Peter Giunta

Peter Giunta is a New York political staffer and party organiser who chaired the New York State Young Republicans and ran in 2025 for the chairship of the Young Republican National Federation. He left his position as chief of staff to New York State Assemblymember Michael Reilly in October 2025, after POLITICO published messages from a private Telegram chat he had created for that campaign.

Young Republicans Role

Giunta was chair — and, in The Hill’s description, chairman and president — of the New York State Young Republicans. He resigned from the post in September 2025, amid allegations of “serious potential financial misconduct” within the organisation first reported by POLITICO Playbook; Al Jazeera described the allegations as involving unpaid bills for club events and missing financial disclosures. At the time, Giunta told POLITICO the accusations were “nothing more than a sad and pathetic attempt at a political hit job.” Bobby Walker, previously the group’s vice chair, succeeded him.

Giunta has said that he created a Telegram group during his campaign to lead the Young Republican National Federation. The group was called the “RESTOREYR WAR ROOM.”

Assembly Staff Position

Before October 2025, Giunta served as chief of staff in the office of New York State Assemblymember Michael Reilly, where The Hill reported he had worked for more than five years.

2025 Telegram Leak

On 14 October 2025, POLITICO published an account of the chat, reporting roughly 2,900 pages of messages exchanged among about a dozen Young Republican club members between early January and mid-August 2025. POLITICO described Giunta as “the most prominent voice in the chat spreading racist messages — often encouraged or ‘liked’ by other members.”

Messages attributed to Giunta by name in coverage of the leak include “I love Hitler,” written in an exchange about appealing to delegates; “Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber. And everyone that endorsed but then votes for us is going to the gas chamber,” written while discussing the federation contest; “I’m going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man”; “I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkeys play ball,” in reply to a question about a basketball game; and “If your pilot is a she and she looks ten shades darker than someone from Sicily, just end it there. Scream the no no word.”

Giunta issued a statement that both apologised and disputed the material: “I am so sorry to those offended by the insensitive and inexcusable language found within the more than 28,000 messages of a private group chat that I created during my campaign to lead the Young Republicans… While I take complete responsibility, I have had no way of verifying their accuracy and am deeply concerned that the message logs in question may have been deceptively doctored.” He said the logs “were sourced by way of extortion” and attributed their release to Gavin Wax and the New York Young Republican Club, a city-level organisation POLITICO described as often at odds with the state group. The widely repeated figure of “more than 28,000 messages” comes from this statement, not from POLITICO’s own count.

Assemblymember Reilly said in a statement to The Hill: “The comments shared in the group chat that have been reported are extremely troubling and disappointing. They do not align with my values. As a result, Mr. Giunta’s assignment in my office has ended.” POLITICO reported the same day that Giunta’s time working with Reilly “has ended.” On 17 October 2025, POLITICO reported that the New York State Young Republicans were being disbanded.

What Is Not Established Here

This page previously stated that Giunta became chair of the New York State Young Republicans in 2021 and was re-elected in 2023; no source located supports either date, and both were removed. Also removed for want of a source: that he is Staten Island-based; that he coordinated statewide outreach for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign or down-ballot races; that he managed volunteer deployments, fundraising receptions or candidate trainings; that he brought the state federation to prominence at the 2024 Republican National Convention; and that he relied on “encrypted chat rooms and rapid-response text trees” to keep activists aligned. An instagram entry in primaryPlatforms and a followerCount field reading “Private Telegram channels” were removed as unsupported and meaningless respectively.

Two factual corrections were made. The page said POLITICO “published 28,000 leaked messages”; POLITICO published excerpts from roughly 2,900 pages of messages, and the 28,000 figure originates in Giunta’s own statement. The page dated his federation campaign to a “2024-2025 leadership contest”; the messages run from early January to mid-August 2025 and the contest was decided in 2025.

The precise nature of his departure from Reilly’s office is not settled by the record used here: The Hill wrote that he “was fired,” while Reilly’s own statement says only that the assignment “has ended.” His resignation as state chair was reported alongside allegations of financial misconduct; no source located establishes any finding, charge or determination against him arising from those allegations, and he denied them. His reported age of 31 in October 2025 is carried by Al Jazeera as something “US media reported,” which is too thin to set a birth year here. No source located establishes his residence, education, current occupation, or the outcome of the federation election as reported in the material read for this page.