NYC GOP Club's New Leader Worked With Pro-Nazi Party: Report

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The new leader of the Upper East Side's Metropolitan Republican Club, the site of an October street brawl between the right-wing Proud Boys and left-wing protesters, did business with a European political party that associates itself with neo-Nazis, according to reports.

Ian Walsh Reilly, who was elected to lead the East 83rd street club in January, bragged about his consultancy group's work with the party Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany during his election campaign, the Daily Beast first reported.

"Last year I founded a consultancy with a friend who is also active in GOP politics. The Yorkville Group is what we called it," Reilly said, according to video obtained by the Daily Beast. "It has provided services, not just to statewide candidates... but to international political parties like Alternative fur Deutschland."

Alternative fur Deutschland is a far-right political party founded in Germany to advocate for a heavily anti-immigrant platform, the Daily Beast reported. Leaders of the party have pushed ideas such as shooting asylum seekers and giving police the power to shoot migrant women and children, according to the report.

Leaders of AfD have also supported the country's neo-Nazis and praised Hitler. Reilly downplayed his firm's connections with the party in an interview with the Daily Beast, but did not rule out working with them again.

"It wasn’t that I went after them, it was that someone who was part of the party knew I would be able to help them get access," Reilly told the Daily Beast. "Since it’s such a new party, they would have wanted access to discuss who they are… what they represent. They are a very pro-American party, a lot of these people."

Reilly endorsed far-right views and talking points during his campaign to lead the Metropolitan Republican Club, a break from the club's more moderate leanings of the past. During his election he was endorsed by far-right figures like Milo Yianoppolus. It's also beleived that Reilly invted the Proud Boys leader Gavin McInnes to speak at the club.

State Senator Liz Krueger, whose district includes the Metropolitan Republican Club, said in a statement: "I cannot tell the Republican Party whom to include or exclude from their ranks. However, you can judge a person, or a party, by the company they keep."

"The company Mr. Reilly keeps – neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust-deniers – are not the kind that Manhattan Republicans can be proud of."

Read the full Daily Beast article here.

Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images News/Getty Images. The photo does not depict Ian Walsh Reilly and was taken at an AfD rally in Germany.