"The genesis of her decision to delve into that world, she says, was her exposure to a Kentucky family composed of Nazi and white nationalist end-times preppers. For three months in 2018, she lived and worked with a friend on the family farm, and she saw firsthand that there was a seismic political shift underway. The family had not voted in a presidential election for 36 years, but they were now ardent Trump supporters."
This Undercover Operative Says She Recruited the Proud Boys for the GOP
A transgender poker player and progressive activist who went undercover and cozied up to right-wing extremists. A state Republican party desperate to see Donald Trump win. A Vegas-based GOP consultant. The Proud Boys. This is the bizarre story connecting a far-right paramilitary group to an effort in Nevada to pressure election officials to overturn the 2020 election results. In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, a self-described progressive activist, embedded herself in GOP circles as part of her research for a book on right-wing extremism. What she found was a Republican consultant desperate to team the Proud Boys up with the Nevada GOP in order to challenge ballots and flip the presidential election. “These guys were too stupid to look into my progressive politics,” Ashton-Cirillo told The Daily Beast in a phone interview this week, “because they were so eager to tokenize me.” Ashton-Cirillo’s infiltration only started last September, and began with more mainstream Republican groups. She went to a Sept. 12 Trump boat rally on Lake Mead, and the next night, she attended a Trump rally where MAGA supporters recognized her from her days as a top-flight Vegas poker player. It was at that rally where she first really connected with GOP officials and donors. And when Ashton-Cirillo organized a meet-and-greet for Democratic and Republican office-seekers at her house, almost 100 Republicans showed up. By December, Nevada GOP state party chair Michael McDonald was in her home discussing future Republican strategy. And the next month, the Proud Boys were asking her to be a “hostess” for a rally in solidarity with the Jan. 6 insurrection. (She declined.) But Ashton-Cirillo was only a couple months into her undercover voyage as a Republican when Woodrow Johnston, the vice president of Las Vegas-based consulting firm McShane LLC, contacted her about getting the Proud Boys involved in efforts to pressure Nevada ballot-counters. On the night after the election, Johnston sent Ashton-Cirillo a message about an Arizona effort—led by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)—to protest the vote-counting process. According to the texts she shared with The Daily Beast, Johnston wanted to stage a similar event in Las Vegas.
