As President Trump re-entered office in 2025, Cait Conley decided it was time to leave government after six tours overseas and 18 years in public service.
Ms. Conley, who held leadership positions in the Biden administration at the National Security Council and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, was quickly snapped up by a company that built anti-drone systems. She also picked up consulting work for an artificial intelligence firm that scraped public sources for law enforcement analysis.
By March of that year, she announced a new career plan, declaring her intention to run for Congress against Representative Mike Lawler in a critical Hudson Valley House swing district.
Although Ms. Conley’s time in the private sector was limited, it has nonetheless become an attack line for Republicans as they fight to hold onto Mr. Lawler’s seat.
The National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee and two of President Trump’s super PACs have committed millions of dollars to boosting Mr. Lawler’s chances. They have unleashed a negative ad campaign attacking Ms. Conley, a former U.S. Army special operations leader, by portraying her as a corporate puppet beholden to her former employers.
At issue is Ms. Conley’s decision to work for companies affected by the policies she made during her time in government, putting her in position to use her expertise and connections to benefit her employers — both defense contractors who were seeking to expand their business with the Trump administration.
The Republicans’ ads do not accuse Ms. Conley of violating any laws, and campaign watchdogs say that her private sector work did not appear to cross any ethical lines.
But with the race expected to be exceedingly close — the Cook Political Report views it as a toss up — Ms. Conley may feel pressure to dispel the accusations more directly than she has chosen to in her campaign.
Ms. Conley made $328,000 in 19 months from her private sector work, according to financial disclosure reports. She has declined to divulge the specifics of what she did for Hidden Level, the anti-drone systems company, and for Primer AI, the firm where she consulted, citing nondisclosure agreements.
She rarely refers to either company on the campaign trail, and neither job appeared on her LinkedIn profile, which lists roles as far back as 2007, when she was a military police platoon leader.
“Cait’s work has kept Americans safe from terrorist attacks, cyber attacks, and drug trafficking,” said Maddy Rosen, a campaign spokeswoman. “Mike Lawler literally voted to ban states from regulating A.I. Once again, he is lying about Cait Conley’s record of defending our country to deflect from his own record.”
Mr. Lawler has said Ms. Conley’s reluctance to discuss her work is indicative that she has something to hide.
“Conley’s own platform promises to close the so-called DC revolving door and end ‘cashing in on connections,’ while at the same time Conley herself is still profiting from that corrupt system and refusing to disclose what she does for all the money these firms are paying her,” Mr. Lawler said in a statement.
After more than a dozen years in uniform, Ms. Conley left her job as director of operations for the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command in 2021 to take on the National Security Council role. Her work, according to her LinkedIn page, included drafting a national plan to help “the U.S. Government, critical infrastructure owners and operators, and state, local, tribal and territorial entities’ ability to defend vital national security interests in the Homeland against the evolving threat posed by UAS (drones).”
In that role, Ms. Conley met with companies that held contracts from federal agencies to track and identify drones and those who operate them.
The roles were reversed at Hidden Level, where Ms. Conley was responsible for selling the company’s services to her former colleagues in the federal government, according to a person familiar with the arrangement who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Primer AI analyzes open-source information, such as social media, public forums and news outlets to, as it describes, “reveal how narratives and public opinion evolve in real time.” Conley’s work there involved designing strategies to help law enforcement fight drug traffickers and terrorists, according to her campaign.
Republicans began targeting Ms. Conley’s work for Primer during the Democratic primary in an ad that sought to link her to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Primer does not have a contract with ICE, but it partners with Palantir, a company founded by the far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, whose surveillance tools are widely used in the federal government, including to help ICE identify targets for deportation.
“True activists fought ICE’s atrocities, but Conley kept collecting. That’s not progressive,” said the ad, which was paid for by Progressive Champions, a super PAC. Progressive Champions is tied to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Congressional Leadership Fund, the newsletter Popular Information reported.
Ms. Conley defended her work for both companies, and denied that either firms’ efforts supported ICE, whose tactics she has criticized.
“It is such a political operative thing that Lawler tries to spin my private sector work as something other than a continuation of my public sector work,” she said in an interview.
And when pressed on some of those questions — and whether the current administration could be trusted to use tools like Primer, Ms. Conley dug in.
“I think that’s government’s job to make sure that our people are safe and secure. I believe that the DoD should have the best analytical tools possible, so we can have the best military,” she said.
Representatives for Primer did not respond to a request for comment.
Margaret Dylus-Yukins, senior ethics council at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, said there was no indication that any ethical rule or law had been violated. While working on a contract while negotiating employment with a contractor is considered a conflict of interest, there is no such prohibition if they do not happen concurrently and is commonplace.
Indeed, she said, the rules were written to not hamper employees from moving in and out of government service.
“I can understand from the perspective of, ‘she’s running for office, people don’t like to see this,’” Ms. Dylus-Yukins said. “But it’s also perfectly legal, and it’s what people do all the time.”
Mr. Lawler has also faced criticism from political opponents for the work he has done outside of his office, after news reports revealed that several entities he controlled had paid his former political consulting firm. Mr. Lawler and his former business partner strenuously deny any wrongdoing.
Mr. Lawler won the seat four years ago, when he upset Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, then the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Since then, Mr. Lawler has sought to fashion himself as a common-sense Republican with moderate views reflective of his purple district.
Since Mr. Trump’s re-election however, Mr. Lawler has defended nearly all of the administration’s actions. The president has responded in kind, allotting millions from his super PAC to Mr. Lawler’s re-election and personally appearing to campaign with Mr. Lawler in the spring.
The post Republicans Seize on Democrat’s Defense Contractor Ties in N.Y. House Race appeared first on New York Times.
