Jack Ciattarelli approved to sue Mikie Sherrill for saying his ‘opioid propaganda’ killed people

New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli was approved on Monday to launch a defamation lawsuit against his Democratic opponent, Mikie Sherrill.

Mr. Ciattarelli, a Republican former state assemblyman, wants to sue the U.S. congresswoman and retired naval officer over her claim in an Oct. 8 debate that he pushed “opioid propaganda” resulting in the deaths of “tens of thousands of people.”

Her accusation relates to a medical publishing company, Galen Publishing, that Mr. Ciattarelli founded and ran until 2017, when he sold it for about $12 million.

At a hearing with the New Jersey Election Law Commission, Mr. Ciattarelli’s campaign attorney, Mark Sheridan, said the lawsuit was a relatively straightforward request and that the candidate intended to use his own money.

“Mr. Ciattarelli  believes that he was defamed during the gubernatorial debate. He seeks to pursue that claim for defamation against Mikie Sherrill,” Mr. Sheridan said, according to the Gothamist. “He does not intend to use any campaign funds or any matching funds. It’s solely his own funds.”

The four-person commission unanimously agreed to greenlight the request.

Sean Higgins, communications director for the Sherrill campaign, said the lawsuit talk was an empty threat.

“Jack has yet to deny his role in fueling the opioid epidemic, and if he actually follows through on his desperate and frivolous lawsuit, we look forward to obtaining legal discovery into Jack putting millions in profits over those dying in the opioid crisis,” Mr. Higgins said in a statement to The Washington Times.

Ms. Sherrill has doubled down on the opioid claims, even launching a website about it with the headline “Opioid Jack.”

Mr. Higgins said the defamation threat was nothing more than an attempt to “shut the conversation down” in what has been a tight and contentious political fight.

“Perennial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has run three gubernatorial campaigns on his history as a ’small business owner.’ But the moment Mikie Sherrill pressed him on the truth about his business, which peddled deadly misinformation about opioids and was paid by an opioid company to develop an app to coach patients to get hydrocodone, he threatened to file a lawsuit,” Mr. Higgins said.

The potential lawsuit comes just a week before the Nov. 4 election, which has seen Mr. Ciattarelli close the gap in what is widely considered a solid-blue state.

A poll released Monday by co/efficient showed Mr. Ciattarelli trailing by only 1 percentage point, with 5% of voters still undecided.

Mr. Ciattarelli lost the 2021 gubernatorial race to incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy by about 3 percentage points — roughly 84,000 votes — in a race where Mr. Murphy entered Election Day with a considerable polling advantage.

In the current race, Mr. Ciattarelli has led on voter enthusiasm, with several Democratic officials and left-leaning groups in the state endorsing his candidacy, potentially accounting for tens of thousands of votes.

He has accused Ms. Sherrill of disseminating disinformation during the campaign, including “blatantly false statements” that he supported a sales tax. Mr. Ciattarelli addressed the claims on a website titled “Mikie Sherrill is a Liar.”

Ms. Sherrill has also been accused of lying about her role in a cheating scandal during her days at the U.S. Naval Academy in the early 1990s.

After reports surfaced that she had been denied the ability to walk at commencement with her graduating class, she said it was because she had refused to snitch on the cheaters.

But a classmate said the punishment suggested there was more to the story.

“At some point in time, she lied, or she obscured the facts … Because if you simply did not report something, it wasn’t grounds for honor code violations at the time,” Heritage Foundation researcher Brent Sadler, a 1994 Navy graduate, told Fox News.