “never worked for Palantir or ICE.” Yet The Intercept, Politico, and her own financial disclosure show that two AI surveillance firms have paid her $328,000, including Primer, which advertises its Palantir partnership on its own website and whose salespeople boast about pitching its platform to ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Why is Cait Conley lying about her work, and what is she so afraid voters will ask about?

Pearl River, NY — 6/16/2026… With the June 23rd Democratic primary days away, Cait Conley is pushing the message that the reporting on her AI work is a Republican lie, and using her campaign website “redbox” to ask super PACs and other big money groups to flood NY-17 with ads declaring that she has never worked for Palantir or ICE. She’s gone so far as to cut a new ad saying “MAGA Republicans” are “lying” about her. There’s just one problem. Cait Conley is spending the final week of her campaign lying about her connections to big AI and ICE, and she will say anything to avoid the questions she cannot answer.

While Conley was in a senior role at SOCOM, as indicated by her LinkedIn profile, Primer was awarded a multi-million dollar contract with SOCOM. This was all the way back in 2020.

Since at least 2025, Conley’s been on the take from Primer, raking in over $328,000 from them and Hidden Level, another AI company.

Then, in February, The Intercept and Politico reported on these payments from Primer and Hidden Level, two companies that partner with Palantir, the surveillance firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Primer advertises the partnership on its own website, and so does Palantir. Palantir, in turn, holds the multimillion-dollar federal contract to build ImmigrationOS, the system ICE adopted to identify and track people for deportation in real time. Hidden Level feeds data into Palantir’s work. And a former Primer employee whose time at the company overlapped Conley’s publicly described positioning Primer’s AI platform across Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and federal law enforcement, building a multimillion-dollar pipeline and securing meetings with CBP leadership. The Judge Street Journal verified that person’s identity. Conley’s campaign would not say whether she worked with them.

What the record shows is that Cait Conley is on the payroll of a company that sells to ICE and publicly partners with the primary contractor assisting with mass deportations, and she will not tell voters what she does to earn that money. She has said she signed a nondisclosure agreement and cannot disclose what her work for Primer actually involves.

Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi reacted to Conley’s deception:

“Cait Conley keeps shouting that she never worked for Palantir or ICE. The problem for her is that The Intercept, Politico, and her own disclosure show that two AI surveillance companies have paid her $328,000, and that her employer, Primer, advertises its Palantir partnership on its own website. At the same time, its salespeople brag online about pitching its technology to ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Cait Conley claims she signed an NDA that supposedly prevents her from telling voters what she does for them. Cait once worked to fight disinformation, but she is now misrepresenting reporting on her own record and begging the big-money groups she pretends to oppose to do it for her. So here are the questions, Cait. What does Primer pay you to do? Did you work with the Primer salesperson who was pitching your company’s AI to ICE? Why did you try to hide your latest disclosure until after voters had already cast their ballots? Why are you lying about your direct work with ICE and CBP?”

The hypocrisy goes further. Conley is endorsed by End Citizens United and casts herself as an anti-big-money outsider, yet she is backed by Democratic megadonor Stephen Mandel’s organization and is now, as mentioned above, using her redbox to call in outside money on her behalf. Her own Democratic opponents have raised the same concerns. Beth Davidson has repeatedly raised concerns about Cait Conley’s AI work and connections with ICE, and former candidates Peter Chatzky and John Sullivan cited both that work and Conley’s reaction to fair questions when they endorsed Davidson instead.

Cait Conley says she has nothing to hide. But until she answers some basic questions, Hudson Valley Democrats are right to ask why a candidate who runs on transparency is keeping her own paychecks from AI companies that partner with ICE and Palantir secret while asking super PACs to bail her out.
 

 ###

Two weeks ago, Indivisible threw an anti-ICE street party, with a DJ, in the hometown of Sheridan Gorman, the Yorktown 18-year-old murdered in March. Her grieving sister begged them to understand what that meant to her family. Their answer: protest again. And the signs they have carried tell you exactly who they are.

Pearl River, NY — 6/13/2026… On May 30, Northern Westchester Indivisible (NWI) held what it advertised as a “pop-up protest” at Route 118 and Commerce Street in Yorktown. The advertisement’s words, not ours: “Let’s Make Some Music!” It promised “our own DJ TiltCat,” described as “the hardest working music man in Westchester protests.” NWI felt it appropriate to host a dance party against immigration enforcement, staged in the hometown of a family that buried their 18-year-old daughter ten weeks earlier. Sheridan Gorman was shot and killed near her college campus in Chicago on March 19. The man charged with her murder is an undocumented immigrant who, by the Department of Homeland Security’s own account, had been released from custody twice, once despite an active ICE detainer.

Sheridan’s sister, Madelon, responded with extraordinary restraint. “Seeing an anti-ICE protest take place in our hometown, a town that means so much to my family, has been incredibly painful,” she wrote. “These are the streets we grew up on, the schools we attended, the fields where we played.” Yorktown’s Town Supervisor publicly asked the question every neighbor was asking: why here, and why now?

Northern Westchester Indivisible’s response to a grieving sister’s plea was to double down and host yet another protest in the Gormans’ hometown.

And residents of NY-17 should see what Northern Westchester Indivisible’s street corners actually look like. At their protests, members have carried signs declaring that ICE is running “concentration camps,” an insult to all those who survived the Holocaust. Another sign displayed at one NWI event placed a Ku Klux Klan hood side by side with a photograph of an ICE officer, captioned “now available in tactical black.” And yet another protester held a cartoon of a flag-draped military coffin, the image under which this nation receives its fallen, repurposed as a profane punchline. Photos of all three are below:

Congressman Mike Lawler released the following statement in response:

“Concentration camps. Klan hoods. A flag-draped coffin with a curse word over it. That is the iconography Northern Westchester Indivisible carries through our towns, and decided the right place for its next performance was the hometown of a murdered 18-year-old, after her sister told them, in the gentlest possible terms, that it was a knife in her family’s wound. Yet, they did it anyway. Every candidate who counts on Indivisible volunteers owes the Gormans an answer: is this what your movement stands for? Say it in Yorktown, out loud, so this family can hear you.”

 ###

Cait Conley has repeatedly claimed she “drafted” federal legislation, without providing any evidence. Amidst the release of a shocking 34,000-word dossier, created by local Hudson Valley Democrat activists, the Lawler for Congress Campaign is asking a simple question – what legislation did Cait Conley actually draft?

Pearl River, NY — 6/10/2026… Throughout the Democratic Primary process in NY-17, Cait Conley has repeatedly claimed she “drafted” federal legislation, without ever providing any evidence. Given recent claims by one of her former opponents that she stole lines from his stump speeches, including ones specifically pertaining to legislation, Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi demanded answers:

“Cait Conley clearly isn’t who she says she is, and the 34,000-word dossier put together by local Hudson Valley Democrat activists is positive proof that she’s hiding things – what she’s promised to donors, her connections to big tech, and even her record in the Biden Administration have been called into question. Given Cait’s total lack of transparency throughout this campaign, one would think it would be very simple for her campaign to point to even one bill Cait ‘drafted’ during her time in the Biden Administration. And if she’s suggesting she drafted legislation after her time in the admin, where are Cait’s lobbying disclosures? Who paid her to draft it, and what legislation was it? How about it, Cait? What legislation have you actually drafted?” 

###

With two weeks to go until the Democratic Primary in NY-17, a damning 34,000-word dossier raises questions about who Cait Conley is, which special interest groups are backing her, where her campaign dollars come from, and what she does to make big bucks from AI companies.

Pearl River, NY — 6/8/2026… With only two weeks to go until the Democratic Primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District, one of the key seats that will decide the House, Cait Conley is facing increasing questions about her background, funding sources, and career. Some of the commentary from Conley’s fellow Hudson Valley Democrats has been damning: 

As the DC Democrat establishment’s darling, this dossier, put together by a local Democrat activist, could not come at a worse time. Already behind in most publicly available polling, Conley is being propped up by VoteVets, an organization whose largest donor is House Majority PAC, with a $1 million TV buy in the last 3 weeks leading up to the primary. This is the same organization that tried, and failed, to salvage the trainwreck campaign of former DCCC Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney, who became the first DCCC Chairman in over 40 years to lose his seat.

Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi reacted to this nascent scandal with the following statement:

“The 34,000-word dossier on Cait Conley raises far more questions than answers. Key among them: who is Cait Conley, which special interest groups will she represent in Congress, why so little of her campaign donations come from within NY-17, and why she worked for companies that had business with DHS and ICE, while running a campaign that criticized both. Her silence is damning, and her repeated attempts to dismiss local journalists’ efforts to uncover what she’s hiding only make it worse. It’s so bad that two of her former opponents came out to strongly endorse Beth Davidson, claiming that Cait stole lines from their stump speeches and expressing deep concerns about her ties (over $328k) to Palantir and other AI companies, calling them a ‘huge liability’.”

###

New City, NY — 4/27/2026… This morning, counsel for Lawler for Congress filed a summation in the New York State Supreme Court, Rockland County, laying out the case that Democratic congressional candidate Effie Phillips-Staley’s designating petition is so permeated with fraud that it must be invalidated in its entirety.

“This is fraud, on the record, in open court, by the campaign of a candidate for US Congress,” said Ciro Riccardi, campaign manager for Lawler for Congress. “Voters have taken the stand and testified that their signatures were forged. Twenty-seven more are submitting sworn affidavits saying the same thing. The candidate herself signed the contract, was present when the petition was bound, and didn’t bother to review a single page. The voters of NY-17 deserve a primary contest decided by real signatures from real people.” 

The filing, submitted by attorney James P. Curran, documents the following on the record:

• All parties have stipulated that 829 signatures collected by six different subscribing witnesses on Phillips-Staley’s petition are invalid.
• Three voters have already testified, under oath, that their signatures were forged. One of them, Frank Capuano, was away at college in Ithaca on the date he supposedly signed. Another, Lisa Locatelli, testified that the forger got her apartment number wrong and listed an address on the line above hers that does not exist.
• The campaign is preparing to submit 27 additional sworn affidavits from voters whose signatures were forged onto the petition — affidavits that directly contradict sworn statements from Phillips-Staley’s own subscribing witnesses, who claimed under oath to have personally watched every voter sign. 
• The six subscribing witnesses in question accounted for 95 sheets — roughly a quarter of the entire petition.
• Phillips-Staley personally signed a contract with the firm Bartholomew Communications to produce 1,600 signatures, more than half of the total she submitted. According to testimony, the campaign performed only a “cursory review” before binding and filing the petition, and not a single page was pulled for fraud.
• One subscribing witness, Dion McBean, recorded 127 signatures in a single day of door-knocking — a figure the filing notes any experienced campaign worker would recognize as wildly improbable, and well beyond the 8-per-shift expectation laid out in Phillips-Staley’s own contract with Bartholomew.

“We are asking the Court to do what the law requires and invalidate this petition in its entirety,” concluded Riccardi.

The court is scheduled to resume proceedings this morning. The full summation has been filed on NYSCEF and is available HERE.

All NYSCEF documents related to 032794/2026 can be found HERE.

Full minutes of the April 20 pretrial conference and the April 22 and April 24 evidentiary hearings are available at HERE. 

###

Pearl River, NY – 4/24/2026… Democratic congressional candidate Effie Phillips-Staley’s campaign canvassers refused to comply with Acting Supreme Court Justice David Fried’s judicial subpoenas and have now been commanded to appear in court on Monday, April 27. 

One of the canvassers, Dion McBean — responsible for hundreds of the signatures the campaign has now conceded are fraudulent — cannot be located and is not responding to the Effie Phillips-Staley campaign. Summations are expected on Monday following the testimony of the final witnesses.

“Let’s call this what it is: Effie’s accused fraudsters are refusing to show up in court because they can’t hold up under cross-examination on how and why they submitted hundreds, if not thousands, of fraudulent signatures in her designating petitions,” said Lawler Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi.

Phillips-Staley formally stipulated in Rockland County Supreme Court that hundreds of the signatures filed on her designating petitions are invalid due to alleged fraud, nearly 30% of the total number of signatures on her designating petitions. The campaign also stipulated that more than two dozen signatures on her designating petition do not match the official voter registration records of the voters whose names appear on the petition.

Today, multiple NY-17 voters who submitted sworn affidavits attesting that signatures attributed to them on Phillips-Staley’s petitions were forged testified under oath. Additionally, Phillips-Staley’s campaign manager testified he personally reviewed every sheet while preparing the designating petition for filing. The paid door vendor, Bartholomew Communications and Strategies, testified the same. The contract with the paid canvassing firm was also signed by Effie Phillips-Staley herself, further linking the candidate and campaign to the alleged fraud.  

###

Pearl River, NY – 4/22/2026… Last night, Democratic congressional candidate Effie Phillips-Staley filed a sworn Verified Answer in Rockland County Supreme Court that concedes fraud was rampant on her designating petitions. In a last ditch attempt to stay on the ballot, her filing asks the court to disregard the fraudulent signatures and count what’s left.

Under well-established New York State election law, when a designating petition is “permeated with fraud”, the entire petition is invalidated — not just the fraudulent sheets. (See Matter of Ferreyra v. Arroyo, 35 N.Y.3d 127 [2020]; Matter of Proskin v. May, 40 N.Y.2d 829 [1976].)

Lawler For Congress’s Verified Petition and Bill of Particulars laid out a staggering scope of widespread fraud. Thirty sworn voter affidavits attesting to forged signatures, multiple witnesses testifying to fraud across the petitions of at least six canvassers, and 1,127 separate technical objections the Answer doesn’t address.

“Effie Phillips-Staley just signed her name to a sworn filing conceding that her Democrat petition is permeated with fraud. The law stipulates her entire petition should be thrown out, and every one of her canvassers must take the stand and answer under oath for the fraud committed in her name as ordered on Monday. New York law is clear: when fraud permeates a petition, the whole thing goes,” concluded Ciro Riccardi, Campaign Manager.

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: [email protected]

Pearl River, NY — April 12, 2026… Today, Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17) officially kicked off his 2026 reelection campaign before a packed crowd at the Pearl River Elks Lodge, drawing an enthusiastic bipartisan coalition. The event featured remarks from a wide array of supporters — organized labor, law enforcement, small business owners, medical professionals, and Democratic officials — underscoring the broad, bipartisan coalition Congressman Lawler has built over three consecutive winning campaigns.

“Our country is at a crossroads, and the people of the Hudson Valley deserve a congressman who delivers, not one who ducks questions and follows the radical playbook,” said Congressman Lawler. “We’ve won three times in a district that was supposed to be unwinnable, and we’re going to win again. This campaign is built on results, not rhetoric, and today showed exactly who we’re fighting for.”

In his remarks, Congressman Lawler drew a sharp contrast with the Democratic primary field, highlighting his record of delivering results for NY-17 — from the historic $40,000 SALT cap to over $1 billion secured for local hospitals and nursing homes, to defeating Beth Davidson’s sanctuary county stunt. The Congressman pledged to keep fighting for the families of the Hudson Valley and challenged his six Democratic opponents to tell voters where they stand on ICE, Zohran Mamdani, and the policies driving New Yorkers out of the state.

Among the event’s highlights: Philip Valenti of TWU Local 106 announced the endorsement of the Transport Workers Union International; Dr. Mark Geller, CEO of Montefiore Nyack Hospital, spoke to what Congressman Lawler’s successful fight to secure over $1 billion in federal funding for local hospitals has meant for patients and caregivers in Rockland County; and Brendel Logan-Charles, Deputy Supervisor of Ramapo and a registered Democrat, took the stage to make the case for Lawler’s reelection — drawing one of the loudest receptions of the afternoon.

The following speakers appeared at today’s event:

• Rob Astorino, Master of Ceremonies

• Roy Tsudy, U.S. Army Veteran — Pledge of Allegiance

• Father Simonz — Benediction

• Rabbi Shmuel Gancz, Chabad Jewish Center of Suffern — Benediction

• Christine Piccone, Mahopac-Carmel Chamber of Commerce

• Jorge Folch, Community Leader

• Dr. Mark Geller, CEO, Montefiore Nyack Hospital

• Stephen Reich, Laborers Local 754

• Philip Valenti, TWU Local 106 — Announcing TWU International Endorsement

• Rivkie Feiner, Constituent, Ramapo

• Brendel Logan-Charles, Deputy Supervisor, Ramapo

• Lauren Mare Wohl, Rockland County Republican Party

• Patrick Casey, Rockland County PBA

• Bruce Blakeman, Nassau County Executive

• Congressman Mike Lawler

Watch the full kickoff event video HERE.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: [email protected]

Pearl River, NY – 2/9/2026… Today, Congressman Mike Lawler blasted Cait Conley after she sent a misleading email to her campaign list falsely accusing Congressman Mike Lawler of orchestrating a “hit” against her — rather than taking responsibility for her own stunning hypocrisy.

Instead of coming clean about her paid consulting work, Conley chose to lash out with a fabricated accusation, attempting to distract from the simple facts now in the public record.

“Cait Conley needs to come clean and be completely transparent about specifically what she did to earn lucrative consulting contracts from military contractors Hidden Level and Primer AI, both of whom did or are doing work with the Trump Administration. Given Conley’s sharp criticism of President Trump’s military, border, and immigration policies, it’s shocking to learn that she’s been paid by two companies directly involved in facilitating those policies through the Departments of War and Homeland Security. Cait Conley’s hypocrisy is stunning,” stated Congressman Lawler. 
 

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: [email protected]

Pearl River, NY – 1/29/2026…  Today, following a report from the New York Post, the Lawler for Congress campaign slammed Beth Davidson and Democrats in the Rockland County Legislature for planning to advance the “Immigrant Protection Act”, which aims to turn Rockland County into a sanctuary county for illegal immigrants, putting her congressional ambitions and radical ideology ahead of public safety.

“Make no mistake, Beth Davidson’s public push to have Rockland County adopt the same radical ‘Sanctuary’ policies for illegal immigrants as New York City or Minneapolis can be summed up in one sentence: Beth Davidson is willing to sacrifice the safety of Rockland County residents for the support of far-left radical Democrats she believes can help her win her congressional primary,” stated Congressman Lawler.

County records reveal Davidson’s proposed “Immigrant Protection Act” will closely mirror the sanctuary law passed in other deep blue states, counties, and cities, which prohibits communication and cooperation between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement, and prevents local agencies from honoring detainer requests — even for individuals with serious criminal records — unless narrowly defined conditions are met.

If adopted in Rockland, the bill would:

• Bar county employees and law enforcement from proactively cooperating with ICE, even when dealing with individuals who have prior criminal histories
• Prohibit honoring immigration detainers or providing release notifications, allowing individuals wanted by federal authorities to be released back into the community
• Create additional legal and bureaucratic hurdles that discourage coordination between local law enforcement and federal agencies
• Prioritize immigration status protections over public safety considerations, tying the hands of police officers and corrections officials

“In just the past few years, the Hudson Valley has seen firsthand the consequences of sanctuary city and state policies.  Last year, a 15-year-old from Somers was gunned down by an illegal immigrant. The year before, Clarkstown had uncovered flop houses with 20-30 migrants crammed in with dozens of fire safety violations,” said Congressman Mike Lawler.

Earlier this week, Congressman Mike Lawler laid out a clear warning in a New York Times op-ed: America’s immigration system is broken, and sanctuary policies at the state and local level have only made it worse. Lawler argued that restricting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities undermines public safety, is fueling the chaos, and leaves both communities and migrants vulnerable. He renewed his push for a commonsense, bipartisan immigration solution — one that secures the border, restores law enforcement cooperation, and treats people humanely while upholding the rule of law.

“I’ve been working in Congress, since I was first elected, on serious, bipartisan immigration reform that includes securing the border, restoring cooperation between federal and local law enforcement, and fixing a broken system humanely and responsibly,” Lawler continued. “Sanctuary laws do the opposite. They block cooperation, incentivize exploitation, and risk putting millions in federal public safety and law enforcement funding in jeopardy. Rockland families deserve leaders who prioritize public safety, the rule of law, and accountability. I am calling on every Rockland County legislator to immediately state where they stand on this legislation.”
 

###