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Newly revealed recordings raise fresh questions about whether staff inside Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)'s office felt pressured to cross ethical and legal lines, as the Tennessee Republican campaigns for governor.
The recordings obtained by WTVF-TV follow last week's revelation that Blackburn's Senate office was the focus of a 2025 Senate Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that taxpayer-funded resources were used for her political campaigns.
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In a weekend interview with WKRN-TV's Bob Mueller, Blackburn dismissed the matter as a "politically motivated complaint," saying it was "fully investigated" with "no misconduct" and "no disciplinary action." When asked whether she would release documents related to the investigation, she did not directly answer.
WTVF's NewsChannel 5 Investigates has now recordings of conversations among Blackburn staffers that were submitted as evidence to the Senate Ethics Committee. In one exchange, a senior staffer says, "I could have ran out of ink writing down the violations," referring to Senate ethics rules, and adds that "the staff being told to do things is a gross violation of the Hatch Act," referring to the federal law barring the use of taxpayer-funded staff for political campaign work.
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The recordings, made as Blackburn prepared for her 2024 re-election campaign, capture staff expressing fear about being asked to do campaign work under the guise of their official taxpayer-funded roles.
"Look, can I tell you something that is completely off the record and, you know, just don't say anything about it?" said a senior Blackburn staffer to an underling. "Look, if I were you, I'd start looking because it's gonna be hell, and you're gonna be asked to break the law – on some level. You're not going to be asked to, like, commit fraud or something, but as far as, like basically being a campaign worker and, you know, blowing off your real job, because you know it's coming."
Much of the staff frustration centers on Blackburn's longtime political strategist, Ward Baker, whom one staffer bluntly calls "a psychopath" with no accountability inside the office.
Government ethics expert Kedric Payne of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center said the underlying concern is legitimate, that using official staff for campaign activity misuses taxpayer money and violates a rule "all staffers are aware of, as well as all members."
Blackburn's campaign manager, Abigail Sigler, who works under Baker, declined to answer specific questions, criticizing the station's coverage as unfair and inaccurate without specifying any errors. NewsChannel 5 said it would correct any inaccuracies if identified, but Sigler did not respond further.
Blackburn's office has also declined to release its correspondence with the Ethics Committee. Gubernatorial rival John Rose has called on her to make that evidence public. Notably, while Blackburn told Mueller the committee's annual report would show no disciplinary action was taken, she did not mention that, according to a person briefed on the outcome, the committee instead planned to require her office to submit a corrective action plan.
NewsChannel 5 said it possesses additional evidence supporting the concerns raised in the investigation but is withholding it for now at the request of a source who hopes that won't be necessary to release any additional information at this stage of the campaign – just two weeks ahead of the Aug. 6 primary election.
