“I came here to stand with all of you, because every town in the country, including where I’m from in Washington state, is a border town,” perennial congressional hopeful Joe Kent told the audience at the Take Our Border Back rally in San Ysidro, California. “My Democrat opponent says with a straight face that no one loses any sleep at night over the open southern border. I beg to differ!”
As Kent talked, one of the American flags decorating the stage fell over. He quickly scooped it up and continued his speech, holding the flag in one hand, and his microphone in the other.
“I get asked all the time, ‘is it just incompetence? Why would the Democrats do this? Don’t they know the border is wide open?’ This is nothing short of an unconventional warfare that is being waged against the people!”
One thousand miles north, Kent’s Democratic opponent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez addressed Kent’s appearance at the rally on Twitter. “I’m working and biking in our district today, but Joe Kent’s at a QAnon rally in California…He’ll never give a damn about SW Washington — his life is based around conspiracies & clickbait. We must defeat him w/ our votes.”
Kent has certainly made a name for himself in conspiratorial far-right circles. He showed support for Nick Fuentes, then walked it back. He repeatedly affiliated with American Populist Union, an organization that ultimately had to change its name to American Virtue after they received backlash for holding an event on Hitler’s birthday. Five weeks before the election, CNN ran a report about the campaign associating with a neo-Nazi named Greyson Arnold.
Despite this, Kent lost to Gluesenkamp Perez by less than 1% of the vote in 2022 — so of course he’s running to be the GOP’s nominee in Washington’s 3rd district again.
Even now, information continues to come out showing Kent’s 2022 campaign was plagued with scandal; notably, they obfuscated their finances, making it impossible to tell who was on payroll. This decision is likely why no one has linked Joe Kent to a San Diego based man named Giorgio Kirylo.
A retired Marine, Giorgio Kirylo was a key witness for the defense in the 2019 trial against Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL. Gallagher faced several charges, including fatally stabbing a 17 year old ISIS prisoner and taking a photo with the corpse. In court, Kirylo took credit for the idea to take photos with the body. “I chose to take a cool-guy trophy photo with my dead ISIS fighter. This is the fruits of my labor on the ground,” he explained.
Since the trial, Kirylo has pivoted toward social media influencing, running an Instagram account that often showcases his harassment of homeless people in San Diego. He often alludes to QAnon-adjacent beliefs, and, like Kent, speaks of his political enemies as though they are affiliated with the Christian devil. “San Diego has a spiritual crisis…our battles on this earth are very much beyond the physical,” he recently captioned one video of a woman in the throes of a mental health crisis.
In June 2022, Kirylo took a break from content creating, and drove up to Battle Ground, Washington. “Took a leap of faith and drove 1500 miles round trip to link up with this dude, shake his hand, and spent some time getting to know him. Joe Kent is the real deal - honored to have met up with him and for what is to come,” he wrote under a photo of himself with Kent.
A couple weeks later, he returned to Washington state, posting photos geotagged in Kent’s district. At the end of July, Kirylo wrote that he was “working for” Kent. Because the Kent campaign’s payroll information is not available through FEC records, it’s impossible to say if Kirylo was actually paid (neither the Kent campaign nor Kirylo himself responded to requests for comment). But what can be confirmed is that social media, newspaper photos, and eyewitness accounts place Kirylo with the campaign through Election Day in November 2022.
Kirylo has been referred to as Kent’s security or bodyguard, according to sources familiar with Kirylo. One remarked that Kirylo self-described as being “willing to die for Joe Kent.”
While his online rhetoric was never that over the top, it was close. “The establishment, the uniparty, the deep state, the demoncrats, the gr00m3rs, and our enemies foreign don’t want warriors like this in places to make a difference,” Kirylo wrote of Kent in July 2022. Over the years, Kirylo has repeatedly expressed he has a close relationship with Kent.
Kirylo remains friends or mutuals on social media with Kent, as well as with Kent’s former campaign manager, Ozzie Gonzalez. On Instagram, Kirylo and Greyson Arnold, the neo-Nazi CNN connected to the Kent campaign, remain mutuals.
When CNN released their story, the campaign responded by claiming that not only were they were unaware of Greyson Arnold’s beliefs, they had no idea who he was. “This is the Democrat strategy: have some weirdo go get a photo with your candidate, give it to @KFILE, get smeared on @cnn as a ‘white nationalist,’” campaign spokesman Matt Braynard tweeted.
From the beginning, this was a confusing message; not only had Arnold attended numerous events for Kent, he was originally a speaker at the Arizona Justice for J6 rally in September 2021, put on by Braynard’s own company, Look Ahead America. When Arizona Mirror contacted Look Ahead America about Arnold’s involvement, he was removed from the speaker list, indicating the organization had been informed of Arnold’s beliefs (when contacted about this two days ago, Braynard suggested I had paid Arnold to associate with Kent throughout 2022 so that I could write this Substack article).
But twelve days before the CNN piece, Kirylo indicated he knew Arnold quite well. In response to a tweet by independent journalist Vishal Singh, Kirylo posted a photo of himself with Arnold, taken that evening at Kent’s primary victory party. “Greyson sends his regards. Surprisingly not a Nazi! Interesting thing we have in America, the 1st Amendment, with dark humor and other perspectives. Cool thing that makes us different than communist hell holes. I did hear there is a video of you getting knocked out, oh no!” Kirylo wrote, referencing a video of Singh being punched by right-wingers while covering a protest.
The friendship between Kirylo and Kent is still strong. Kirylo posted a video of Kent at the border, taken when the pair went to the San Ysidro Take Our Border Back rally. Shortly after, they took a trip to Utah together.
Kirylo doesn’t appear to have joined Kent’s 2024 campaign, but San Diego mayoral candidate Larry Turner briefly brought him on as his campaign manager. Turner is a San Diego police officer and, like Kirylo, a Marine veteran. Last month the campaign faced controversy when it was reported that Turner had used Kirylo’s address to meet residency requirements to run. Not believing that Turner, who has a wife and kids, was rooming with Kirylo instead of his family, a lawsuit was filed to challenge the address. After Turner did well in the primary and triggered a runoff, the lawsuit was dropped.
Kirylo is no longer running Turner’s campaign, and did not respond to requests for comment regarding whether he’ll be involved in Kent’s 2024 run.
If you know of anyone else who worked (or is currently working) for Kent’s campaign that they might have wanted to hide from FEC records, I can be reached on Telegram.
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