| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Ciro Riccardi | ciro@lawlerforcongress.com | (845) 642-6569 The mailers carry no legal disclaimer, and the group has filed nothing with the FEC. The Department of Justice has told the Lawler campaign it referred the group to the FBI. Orangeburg, NY — October 27, 2026 — Today, Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17) was joined in Orangeburg by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson, Rep. Jimmy Patronis, State Senator Bill Weber, Rockland County Executive Ed Day, local elected officials and a senior couple who saved over $6,000 on their taxes this year thanks to the Working Families Tax Cut Act. Lawler also called on Cait Conley to condemn an anonymous group mailing false attacks into the district in the final days of the race. The mailers, from a group calling itself American Forge Coalition, reached Republican homes across NY-17 on October 23 and 24. They claim Lawler “supports giving mass amnesty to up to 13 million criminal illegals.” The only disclosure reads “Paid for by American Forge Coalition,” with no address, phone number, or website, and no statement of authorization, as federal rules require. The phone number printed on the mail is Lawler’s Pearl River district office. No FEC committee is registered under the name, and none of the 259 24- and 48-hour reports filed on the race since September 1 come from the group. The Department of Justice has told the Lawler campaign it referred the group to the FBI. “Somebody is spending real money in the last weeks of this election lying about my positions on criminal illegal aliens, and they won’t say who they are,” said Congressman Lawler. “There’s nobody to my right on the ballot, and voter suppression is illegal. You can figure out who comes out ahead if Republican voters stay home.” Conley’s own policy page says it is time to “get rid of dark money flooding our elections,” and says she worked at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “to protect our election systems.” “Well, here it is in her race,” said Lawler. “And the question is, will Cait Conley condemn the far-left groups that are very clearly trying to suppress voters in the waning week of this election? That’s the question, and every reporter here should ask her.” The Working Families Tax Cut Act, which Lawler helped pass, raised the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 and kept the 2017 tax cuts from expiring. Had they lapsed, the standard deduction would have been cut roughly in half and the child tax credit would have dropped from $2,000 to $1,000 per child. “I was clear when I told my own party I wasn’t voting for a tax bill that didn’t fix SALT, right? The SALT caucus worked together and got the cap raised from $10,000 to $40,000,” said Lawler. “Now that’s significant money for people paying some of the highest property taxes anywhere in the country. The Speaker could have told us to take a hike, but I know many families around here are happy that he didn’t.” “You have 3.3 million seniors in the state of New York who are no longer paying taxes on their Social Security. That’s a big deal for a lot of people,” said Speaker Johnson. Conley would have let it all go. At the October 7 NAACP forum at Rockland Community College, Conley said of the expiring SALT cap, “The best thing that Congress could have done for New Yorkers was absolutely nothing and just letting it go away.” Conley doesn’t pay property taxes in NY-17. She still owns the house in Fairfax County, Virginia, where she filmed her launch video, as POLITICO reported under the subhead “Running for New York, from Virginia.” Since January 2025, she has paid Fairfax County almost $11,000 in property taxes and county charges on that house. Her campaign says she lives in Ossining, but the Hudson Valley Digger found she moved to Millwood, in the Town of New Castle, in 2025. Her campaign has also misspelled several towns in the district, including writing “Ossinging” for the town she claims as home. “How much has she paid in property taxes in this district? The answer, of course, is zero, because she doesn’t own a home here,” concluded Lawler. Watch the press conference HERE. Photos are available HERE.The memo on American Forge Coalition can be found HERE. |
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