As the Donald Trump-backed, alt-right-cozy Washington State congressional candidate Joe Kent tells it—in his public appearances and public filings—he made $122,110.36 last year as a “project manager” for a tech start-up called “American Enterprise Solutions.”
One problem: There’s no record the company exists.
The enigma of the former Green Beret’s income has prompted fevered conspiracy-mongering on fringes of the internet where his past work for the Central Intelligence Agency has marked him as a supposed “puppet of the deep state.” These suspicions have arisen despite Kent’s vaccine-bashing, endorsement from not just Trump but right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, and his vanquishing in the August primary of Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA), one of the few Republicans to support the ex-president’s impeachment.
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One website, JoeKentIsCIA.com has posted multiple videos in which audience members questioned the candidate about his employment situation. In one clip from May, Kent reiterated that the name of his employer is “American Enterprise Solutions,” and maintained that “we do a wide variety of 5G conversion type of stuff.” In another, Kent told an audience member that the firm is in Virginia, and added “we have a lot of proprietary software.”
But American Enterprise Solutions holds no patents or trademarks, has no licenses, no website, no social media pages, and not a single publicly announced contract with a government agency or a private wireless provider. The Daily Beast phoned the owner of the only company ever formed under that name in the Commonwealth of Virginia, who said that the entity—listed as inactive in the State Corporation Commission—has been defunct for the better part of a decade, did not work in the tech sector, and never employed Kent.
When The Daily Beast reached out to the Kent campaign for an explanation, the response was terse.
“AES is a technology company registered in Delaware and operated out of Reston, VA,” spokesman Ozzie Gonzalez wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.
However, there is no American Enterprise Solutions registered in Delaware either as a corporate entity or as a fictitious business name, and public records show there is no business using the name in Reston or anywhere else in Virginia. Further, Fairfax County confirmed to The Daily Beast that it has no record of an American Enterprise Solutions holding a Business, Professional, and Occupational License—necessary for any private enterprise to operate in Reston or the surrounding area.
Reached by phone, Gonzalez insisted “that’s the company where Joe works,” and vowed to provide more information. He added that he believed that American Enterprise Solutions is a government contractor or subcontractor.
But no American Enterprise Solutions has registered with the federal System for Award Management or the Commercial and Government Entity Code program, though this might not be necessary if the firm were not the primary vendor on a contract.
Unfortunately, Gonzalez did not supply further details, and did not respond to repeated emails, texts, and voice messages from The Daily Beast requesting that the campaign provide documentation of Kent’s employment at American Enterprise Solutions—or that it share the name of so much as a single founder or executive from the firm.
Joe Kent.
Nathan Howard/GettyA search of the Data Universal Numbering System—a private portal used for credit reporting and some contracting opportunities—did turn up one American Enterprise Solutions in Florida and another in Georgia. When questioned, the Peach State entrepreneur told The Daily Beast “I did not work with that person,” in reference to Kent.
Meanwhile, the co-owner of the Florida firm said that not only did they never employ Kent but attested that their company has no employees at all.
Delaney Marsco, senior counsel for ethics at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, noted that House financial disclosure rules include carve outs for certain work performed for the U.S. government. However, she noted that “if an exclusion applied, you would likely not report the income at all.”
Marsco stressed that she could not say whether Kent’s filings contained false information, and left open the possibility that American Enterprise Solutions might be a sole proprietorship that failed to acquire a business license or trade name, which Delaware law mandates. However, she highlighted the harsh penalties federal authorities may impose on dishonest filers: up to a quarter-million dollars in fines and as many as five years in prison.
“You are required by law to file accurate and complete documents. and it is a very big deal to lie on these documents,” she said. “You cannot, for example, lie and say ‘this is my full time job,’ when in reality the company does not exist.”
Kent kicked off his House bid last March by loaning his campaign $205,000 out of his own pocket, and has since donated a further $44,866.89 in his effort to replace Beutler.
Federal Election Commission records show he began identifying American Enterprise Solutions as his employer on donations he made to Trump-linked committees in May 2020. His LinkedIn page asserts he started work as a project manager at an unnamed “technology start-up” in August 2019. The page indicates he has concurrently run a sole proprietorship called Perpetual LLC, registered and since dissolved in his native state of Oregon, which Gonzalez told The Daily Beast was a security subcontractor for the Department of Defense.
Kent will face Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in November.
