A Republican committee in a deep red Virginia county is in total upheaval after several Republicans In Name Only (RINOs), in partnership with Democrats, carried out what’s being called a “coup.” The cabal took advantage of a disorganized meeting to hold a flawed election that was used to select a new chairman and boot more than 100 individuals.
The chaos erupted during a February 12, 2026 mass meeting of the Warren County Republican Committee in the town of Front Royal. Ballots were passed out to local Democrats without any explanation, and dozens of Republicans were denied entrance to the venue. One person claimed that they were physically pushed out by the sheriff of the county.
The mass meeting takes place every two years and serves as an opportunity to refresh membership in the group and it also allows for the election of a chair and other positions on the committee. Secretary of the WCRC, Scott Lloyd, was running for the chair position against local lawyer David Silek, who many of the more principled conservatives referred to as a “RINO.”
According to Breitbart News, Republicans across the nation should be keeping a close eye on the hijacking of the GOP taking place in the Virginia county, especially since almost 70% of the county cast their ballots for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. The report goes on to list several others who were part of the coup, including Warren County Sheriff Crystal Cline, Warren County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cheryl Cullers, County Supervisor Hugh Henry, a local Antifa group, and the Samuels Public Library.
Lloyd revealed to the media that the individuals who were turned away at the door “tilted heavily in my favor,” meaning they were going to support his bid for the chair position. He then said that those folks were told they could not enter the building because the number of people in total would violate the building’s fire code.
The group inside the building also enforced a 7:00 p.m. cutoff time, which also led to others on the committee not being able to attend the meeting. There was no advance notice that such a cutoff existed. In fact, the meeting was advertised to start at 7:00 p.m. and run until 9:00 p.m., with registration starting at 6:00 p.m. Again, there was no mention of not being able to register after 7:00 p.m.
Several eyewitnesses to the mayhem unfolding during the meeting recalled seeing ballots haphazardly distributed to voters without making any effort to verify who each individual was. A few even ended up with multiple ballots. Virginia is one of 30 states that do not present a party affiliation question when registering to vote,
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The Republican Party of Virginia determines who is eligible to vote in committee elections by having participants sign attestations, or pledge forms. But witnesses to the February 12 meeting said that attestations were not required of every attendee, nor were they collected. This, according to the report, left the voting process easier for known Democrats to cast their votes while many Republicans were denied entry.
Adding credence to the notion that a coup was taking place is the fact that Sheriff Cline, the woman who allegedly pushed someone physically out of the building, campaigned on social media for Silek, informing her followers on Facebook to show up and vote, despite not being a member of the committee. Outgoing Chairman Tom McFadden, Jr. wasn’t present when the meeting opened, which is a clear violation of the committee bylaws.
Not surprisingly, Silek won the election to the chair 225 votes to Lloyd’s 206 votes. It took four attempts to count the votes properly by hand. “Once I knew that, when they presented the totals to me, they gave me the option of conceding. I said I’m not going to do that, because we all agreed that the second group of voters were going to come in, and that never happened,” the chair candidate went on to say. “So I’m going to look into what happened before I concede anything.”