A Washington State congressional candidate The Daily Beast caught misreporting his employer in 34 public statements and disclosures in fact never worked at all for his six-figure pay, his former campaign manager claims—just one perk the former staffer says the Republican enjoyed from his putative job.

Conservative operative Byron Sanford told The Daily Beast that Joe Kent never dedicated a single hour to his reported role as a project manager for a tech firm in all the grueling months he ran the campaign up until the candidate axed him amid internal disputes in December of last year. Nonetheless, the Donald Trump-backed contender reported to the House Ethics Committee that he had earned a $122,110.36 salary in 2021 from a company called “American Enterprise Solutions,” which he stated in an earlier filing was his full-time job.

When The Daily Beast exposed earlier this week that “American Enterprise Solutions” did not appear to exist, Kent and his campaign admitted that they had misidentified the firm in dozens of disclosures to the committee and the Federal Elections Commission, and in at least one public appearance. The team has since updated Kent’s personal financial reports to state that his employer is “Advanced Enterprise Solutions.”

Business records in Delaware, Virginia, and Washington State do attest to this firm’s existence, as does a $264,476 Paycheck Protection Program it received in April 2020 for reportedly preserving 18 positions in the face of the pandemic. Only a few weeks after catching this lifeline, Kent made his first federal campaign donation to a Trump-linked committee, giving “project manager” as his title and “American Enterprise Solutions” as his employer.

But Sanford alleged that, at least from the start of his campaign in early 2021, Kent was not logging any hours for any project other than his own bid to unseat Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA).

“I made his schedule, there simply wasn’t any time in the day,” Sanford said, adding that Kent told volunteers that he had “light hours” thanks to an arrangement with his company’s owner. “I think he’s just paid a six-figure salary so he can campaign.”

Sanford further recalled sitting in on a conference call in which Kent revealed that his employer would finance a survey by Trafalgar Polling of voters in the House district. No payments of any kind to Trafalgar appear in Kent’s reports to the FEC, and the firm did not respond to repeated requests for comment by The Daily Beast. ...