Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born 9 July 1977) is an American former journalist who has worked as a spokesperson for Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, in which she is a junior sergeant. A self-described "recovering political operative" from Las Vegas, Nevada, she was active in Nevada politics from 2020 to 2021, including an abortive run for Las Vegas City Council. She arrived in Ukraine in March 2022, shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion, and has variously served as a war correspondent, a representative in aid negotiations, a civilian analyst with the Ministry of Defense, and a combat medic.

This profile of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo covers Early Life and Family Background, Nevada politics, Nevada Republican Party and Proud Boys (2020–2021), Blundo defense and Las Vegas City Council run (2021) and Political Views and Public Life.

Ashton-Cirillo drew national media attention in 2021 when she released records of conversations from her time working with Republican candidates, documenting efforts to recruit members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, for a planned "Brooks Brothers Riot" (alluding to the 2000 demonstration) as part of efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 United States presidential election. In 2022, she leaked a text exchange with the Republican nominee for Nevada Attorney General, which became a key controversy in that election.

Starting in March 2022, Ashton-Cirillo reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine from Kharkiv, Ukraine, primarily for LGBTQ Nation, often writing about the war's effect on LGBTQ people. A trans woman, she is thought to have been the first openly transgender war correspondent and the only transgender journalist covering the invasion. In Kharkiv, she worked closely with the Ukrainian military and police, and was appointed by the mayor of Zolochiv, Kharkiv Oblast, as a representative to advocate with aid groups. After witnessing and reporting on the October 2022 Kyiv missile strikes—including posting a controversial widely shared video that showed a dead body—she resigned from LGBTQ Nation to become a combat medic in Ukraine's Noman Çelebicihan Battalion, a Crimean Tatar unit. In February 2023, she was wounded by Russian shelling while serving on the front lines in the Donbas with the 209th Battalion of the 113th Kharkiv Defense Brigade [uk; it]. She was later assigned to the Territorial Defense Forces, and became one of its English-language spokespeople in early August 2023; she was suspended in late September pending investigation of unspecified unapproved statements. Ashton-Cirillo was discharged in February 2025.

Early Life and Family Background of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

Ashton-Cirillo was born on 9 July 1977 in North Florida; she previously had the surname Cirillo. According to her byline with The Nevada Independent, she has lived in Las Vegas since 2004; according to the Nevada Current she "established residency in 2016 to be closer to" her ex-wife and child. In this phase of her life, she worked as a real estate analyst, a poker player, and the communications director at a healthcare company.

In 2015, before her gender transition, Ashton-Cirillo went to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey to report on the refugee crisis, having been afraid to enter Syria itself. She wrote a book about the experience, Along the Tracks of Tears, but was unhappy with its quality, having been preoccupied with concerns about whether the people she traveled with would have accepted her if they knew she was a trans woman.

Ashton-Cirillo started taking feminizing hormones "on and off" in 2018, before deciding to transition in May 2019 after what she described as a "35-year wait to embrace myself". She later said that she would have died if she had not transitioned. Her transition has included gender-affirming surgery and hair regrowth. She was writing Fair. Right. Just. As she was coming to terms with her gender identity, and rushed to finish it for fear that she would kill herself. After beginning her transition, she removed both the novel and Along the Tracks of Tears from circulation, explaining:

Nevada politics of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

Ashton-Cirillo described herself as a progressive activist and leftist libertarian when she was active in Nevada politics, and has since referred to herself as a "recovering political operative"; she has been described in The Washington Post and The Nevada Independent as a liberal activist and in the Las Vegas Review-Journal as "unapologetically left-leaning". She was a registered member of the Democratic Party as of February 2022.

Nevada Republican Party and Proud Boys (2020–2021)

In September 2020, Ashton-Cirillo began working as an opposition research operative with Republican candidates in Nevada under the name Sarah Cirillo. She later told the Post and Nevada Current that her initial purpose in switching parties was to conduct research for her book on extremism and help her friend, Nadia Krall, get elected to a local judgeship as a Republican. According to The Daily Beast, Ashton-Cirillo convinced Krall to change her party affiliation from Democratic to Republican to pick up endorsements from Ashton-Cirillo's high-profile Republican contacts. Taking on a hard-right, Trumpist persona, Ashton-Cirillo developed ties with Nevada Republicans by attending and hosting rallies organized by prominent party figures. She commented to the Post that her record as a liberal activist was available on the internet, and told the Beast that "these guys were too stupid to look into my progressive politics, because they were so eager to tokenize me". She was open about her transgender status. Some were indifferent to it, while Republican attorney Sigal Chattah saw it as a positive and referred to Ashton-Cirillo as a "unicorn".

Following the 2020 presidential election, Ashton-Cirillo became involved with efforts to bring members of the Proud Boys—a far-right, men-only group that would later play a role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol—to a rally in front of the Clark County election department, part of nationwide efforts to overturn Joe Biden's victory. The day after the election, Ashton-Cirillo received a message from the vice president of McShane LLC, a firm hired by the Republican Party to investigate electoral fraud. In the message, given to the Post in 2021, the McShane vice president said that Republican Congressman Paul Gosar was planning a "Brooks Brothers Riot" in Arizona—referencing the 2000 demonstration by Republican staffers that contributed to George W. Bush's victory—and that Ashton-Cirillo should start planning something similar in Nevada; the McShane vice president said that they should "get the Proud Boys out". This led Ashton-Cirillo to contact a group of far-right activists, at least one of whom was a member of the Proud Boys. The proportion of those wearing Proud Boy colors in the crowd was relatively small, and the protest remained peaceful. Gosar denies having discussed any protests with the McShane vice president.

The Clark County Republican Party later banned seven people from participating in Republican county affairs, citing racist and anti-Semitic texts disclosed to them by Ashton-Cirillo. One of those banned was a Proud Boy who Ashton-Cirillo had contacted when recruiting for the Clark County rally.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Ashton-Cirillo), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.