On Wednesday, Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli took the first step in initiating a defamation lawsuit against Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), his opponent for New Jersey governor.
Ciattarelli’s lawyer wrote a letter, obtained by the Washington Examiner, to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission asking for confirmation on whether “expenditures made in his personal capacity to sue Sherrill in her personal capacity do not constitute a contribution to his campaign or an expenditure against the expenditure cap.” The letter stated Ciattarelli believes any of his personal funds spent on the possible lawsuit do neither and asked NJ ELEC for an “advisory opinion” on the matter.
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Ciattarelli threatened to sue Sherrill last week over comments she made during last week’s New Jersey gubernatorial debate. Sherrill alleged that Ciattarelli profited from the nation’s opioid crisis through his medical publishing company and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of adults and children. Sherrill then reaffirmed her comments during a press conference on Monday, launching a website titled “Opioid Jack.”
“You’re trying to divert from the fact you killed tens of thousands of people by printing your misinformation, your propaganda,” Sherrill said during the debate.
Ciattarelli’s letter, sent Wednesday afternoon, affirmed he “intends to sue Sherrill in his personal capacity using his personal funds to right the damage to his professional reputation,” his lawyer, Mark Sheridan, wrote.
“Today, Jack took the first step in his legal efforts to sue Mikie Sherrill for her defamatory & false allegations related to his small business. In her desperation, Mikie Sherrill crossed a line and sunk to dangerous levels of unhinged rhetoric. New Jersey deserves better, and Jack looks forward to his day in court,” the Ciattarelli campaign wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Sean Higgins, communications director for the Sherrill campaign, called Ciattarelli’s threatened lawsuit “desperate” in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“Perennial gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has run three times on his history as a ‘small business owner,’ but the moment Mikie Sherrill pressed him on the truth about his business, which peddled dangerous misinformation about opioids and was paid to develop an app to coach patients to get Hydrocodone, he’s threatened to file a desperate lawsuit to shut the conversation down,” Higgins said.
A spokesperson for the Ciattarelli campaign told the Washington Examiner that Sheridan sent the letter to NJ ELEC on Wednesday afternoon and expects to hear back “promptly.”
Ciattarelli called Sherrill’s comments a “reckless lie” on Fox News on Wednesday morning. He first told Maria Bartiromo that “I’ve filed a defamation suit,” though he later said in the interview, “We’re filing our defamation suit.” As of publication time, no lawsuit appears to have been filed.
Higgins called out Ciattarelli’s wording on the lawsuit timing in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“Now, he’s lied three times in the last 24 hours about having filed a lawsuit, which is nowhere to be seen, so we encourage New Jerseyans to go to OpioidJack.com to get the facts,” Higgins said, referring to Ciattarelli. The Sherrill communications director pointed to an article from Insider NJ and a 77 WABC radio episode, both in which Ciattarelli said he filed the lawsuit.
Sheridan said in the letter that Ciattarelli believes suing Sherrill “is not an expenditure in aid of his campaign as it is intended to address his personal and professional reputation and not harm to his campaign.”
“It is Ciattarelli’s position that spending more than $25,000 of his own funds to sue Sherrill for defamation is not an expenditure ‘in aid of his campaign.’ It is a personal matter outside of the campaign context,” Sheridan wrote in the letter, referring to a New Jersey law that prohibits candidates from spending over $25,000 of their own money toward their own campaign.
The letter said Ciattarelli’s expected lawsuit is “certain to cost more than $25,000.”
NJ ELEC oversees the campaign finances of all New Jersey state elections.
Election Day is set for Nov. 4 in the Garden State, less than one month away.