Trump-backed Washington Republican paid $122K from company that doesn’t appear to exist

Washington congressional candidate Joe Kent made $122,110.36 last year from a company that doesn't appear to exist.

The Donald Trump-endorsed Republican was listed as a "project manager" for a tech startup called "American Enterprise Solutions," but the company has no licenses, website, social media pages or publicly announced contracts, and the owner of the only company ever formed with that name in Virginia said it has been inactive for years and never employed Kent, reported The Daily Beast.

“You are required by law to file accurate and complete documents. and it is a very big deal to lie on these documents,” said Delaney Marsco, senior counsel for ethics at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. “You cannot, for example, lie and say ‘this is my full time job,’ when in reality the company does not exist.”

Two other companies called American Enterprise Solutions -- one in Florida and another in Georgia -- also denied employing Kent.

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The mystery around the payments has prompted conspiracy theories about the former Green Beret's past work for the CIA, and he's been accused of being a "puppet for the deep state" despite his opposition to the vaccine mandates and endorsements from Trump and right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel.

Marsco said House financial disclosure rules allow carve-outs for certain work performed for the U.S. government, but she said that doesn't appear to be the case for Kent.

“If an exclusion applied," she said, "you would likely not report the income at all.”

Kent has been confronted by conspiracy theorists about American Enterprise Solutions, telling town hall audience members that the company does a "wide variety of 5G conversion type of stuff" and has "a lot of proprietary software," but his campaign offered a terse explanation about the company.

“AES is a technology company registered in Delaware and operated out of Reston, VA,” said spokesman Ozzie Gonzalez.