Joey comes to us from Elkins West Virginia. His claim is that he is both a 16 year and 22 year Navy SEAL and a veteran of the Gulf War and the War on Terror. He also claims to be a NRA instructor. We did not look into the NRA claim but we did look into the claims of military service.

Here is Joey wearing the Uniform of a SEAL Chief (E-7). Notice that the name tap is the same as his last name. He is also wearing a Gulf War Veteran hat.

He is also referred to as a chief by people on his Facebook page.

He even has the cool Navy SEAL ballcap.

He calls himself a Navy SEAL Special Warfare Operator that was at Team Two. Sixteen years of service.

Here he is a 22 year Navy veteran.

Same here.

He even got into a Twitter battle claiming 8 trips to Iraq and/or Afghanistan. This is one screenshot of that.

The SEAL Team Two logo with a couple things added.

This is an interesting picture.  It has the E6 SO rating badge with one hash mark showing four years of service. It would be implied he made E6 in under 8 years? If you are reading ahead you would also know that the SO rating did not exist while he was in the Navy. It would not come about for another decade.

This photo actually looks like a legit boot camp photo.

Several things are off here so we made a check of the Navy SEAL Archives to see if he is listed as a graduate. He is not listed. We requested his records with a Freedom of Information Request to find the real story.

That DD214 is interesting in a lot of ways. It lists him on the rolls from 1990 to 1997. It shows his net active service as 3 years 9 months 21 days. That math doesn’t add up. If you look at his History of Assignments you will notice there is some stuff blocked off.

That is not a secret SEAL command that is blacked out. I have seen enough FOIA results to know that the Command he would claim would be listed. I have seen commands blocked but those were prison commands or the Navy brig. What we know for sure is he isn’t given credit for all the time he was listed in the Navy. We also know that his date of last rank is July of 1995. He made the rank of E1, which means he was making that for the second time at least. The reasons could be many but after making E1 he found himself in West Virginia.

For some reason, he was in West Virginia after his military time was put on hold. During that time he was convicted of a felony that was good for 1 to 10 years in prison. Later that year he was discharged. I am really not sure of the laws in West Virginia when it comes to convicted felons teaching weapons courses but I wouldn’t want him as an instructor.

Joey Ray Gibson was never a Navy SEAL. He has a Southwest Asia Service Medal but not the Liberation Medals that go along with being in the Gulf during the war. The Southwest Asia Service Medal was given out between August 2nd 1990 till November 30th 1995.  Joey was never a Navy Chief. He was discharged as an E1. He has less than 4 years of Naval service to show for the 7 years on his DD214.

Joey Gibson Facebook

Joey Gibson Twitter