🚨CHECKMATE: Mike Lawler Funneled Over Half a Million in Campaign Cash to His Own Firm

Since 2020, Lawler has hired Checkmate to work on multiple of his campaigns while maintaining 50% ownership in the company, potentially padding his own pockets and enriching his longtime and business partner friend Chris Russell – the same operative behind GOP efforts to obtain and release Mikie Sherrill’s private military records.

REMINDER: Lawler said Donald Trump should forgo any profit he makes while serving as President and argued that “no one should profit from serving in public office” in 2016, just two years before he started Checkmate Strategies.

DCCC Spokesperson Riya Vashi:
“Mike Lawler doled out hundreds of thousands in campaign cash to a company he helped start, likely using his own runs for office to line his pockets and enrich his inner circle – and now he wants voters to believe he didn’t benefit. Lawler might think the rules don’t apply to him, but Hudson Valley families see right through his self-dealing and corruption.”

Read the stunning new reporting for yourself:

• CHECKMATE!: Republican Rep. Mike Lawler has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to a political firm he previously co-owned with his campaign spokesperson, campaign finance and income disclosure forms show.
• Checkmate Strategies, a “strategic communications firm” cofounded in 2018 by Lawler and Chris Russell, his business partner and occasional campaign spokesperson, has raked in over $500,000 in campaign cash from Lawler’s own Assembly and congressional runs.
• Government watchdog groups who spoke with Playbook say a candidate’s ability to enrich businesses they own through their campaigns raises clear ethical questions.
• Lawler’s campaign hired Checkmate Strategies to work on his 2024 and 2026 congressional runs. The firm has conducted research, handled public relations and provided a host of other services for Lawler’s campaigns. It also worked on his Assembly campaign in 2020 and helped fundraise for that seat in 2021 and 2022.
• Lawler has not reported receiving any income from the firm while in Congress, but required financial disclosures filed during his time in the Assembly and Congress show he earned $150,000 from the firm in 2022, $160,405 in 2021 and between $150,000 and $250,000 in 2020.
• Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, said Lawler’s relationship with the firm “does not look good.”
• “It certainly raises questions of why he maintained a 50 percent ownership in a campaign consulting firm through several different campaigns where he was running for office and paying that firm with campaign funds,” Lerner said.
• In August of 2023, Lawler reported having a 50 percent stake in Checkmate Strategies on financial disclosure forms. The following year, he reported being part of a “separation agreement” that had been pending since January 2023. In August 2025, he reported that the separation agreement was finalized, and that he received anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 for the deal.
• Russell, who, according to the firm’s website, remains one of two employees at Checkmate, recently caught the ire of Democrats for his reported work to obtain New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mikie Sherrill’s military records, which Republicans used to link Sherrill to an academic cheating scandal at the Naval Academy.
• The records, which were released by the National Archives, weren’t properly redacted and contained personal information such as Sherrill’s social security number.
• Russell works as a chief strategist for Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli — whom Lawler rallied for this weekend — and was sent a cease and desist letter from the Sherrill campaign. The letter accuses Russell of being behind the GOP’s successful efforts to obtain Sherill’s military records.
• “Mike Lawler funneled over half a million dollars into a company he co-founded,” DCCC spokesperson Riya Vashi said. “This isn’t just unethical, it’s an abuse of power that reeks of self-dealing and corruption, and it’s exactly what Hudson Valley voters hate about Washington politicians like Lawler.”

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