Attorney says he’ll drop defamation lawsuit if Horry County GOP leaders resign
Columbia attorney Tucker Player, who is currently helping a Clemson man sue the Horry County Republican Party and other GOP figures for defamation, wrote in a letter Thursday that he’s willing to drop the lawsuit against the county GOP if its current leaders resign from their posts.
The demand was included in a letter sent to leaders of the Horry County GOP, known as executive committee members, on Thursday. The letter contained two other demands, that the leaders of the local party — Chairman Roger Slagle, Vice Chairman Jeremy Halpin and State Executive Committeewoman Tracy “Beanz” Diaz, along with GOP activist and former right-wing radio host Chad Caton — retract a statement posted on the local party’s website and that the rest of the party must “disavow” comments the four had made about Player’s client, Matthew McDaniel.
The letter goes on to say that if the Horry County GOP leaders don’t resign, that Player will file individual lawsuits against each member of the county’s executive committee members, around 90 people total. The executive committee is made up of the voting members of Horry County GOP and decides how to raise and spend money and how primary elections are handled, among other responsibilities. Player said Friday that he’ll consider each of the dozens of executive committee members to be supportive of what he and McDaniel call defamatory statements about McDaniel if the demands in the letter aren’t met.
“If they took the statement down today no ECs would get sued,” Player said.
As of publication of this story Friday, the statement was still posted on the Horry County Republican Party’s website.
The call for the Horry County GOP leaders to resign comes as the local party has been embroiled in months of infighting and controversy, and comes just three months after Slagle, Halpin and Diaz won leadership positions during a biennial reorganization. The call also follows leaders of the Greenville County GOP resigning abruptly earlier this month after conservative activists there alleged that the recent party reorganization election was unfair.
Player’s call for the new leaders to resign is only the latest controversy for the local party in a county that’s a key Republican stronghold for the South Carolina GOP, and some party members are beginning to worry that the conflicts could harm the party’s chances during the 2022 midterm elections in which voters will cast ballots for members of Congress, the governor, school board and County Council chairman, among other key seats that Republicans hope to hold on to.
So far this year, the Horry County Republican Party has voted for a censure of South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick, undergone a rocky reorganization process in the spring, waded through accusations that past leaders misspent party funds and voted for a censure of U.S. Rep. Tom Rice (R-Myrtle Beach) in January after he voted to impeach former President Donald Trump following the violent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6.
Slagle did not respond to voicemail and text messages Wednesday seeking comment on Player and McDaniel’s call for him to resign from his position. Both Halpin and Diaz declined to comment on the letter or the demand they resign. Caton, who’s at the center of McDaniel’s lawsuit, didn’t respond to voicemail and text messages seeking comment on the suit.
McKissick declined to comment on McDaniel’s lawsuit and Player’s settlement letter on Friday. However, South Carolina GOP spokesperson Claire Robinson noted that Slagle, Halpin and Diaz would have to voluntarily resign from their positions and that party rules allow leaders to be forcefully removed only if they decline to support the party’s nominees for office.
McDaniel is suing Slagle, Halpin, Diaz, Caton and other GOP figures in South Carolina for assaulting him at a recent conservative convention and making defamatory comments about him after the event. Following a speech by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn at the “Rock the Red” convention in Greenville in June, McDaniel, who attended the event, picked up a microphone, called for a toast to Flynn and then called him a traitor and planned to say he was placing him under a “citizen’s arrest.”
“General Flynn is the biggest scumbag traitor in the history of this country next to Donald Trump,” McDaniel said to the crowd gathered in the hotel ballroom where the event was held.
According to the text of McDaniel’s prepared speech, he was preparing to continue by saying, “I am placing traitor Flynn under citizen’s arrest for treason and for attempting to overthrow the United States government,” but was stopped short.
Before McDaniel could finish reading the rest of the statement he had prepared about Flynn, other attendees intervened, taking the microphone from him and knocking him to the ground. According to McDaniel’s lawsuit, which he filed in Horry County Common Pleas Court on Monday, Caton “grabbed,” then “slammed” him to the ground and then kept him in a “horse-collar grip” as he was lifted back up, knocked to the floor again, and pushed out the door of the ballroom.
Following the incident, several South Carolina Republican Party leaders, including Slagle, Halpin, Diaz and MySCGOP leader Pressley Stutts — who had organized the convention — released statements about McDaniel and what had happened at the event. In the statements, leaders defended Caton’s intervention and described McDaniel and his actions as “antifa” — shorthand for anti-fascist activists who have joined protests around the United States in recent years, some of which turned destructive — and said McDaniel had a weapon. McDaniel said both claims were untrue.
McDaniel said Friday that he’s received online messages calling him an “antifa terrorist” since the statements were made and that negative information about him appears when he searches for his name on Google.
“I’ve been getting these trolls contacting me, Facebook posts calling me a terrorist, calling me an antifa terrorist, I’ve been seeing all these comments and these things online,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel said he made the offer to Horry County GOP leaders to drop the lawsuit against the party if they resign because he wants them to be “held responsible and for them to apologize.”
McDaniel describes himself as a lifelong Republican who’s become disaffected by the party since former President Donald Trump won the 2016 election. He said he identifies more as an Independent these days and views many of the pro-Trump individuals within the GOP to be harmful to the party.
“My client is a lifelong Republican/Libertarian,” Player wrote in the letter outline the settlement offer. “He is not a liberal and certainly not Antifa. He has no interest in harming or suing the Republican party in any fashion. He believes that people like Caton, Beanz, Slagle, and Halpin are destroying the party. My client simply wants to correct the ship before these people sink it.”
The settlement letter has not yet been filed in court, records showed Friday. The Sun News obtained a copy of the letter independently.
How we got here
Following McDaniel’s attempted speech and ouster from the “Rock the Red” convention, videos of the encounter quickly surfaced online, which show Caton and others intervening and knocking McDaniel to the ground.
The day after the incident, a Myrtle Beach blog published a clip of one of the videos, and took aim at Caton in the process, questioning his status as a disabled person. Caton told Diaz in a recent podcast episode the two recorded together that he’s considered disabled because he is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Following that blog post and other coverage of incident, Slagle, Halpin and Diaz published a statement disavowing the post, defending Caton and calling McDaniel an “infiltrator” and “antifa,” adding that he had a weapon. McDaniel denies those claims, and said he purchased a ticket to the event, does not identify as antifa and was not carrying a weapon.
“... noticing a threat, Mr. Chad Caton, a Horry County (executive committee member), utilized his military training to defuse the situation by subduing the perpetrator,” Slagle, Halpin and Diaz wrote in the statement. “He brought the man to hotel security, while ensuring that none of the other guests, who at this point were very angry, harmed the man. The perpetrator was in possession of a weapon, and police did escort him from the hotel property in a police car. Additionally, witnesses heard the man self identify as Antifa.”
The statement went on to further defend Caton’s actions and praised him.
“We are thankful that Mr. Caton was in the right place at the right time and was able to help defuse what could have been a very dangerous situation,” the statement said. “Some individuals have come forward to state that Mr. Caton’s involvement was an ‘embarrassment’ to the Horry County GOP. To the contrary, both Roger Slagle and Tracy Diaz, who were attendees of the event, think that the actions Chad took were nothing short of heroic, regardless of how you may feel about him personally.”
Another statement, from MySCGOP’s Stutts, described McDaniel’s attempted speech as “an antifa-style attack,” called him an infiltrator and said he possessed a weapon. McDaniel has denied those claims, too. Stutts’ statement also defended and praised Caton.
“... we have come to the conclusion that Mr. Caton’s split-second action diffused a potentially volatile (and perhaps deadly) situation. If the individual had a gun, the situation could have turned deadly. We consider Mr. Caton’s actions to be heroic indeed!” Stutts’ statement said. “While conservative citizens across the country, including General Flynn, are under constant daily threats and attacks, this incident reminds us that we must remain vigilant in the face of hatred and anger.”
In his lawsuit and in an interview with The Sun News this week, McDaniel said the statements contained “lies” and that he suffered injuries from Caton’s actions, including bruises.
In the letter sent Thursday, Player noted that McDaniel doesn’t wish to harm the Republican party, and pinned blame for the statements on the leadership.
“I find it truly remarkable that the statement remains after the public attention to this case over the last three days,” Player wrote. “But as my grand-momma used to say, ‘you can’t fix stupid.’ Your ‘leadership’ put you in this position. You cannot deny or disavow their lies while simultaneously publishing a statement that celebrates Chad Caton as a hero.”
What else the letter says
In an interview Friday, Player admitted that his letters “can be a bit acerbic” but said he wanted to send a message to “sane” members of the county GOP’s executive committee a chance to avoid a lawsuit. If those party members don’t work to convince Slagle, Halpin and Diaz to resign, and to retract the statement posted online, the letter and Player said, they will face similar lawsuits, and McDaniel said Friday that he’d seek monetary damages in that event.
The letter also suggested that the county party and the individual executive committee members would lose in court, especially if the matter goes before a jury.
“If these conditions are not met, we will proceed with litigation up to and including trial. We will seek punitive damages, which necessarily allows me to gather evidence of HCGOP’s financial status and ability to pay a judgment,” Player wrote. “It also ensures that no Republican in Horry County belonging to HCGOP can serve on the jury. Imagine 12 Democrats or Independents judging ‘Thugzilla’ (a nickname Caton has given himself) and his protectors at trial. Better yet, imagine those 12 democrats and independents deciding how much the Horry County Republican Party will have to pay for the transgressions of these foolish people. The choice seems simple to me.”
A fracturing GOP
On Friday, several Horry County GOP members who had received Player’s letter said they think Slagle, Halpin and Diaz need to work to resolve the lawsuit, even if it means agreeing to the settlement terms and having them resign.
Shannon Grady, a member of the party’s executive committee and the leader of the Horry County Republican Women’s Club, said she’d like to see the three leaders resign and work to heal the fractures in the party.
“I don’t want it to hurt the party at all but we have to do whatever we have to get rid of these crazies,” she said. “They all think it’s a joke.”
But the party is fractured, Grady said, and it’s unclear what will happen to it in the near future. She pointed to the recent vote to censure South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick for comments he made about the Greenville GOP — a little more than half of the executive committee members voted to censure McKissick, but nearly the same number of members voted against the proposal. A similar split could arise because of McDaniel’s lawsuit.
“It’s an embarrassment,” she said. “We have a midterm election coming up but so far we’ve been bogged down in this.”
Gerri McDaniels, who previously held Diaz’s position and is still a member of the executive committee, said she’s “disappointed” by all the infighting and said Slagle, Halpin and Diaz need to resolve the matter before the party is harmed further. As Player’s letter has circulated, party members have argued about it in posts and videos online, and Grady posted a video on Facebook saying leadership needed to stop talking to reporters.
“If you get me sued so help me god I’ll sue you too,” she said in one video. “This is absurd, resign now.”
McDaniels said she thinks everyone needs to calm down so they can move the party forward.
“I think that right now folks need to stay off of Facebook unless there’s something positive to say, there’s too much anger right now,” she said. “They need to think about their life and what’s important.”
She added: “I just wish things wouldn’t have turned out the way they had. I think the leadership is trying to do the right thing but it’s just going to depend on what direction they want to take this group. The sad thing is when new people are involved they don’t understand how politics works and how quickly things can escalate.”
For his part, McDaniel said he wanted the Horry County GOP leaders removed because he’s worried about the direction the Republican Party in South Carolina and nationally is headed.
“My opinion is that Republicans (need to) get back to their conservative principles and also they need to pick better leadership to represent them who have strong character and great integrity, like Mitt Romney,” he said. “They need to stay clear of the self-promoters and people with bad character.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify what McDaniel said at the “Rock the Red” event in Greenville.
This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 3:21 PM.
