Washington GOP briefly put pro-Nazi blogger on payroll -- and he's got ties to far-right primary winner

The Washington State Republican Party paid a pro-Nazi blogger, but his ties to the state's GOP go deeper than a one-time payment.

According to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by The Daily Beast, the state GOP listed a payment to Greyson Arnold, who operates the far-right Telegram account “Pure Politics,” for $821.87 on July 15 marked "payroll," and the party's communication director didn't deny his employment but insisted the tenure was short term.

“When the Washington State Republican Party became aware of this individual staffer’s conduct and views expressed on social media, we terminated the employee,” said communications director Ben Gonzalez. “He no longer works for the party. The stated viewpoints in question do not reflect the values of the Republican Party.”

Arnold's account pushes Jan. 6 conspiracy theories and COVID misinformation to more than 12,000 followers who often post racist and anti-Semitic content, and he had advocated shooting refugees and undocumented immigrants and praised Adolf Hitler as “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”

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He was photographed alongside Joe Kent, the GOP congressional candidate who beat Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in a primary election earlier this year, and Arnold is considered a lieutenant in the "America First" group led by white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes, who briefly endorsed Kent.

“The fights he’s picking are counter productive," Kent said, which infuriated Feuntes, "this is not my message of inclusive populism."

Arnold himself interviewed Kent, who had defended Feuntes before running for Congress.

But the groyper leader and his followers, including Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, attacked the GOP candidate as a former CIA operative and "deep state puppet," but he won anyway.