GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter changes his story about man making white supremacist gesture in photo

Rep. Duncan Hunter’s staff can’t get their story straight about how well Hunter knows the man flashing a white supremacist symbol while posing with the Republican congressman.

Hunter posed with local businessman and white supremacist Kris Wyrick at a Fourth of July parade, with Wyrick doing the “okay” gesture that’s been taken up by white supremacists. The first story from Hunter’s staff was that Wyrick was “a stranger in a parade who wanted to be in a picture.” Then YouTube footage emerged of Wyrick saying of Hunter, “I know him personally. And I know his family personally. And he’s a great man,” and the story changed to, “Alpine is a small community. It’s not unusual for the congressman to frequent different places around his district,” but “Congressman Hunter is not friends with this individual and does not socialize with him.”

Although, okay, Hunter’s father, former Rep. Duncan Hunter, “has mentioned [Wyrick] a couple of times.”

Wyrick claimed that the hand sign he made in the photo with Hunter was a “giant joke against the left,” but in the same video in which he talked about knowing Hunter personally, Wyrick said, “People can call me a white supremacist all they want, I wear that label as soon as I wake up in the morning.”

Hunter and his staff have plenty of practice being defiant in the face of ugly stories: His corruption trial starts next month.