Marsha Blackburn Corruption & Ethics

Recordings From Inside Marsha Blackburn's Office: Staff Warned They'd Be 'Asked to Break the Law'

New recordings from inside Marsha Blackburn's Senate office allege staff were pressured to do campaign work on the taxpayer's dime — a Hatch Act violation — as she runs for governor.

MAGA Report Cards · Jul 20, 2026

Recordings From Inside Marsha Blackburn's Office: Staff Warned They'd Be 'Asked to Break the Law'

Marsha Blackburn wants Tennessee to make her governor. But new recordings from inside her own U.S. Senate office raise a serious question: was her taxpayer-funded staff being pressured to break the law for her campaign?

On July 20, NewsChannel 5 Investigates reported that it obtained recordings from inside Blackburn's Senate office — the same evidence that was handed to the Senate Ethics Committee during a 2025 investigation into whether Blackburn used taxpayer resources for her political campaigns.

What the staffers say on those recordings is damning.

"A gross violation of the Hatch Act"

The Hatch Act is a federal law. It makes it a crime to use government staff and taxpayer dollars to run someone's political campaign. On the recordings, a senior Blackburn staffer did not mince words:

"Look, I could have ran out of ink writing down the violations."

"The staff being told to do things is a gross violation of the Hatch Act."

Blackburn's Senate staffers — the people your tax dollars pay to do government work — were afraid they were being turned into campaign workers as she geared up for her 2024 re-election. One junior staffer worried out loud about "the moment it feels like I'm crossing ethical lines." A senior colleague answered: "It's gonna be like those lines don't even exist in '24, which is a problem."

Then came the warning that gives the story its name:

"If I were you, I'd start looking 'cause it's gonna be hell, and you're gonna be asked to break the law – on some level... basically being a campaign worker and, you know, blowing off your real job. 'Cause you know it's coming."

A leading ethics expert says those fears were justified. Kedric Payne, general counsel of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, told NewsChannel 5 that using official staff for campaign work means "you're using taxpayer money for campaign activity. And that's a basic ethics rule that all staffers are aware of, as well as all members."

The strategist they called a "psychopath"

Much of the blame on the recordings points to Ward Baker, Blackburn's longtime political strategist. Staffers described him as someone who "just doesn't really operate ... in this world of truthfulness or honesty." One went further:

"He's a psychopath, and he doesn't care... There is no empathy, compassion, dignity, integrity."

Why would Baker lean on the taxpayer-funded Senate staff instead of just hiring campaign workers? The staffers had an answer for that too. Baker was "literally making millions of dollars for her campaign effort," and the reason he wouldn't hire real campaign staff was simple: "'Cause he keeps more money." As one put it, "I think he enjoys hurting people."

Blackburn says "nothing to see here" — and won't show her work

Here is where it gets worse. Blackburn is not being straight with voters about what happened.

Over the weekend, she told WKRN's Bob Mueller the whole thing was "a politically motivated complaint" that "was fully investigated. There was no misconduct. There was no disciplinary action. And it has been completely resolved."

But that's not the full story. According to a person briefed on the outcome, the Ethics Committee didn't find "nothing" — it planned to ask Blackburn to produce a corrective action plan to fix the problems inside her office. The Senate Ethics Committee also almost never takes public disciplinary action against a sitting senator, so "no disciplinary action" is not the clean bill of health Blackburn makes it sound like.

And when asked to release her correspondence with the Ethics Committee to back up her claims, Blackburn refused. Her campaign manager, Abigail Sigler — who works for Ward Baker — wouldn't answer NewsChannel 5's questions at all. Even one of Blackburn's Republican rivals for governor, John Rose, has called on her to produce the evidence.

If there was truly "nothing to see," releasing the documents would end the story in a day. Instead, Blackburn is hiding them.

A pattern, not a one-off

This is not the first time Blackburn's ethics have been questioned — she already faces scrutiny over an ethics probe and her out-of-state donor money. But this one cuts to the core of public trust: it's about whether she treated the government office you pay for as her personal campaign machine, and whether she's now covering it up while asking for a promotion to the governor's mansion.

One person involved in the investigation compared Blackburn's office to children "running around with scissors." Tennessee voters deserve to see the full report before they decide whether to hand her the keys to the whole state.