By Dan Murphy
Democrats who live in Congressional district NY-17 and will vote in the upcoming June 23 Democratic primary to see who will take on Republican Congressman Mike Lawler just received a treasure trove of information concerning Cait Conley, one of the top Democrats in the field.
Titled “The Conley Dossier,” a massive 34,000-word document at theconleyrecord.com, paints a concerning portrait of Conley, including where her financial support comes from and who she will represent if elected.
The Dossier reads:
“She runs as a Hudson Valley democracy-defender. The records describe someone else. A candidate parachuted into the district in 2025, financed by a coastal billionaire-and-defense network, and personally paid by the surveillance-AI industry she’d be positioned to oversee. Every figure below traces to her own filings, the FEC, or named reporting.
Who She Represents
The constituencies with a real claim on her, ranked by strength of evidence:
- The surveillance / defense-AI complex she personally worked for — $328,283 from Hidden Level + Primer (incl. a $152,743 salary), data feeding Palantir’s Maven; hidden from her website behind NDAs. Her own paycheck. (Ironclad.)
- A coastal centrist-finance billionaire network — Bain, Lone Pine, Charlesbank, the Renaissance/Heising-Simons fortune, and mall-REIT heiress Deborah Simon — who fund her directly, fund the bundling PAC, and fund the Super PAC airing her ads. (Strong, FEC.)
- The national-security-Democrat recruitment machine — New Politics, VoteVets, Serve America (Moulton) — that manufactured her “Hell Cats” candidacy. (Strong, FEC + press.)
- The pro-Israel establishment — DMFI ($2M from Simon), to whose position she has aligned on arms during the Gaza war. (Strong, stated.)
- The DC consultant and party apparatus she pays and answers to. (Strong, FEC.)
- NY-17 voters — who supplied ~8% of her money. (Weak.)
One-line verdict: Cait Conley represents the surveillance-AI industry that signs her paychecks and the coastal billionaire-and-defense network that funds her — a “defend democracy” brand wrapped around the national-security and donor establishment her own brand runs against.
The Narrative
She ran Harvard’s “Defending Digital Democracy” project and was CISA’s top election-security official — then went onto the payroll of the airspace-surveillance and defense-AI industry, took $328,283 from two Palantir-orbit contractors, and scrubbed it from her campaign site, citing NDAs. She had never lived in NY-17; she moved in during 2025 to run, lives in wealthy Chappaqua-adjacent New Castle while branding herself “Ossining,” and recently registered as a Democrat. She didn’t rise from a local movement — she was recruited by a national veteran-candidate operation (New Politics’ Emily Cherniack) into a four-woman “Hell Cats” slate, air-covered by a $508,592 VoteVets Super PAC campaign, and bundled into contention by a centrist hybrid PAC chaired by a Massachusetts congressman and funded by a handful of finance billionaires who max out to her, fund the PAC that bundles for her, and fund the Super PAC that runs her ads — all at once. Her most co-funded fellow candidate and endorser, Rep. Pat Ryan, spent two years inside the Palantir/Berico/”Team Themis” consortium that pitched surveilling unions and journalists. Her platform is loud and populist where it costs her donors nothing and conspicuously silent where it would cost them money. This dossier documents each thread.
The Money in Brief
- Raised $2.65M; only ~8% ($217,725) from inside NY-17. ~50% of itemized money is out-of-state; NYC out-raised the entire home district.
- VoteVets Super PAC: $508,592 in ads for her, $0 against (FEC Schedule E). Mostly labor-funded, with its single largest individual backer being mall-REIT heiress Deborah Simon ($1.5M) — who also maxed Conley directly.
- The PAC loop: Bain’s Bekenstein ($7K + $375K to VoteVets), the Mandels ($14K + $300K to VoteVets + Sue Mandel $3.63M to Majority Democrats PAC), Heising ($7K + $1.005M to Majority Democrats PAC). Majority Democrats PAC (chaired by Rep. Jake Auchincloss) bundled $112,150 into her.
- Her donors’ #1 co-funded candidate is Rep. Pat Ryan (36 shared donors) — her endorser and a former Palantir-subcontractor executive.”
The website, theconleyrecord.com, brings you to an AI friendly database with all of the facts and data that back up the allegations made against her, which allows you to upload the entire file into your computer or preferred AI.
I prefer starting out on the summary page, https://web.archive.org/web/20260605184346/https://www.conleyrecord.com/#executive-summary-who-she-represents, which also provides available tabs to all of the relevant topics.
You may be asking, who created this, and is this an orchestrated hit piece on Conley’s campaign? We chatted with the creator of theconleyrecord.com, Andrew Torbie, about his research, which is impressive regardless of who you support in the NY-17 dem primary. The fact that Torbie has come forward to acknowledge ownership of the data legitimatizes his work, in our view.
Torpie, who grew up in NY-17 (Thornwood) and we now lives in California, explained the rationale for his Conley Dossier in a Facebook post. “Hi everyone – some of you may have seen the article about the Cait Conley dossier, and some of you may have already read the longer research document.
“I want to be very clear: this was my own independent work. It was not requested, authorized, directed, approved, or funded by any campaign. I am not currently working with any campaign, and none of my recent research is affiliated with any campaign.
“I am an independent researcher and activist. I grew up in NY-17, I care deeply about this race, and I believe voters deserve to understand the records, donors, professional ties, public claims, and vulnerabilities of the people asking to represent them.
“This presentation is a condensed version of that research. It is based on public records, FEC filings, financial disclosures, and public statements. I encourage people not to take my word for anything: read it, check the sources, challenge the conclusions, and do your own research.
“Opposition research is not inherently dirty. It is one of the ways voters, journalists, activists, and campaigns test whether a candidate is ready for the scrutiny of a general election.
“Mike Lawler and national Republicans will have opposition researchers, consultants, lawyers, trackers, Super PACs, and national money behind them. If Democrats nominate someone with serious unresolved vulnerabilities, they will not be gentle about it. They will drag us for filth.
“That is why I believe this work matters now – before the primary, before the nominee is locked in, and before Republicans define them for us.
“I also want to be equally clear about the general election: whoever wins the Democratic primary will have my full support against Mike Lawler. I will be publishing separate research on him as well, and I will be just as aggressive in holding him accountable.
“This is not about tearing Democrats down. It is about transparency, accountability, and making sure we nominate the strongest possible candidate – and then win,” posted Torpie, who has created a donation page to support his work, at https://buymeacoffee.com/andrewtorpie.
Some Facebook posts about Torpie’s Dossier asked why he did not research Conley’s primary democratic opponent, Beth Davidson. “My focus is on Cait and Lawler, who have much more in common than you’d think,” posted Torpie, who can research any candidate he wants to in the American market of Free Speech. If someone else wants to research Davidson, or any of the other democratic NY-17 candidates feel free and good luck matching the high bar that Torpie has achieved.
It is up to you, the reader, to read this story and then read Torpie’s dossier. We recommend you do so, not only because it is truly fact-based, but also because it provides insight into what the future of political research will produce and deliver to voters.
The useful days of political mailings are history, folks. We have said it again and again. We live in NY-17, and as an Independent voter, I’m getting swamped with mail pieces from Conley, Davidson, and Lawler…that go in the trash. It’s a waste of money.
The YouTube video ads from Conley, Davidson, and Lawler are a bit more effective for their respective campaigns because I have to watch them to continue to the next YouTube video.
But this work from Torpie is the future of politics in America, and I welcome it and praise him for it.
And of course, the Lawler campaign jumped on The Conley Dossier, in a press release which reads, “With two weeks to go until the Democratic Primary in NY-17, a damning 34,000-word dossier raises questions about who Cait Conley is, which special interest groups are backing her, where her campaign dollars come from, and what she does to make big bucks from AI companies.“
But a word of warning to the Lawler camp about being so gleeful about Torpie’s research, because Lawler is likely the next subject of Torpie’s next Dossier.
