As the heated 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial race enters its closing weeks, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D) is facing sharp criticism for her role in the 1994 U.S. Naval Academy cheating scandal involving stolen electrical engineering exam answers, with one of her classmates revealing that her role in the scandal is much larger than she would have America believe.
For context, not only was the NJ gubernatorial candidate barred from walking at graduation for not reporting the guilty party, but Classmate Brent Sadler also accused her of lying to investigators, obscuring a deeper involvement, and fostering a culture of dishonesty that stigmatized the entire Class of 1994 for years.
Sadler, who now works as a Heritage Foundation Fellow, graduated as part of the same class and offered a unique insight to the scandal and her role in it in comments to the press on the matter. “At some point in time, she lied, or she obscured the facts. I would say lying, and that’s why she didn’t graduate or walk across the stage. Because if you simply did not report something, it wasn’t grounds for honor code violations at the time,” he noted.
Providing more nuance, the same source added, “She can say she covered for her classmates. It wasn’t, ‘I’m not gonna say anything.’ It was lying about what she saw, lying about the details. Those that tried to avoid doing the honorable thing were able to stay and graduate and go off and get commissions.”
Explaining the issues with this attitude, he described how it affects underclassmen. “It sent a very corrosive signal to young officers that doing the honorable thing doesn’t pay.” Additionally, he noted how this created a negative for other graduates from the same class.
In a lengthy anecdote, Sadler said, “I went off to nuclear power school to become a submariner. And there would be snide comments from the instructors and the senior chiefs to say, ‘Hey, OK, all those 94 graduates, we’re going to make sure you don’t steal the test.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I got it, fun joke, doesn’t really matter.’”
Describing the consequences and contrasting that with the modern Navy, he added, “But now, fast-forward to out when you’re a division officer responsible for a dozen sailors on an operational nuclear submarine, and the chief and the senior enlisted are kind of going, ‘Oh, you’re from one of those. So, can I trust you to do the right thing? If you see something, will you do it?’ They’d rapidly learn by your own force of your personality that that’s not you, but you had to prove it over and over again.”
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Continuing to outline the issue with Sherrill’s dishonesty, Sadler expressed the long-term career repercussions regarding the scandal. “Fast-forward to my first command course. Folks kind of saying, ‘Oh, ’94. It’s like, well, a little extra scrutiny on you guys.’ And that’s like 15 years later. It had a cloud,” he noted.
Reacting to this scandal, Rep. Mikie Sherrill dodged responsibility, saying, “I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk but graduated and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving for nearly ten years with the highest level of distinction and honor.”
Responding to her lack of accountability, her classmate objected to her remarks. “She immediately went back, and she defended the worst of the behavior in that scandal. And she let it just continue. That, in my estimation, is the violation that she’s committed here. We should demand better of those who lead us,” Sadler declared.
Watch her Republican opponent’s ad calling out her cheating scandal here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video