Ms. Cait Conley

Cait for New York
PO Box 96
Ossining, NY 10562
[email protected]

Dear Cait,

Now that the Fourth of July holiday is behind us, I am writing to renew my debate challenge to you, which I made on June 23.  The same challenge you have ignored, while journalists with the area’s largest newspaper said you “owe it to voters” to participate.  

As you will recall, I challenged you to six televised debates to give voters in New York’s 17th Congressional District ample opportunity to see us share the same stage and debate the issues important to residents and taxpayers.  

We all agree that this will be one of the most competitive and watched congressional races in the entire country. Frankly, that level of national attention requires candidates willing to engage in vigorous public debate, not through press releases, tweets, and carefully choreographed events put on by organizations based out of DC, but rather one-on-one in front of a large television audience. We have an opportunity to set a standard for transparency and substance that other high-profile campaigns around the country would be pressed to emulate.

Moreover, with absentee ballots being mailed out just over two months from today, there is no legitimate reason to delay us scheduling the first debate right away. I am confident we can find a sponsor and moderator who will accommodate us in short order.

Disappointingly, your campaign to date has been focused on lying about my proven bipartisan voting record, supporting tax increases and Sanctuary policies, concealing your lucrative consulting contracts with AI and big tech companies, and endlessly repeating canned, hyperpartisan talking points that have been long on biography and woefully short on detail or substance.

Voters deserve better. They deserve to hear why you defend positions like:

• Opposing expanding the cap on state and local tax deductions and raising taxes by over $4,000 a year for the average Hudson Valley taxpayers

• Supporting Sanctuary City policies and handcuffing law enforcement as it relates to immigration enforcement

• Embracing radical Socialists in New York City and inviting them to come campaign with you in the Hudson Valley

• Endorsing Kathy Hochul’s disastrous energy mandates and “green” policies that are driving up electricity costs is a good idea

Voters know where I stand on issues.  They know my bipartisan record.  They know – whether they ultimately agree with me or not – that I speak my mind, never run from a debate, fight for them and their families, and deliver on my promises.  Frankly, they don’t know much about you at all.  It’s time for them to learn.  

I have authorized my campaign manager and general consultant to work with their counterparts on your team to schedule the first of our six debates this month, and I am hopeful you will authorize your team to do the same.  Let’s debate, Cait!

Sincerely,

Michael Lawler

U.S. Congressman (NY-17)

Cait Conley has had multiple chances to denounce the Socialist Sweep of New York City, but every single time she’s deflected, dodged, or outright accepted their support in her race for Congress. Today, the Lawler for Congress campaign announced a five-figure ad buy to hold her accountable.

Pearl River, NY — 6/30/2026… Fresh off her under-50% primary win, Cait Conley sat down with CBS, Bloomberg TV, and NBC and received what should have been a layup question on every program about the socialist sweep in New York City. Yet every time, she avoided the question and moved on, even when confronted with a clip of Brad Lander, architect of the Defund the Police movement in NYC, saying he was excited to campaign for her. Then, Cait doubled down, saying she would welcome his support!

This is in stark contrast to the actions taken by members of Conley’s own party from New York, including Tom Suozzi, who have pledged to fight the radical left.

Today, the Lawler for Congress campaign is announcing a five-figure buy to air these clips so every voter in NY-17 can see Cait Conley’s cowardice for themselves.

Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi offered the following statement in light of this new ad spend:

“Cait Conley will be held accountable throughout this campaign for her far-left positions, and that starts today. Saying you would ‘welcome’ socialists like Brad Lander, Zohran Mamdani, and the rest of the DSA in the Hudson Valley is the opposite of moderate – it’s radical. Cait Conley says she wants to fight for the Hudson Valley, but she can’t even stand up and denounce someone who wants to abolish ICE, defund the police, raise taxes, and is Zohran Mamdani’s best friend. That lack of courage, also known as cowardice, in the face of radicalism is precisely why voters will send Cait Conley back to the private sector and big tech contract work this November.”

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Cait Conley has decided she wants the help of those who have pledged to abolish ICE, fought to defund the police, and co-founded a group that calls for the “total eradication of Western civilization.”

Pearl River, NY — 6/29/2026… Last Tuesday, three New York City socialists won their Congressional primaries: Brad Lander in NY-10, Claire Valdez in NY-7, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in NY-13. The very next day, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated that she was looking forward to working with Cait Conley and her fellow socialists. Brad Lander said he was excited to campaign for Cait Conley in the Hudson Valley after winning in NY-10.

And Cait Conley’s response? “I welcome anyone here in this district.”

So who exactly is Cait Conley welcoming into the Hudson Valley?

Brad Lander (NY-10). In June 2020, Lander published an open letter with a title that says it all: “My commitment to working to defund the NYPD.” He called for cutting a billion dollars from the police budget. Recently, Brad stated he was looking forward to campaigning for Cait Conley in the Hudson Valley.

Claire Valdez (NY-7). Valdez calls herself a “proud democratic socialist,” and her own campaign website pledges that she will “fight to dismantle and abolish ICE.” She was arrested inside Senator Chuck Schumer’s Manhattan office in August 2025 while protesting U.S. arms sales to Israel. At a televised primary debate, she said Israel had committed “genocide” and said she would support arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on an International Criminal Court warrant if he set foot in New York.

Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13). Deleted tweets reviewed by CNN’s KFile show her calling to abolish the police, prisons, and borders, declaring “all deportation is wrong,” and reposting a message that “Israel doesn’t exist.” She also called President Biden a “rapist.” Darializa even attended the pro-Hamas Times Square rally on October 8, 2023, the day after October 7th, an event so widely condemned that fellow primary winner Brad Lander quit the DSA over the party’s promotion of it. At a March 2026 candidate forum, she declined to condemn Hamas’s October 7 attack when asked directly. She also co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the campus group that later posted that it was fighting for the “total eradication of Western civilization.”

And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) herself, who has called to “Abolish ICE,” still champions defunding the police on her campaign website, and pledged at a March 2026 NYC-DSA forum to vote against any U.S. military aid to Israel, including defensive systems such as the Iron Dome, which she has previously voted against.

These are the people who Cait Conley wants to serve alongside and the same ones she would “welcome” into the Hudson Valley. Those are their words and their records.

Lawler for Congress Campaign Manager Ciro Riccardi offered the following response:

“Cait Conley just said the quiet part out loud – that she welcomes the support of New York City socialists in her campaign for Congress. Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and AOC are some of the most radical, card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Cait Conley wants to campaign alongside them. These are folks who want to defund the police, abolish ICE, work for the ‘total eradication of Western Civilization,’ get rid of prisons and borders, and even think Joe Biden is a rapist. If Cait thinks those are the values Hudson Valley voters are clamoring for, we wish her the best of luck in securing more six-figure contracts with big tech companies after losing in November.”

 

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Cait Conley won her primary while refusing to tell voters what two Palantir-linked AI defense contractors paid her nearly $335,000 to do, citing nondisclosure agreements. Now that she’s the nominee, the Lawler for Congress campaign is calling on Conley to release certified copies of her NDAs with Primer AI and Hidden Level. If she won’t, voters deserve to know why.

Pearl River, NY — 6/24/2026… Cait Conley is now the Democratic nominee for New York’s 17th Congressional District. She earned that nomination without ever answering a basic question: What are Primer AI and Hidden Level paying her hundreds of thousands of dollars to do?

Conley’s own financial disclosure, filed only after a local reporter and constituents pressed her, shows roughly $335,000 in income from the two firms, $35,000 from Primer, and nearly $300,000 from Hidden Level. Both companies work alongside Palantir, the contractor helping the federal government carry out its surveillance and deportation operations. Primer advertises that it supports DHS “homeland security operations.” Primer also won what was then its largest federal contract in history, a multi-million-dollar deal with US Special Operations Command, in October 2020, while Conley was serving as Director of Operations at Army Special Operations Command, inside SOCOM.

When voters and members of the media asked what she actually did for that money, Conley said she had signed nondisclosure agreements and could not discuss it. Lawler for Congress campaign manager Ciro Riccardi today called on her to release certified copies of those agreements:

“Cait Conley is asking Hudson Valley voters to make her their voice in Congress, but she’s doing so while hiding who has been signing her checks and what they bought. She says an NDA ties her hands. Fine. Then release certified copies of them. If there is nothing in Cait Conley’s arrangement with Primer and Hidden Level that voters would object to, a certified copy of each NDA costs her nothing. So which is it, Cait? Will you release certified copies of your NDAs with Primer and Hidden Level, so the people of the Hudson Valley can see exactly what a Palantir-linked surveillance contractor is paying their would-be Congresswoman to do? Or will you ask them to trust you while you keep them in the dark? If you are serious about representing the Hudson Valley, you’ll release them. If you won’t, voters deserve to know why.”

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Lawler says Conley’s overly scripted soundbites and attempts to conceal her lucrative consulting deals with AI and big tech companies behind NDA’s won’t fly in nation’s top race

Pearl River – June 23, 2026… Congressman Mike Lawler issued the following statement tonight/this morning in response to Cait Conley’s victory in the NY-17 Democratic Primary tonight:

“We all commend Cait’s military service, but the people of the Hudson Valley don’t vote for resumes, they vote for results. Recent media criticism about Cait’s shallow, hyperpartisan campaign are spot on.  Overly scripted soundbites and hyper partisan name-calling backed by millions of dollars from Washington, DC party bosses might win a primary against underfunded local challengers, but it’s not going to win the nation’s most-watched congressional race against someone, like me, with a proven bipartisan record of delivering for this district during both the Biden and Trump Administrations, and standing up to my own party again and again along the way.”

Added Lawler: “That is why I am challenging Cait tonight to six televised debates.  Without the beltway handlers who parachuted her into this district from Virginia there to script her – I look forward to exposing Cait’s hypocrisy of attacking ICE, while getting paid handsomely by AI and big tech companies that do business with ICE.  

I look forward to having her explain why she opposed expanding the SALT deduction and cutting taxes for working families and seniors by an average of $4,000 a year, while letting illegal immigrants access taxpayer-funded healthcare.  

I look forward to questioning her about why she believes she knows how to keep local communities safe better than our local law enforcement, and wants to block them from communicating and cooperating with federal immigration officials. 

I look forward to challenging her embrace of Kathy Hochul’s bone-headed energy policy that has driven costs through the roof. 

And I look forward to contrasting my record as the 4th most bipartisan lawmaker in the entire Congress with Cait’s stated belief that Republicans are ‘the greatest threat to America and our future’ and an enemy from within. Frankly, that is disqualifying rhetoric for someone seeking to represent one of the most politically-balanced and competitive districts in the country.”

Concluded Lawler: “So, c’mon Cait… let’s debate!”

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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.
 

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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.”

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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?” 

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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’.”

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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. 

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