The hits just keep on coming for Due Diligence Group, the Democrat-aligned group that has been found to have requested the military records of Republican political candidates. Congressmen Don Bacon of Nebraska and Zach Nunn of Iowa already learned that the group sought their Air Force records without their consent. Now another person has come forward. Abraham Payton of Due Diligence Group sought the National Guard records of New York Assemblyman Colin Schmitt last summer when he was running for Congress. The group was definitely up to more activities of this type and we almost certainly do not have the full list of victims yet. (Politico)

A Democratic-aligned firm made a failed attempt to obtain personal information from the Army National Guard on at least one House Republican candidate, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.

It’s the same firm that the Air Force has identified as securing the unauthorized release of multiple House GOP candidates’ records last year.

Abraham Payton of the research firm Due Diligence Group attempted in August to obtain the personnel records of Colin Schmitt — a GOP member of the New York state assembly — from the Army National Guard, according to a copy of the request form that Payton filed. Schmitt, who’s still an active National Guard sergeant, lost by less than 1.5 percentage points to Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) in their November battle for New York’s 18th District.

After the records of GOP candidate Jennifer-Ruth Green were exposed last year, the Air Force conducted an internal investigation and determined that the records of eleven service members had been “improperly disclosed to a third party.” But that was just the Air Force. Now that we know that Due Diligence was going after National Guard records, who knows how many more will turn up?

Schmitt isn’t pulling any punches. He is directly blaming the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And why wouldn’t he? It’s obvious that Due Diligence wasn’t doing this as a hobby or out of boredom. The DCCC paid them more than $100,000 during the last campaign cycle. And they had no legal right to those records.

The group had also somehow obtained the social security numbers of at least three of the candidates and used them when requesting the records. This form of data piracy is something we’ve come to expect from hackers and scammers. But having the DCCC funding activity such as this takes it to an entirely new level.

There still seems to be some confusion among the House members investigating the situation as to precisely what laws (if any) may have been broken. But it just seems as if there have to be some charges in the offing. The forms submitted to the military fraudulently claimed that the records were being requested for a “background check” related to “benefits and employment.” They specifically asked for any disciplinary actions that may have been taken against the candidates when they served.

How is that not some form of fraud at a minimum? The real question is whether Abraham Payton and Due Diligence Group will be the only ones to take the fall. We need to see the contract between that group and the DCCC. If they specifically tasked them with obtaining military records, whoever made that agreement and paid them should be culpable as well. Sadly, if they were even mildly clever, they might have phrased it as some sort of generic request for “general records” and discussed the military angle through other channels.