A local Republican committee in a deep red Virginia county is in turmoil after RINOs and Democrats staged what some members are calling a “coup” by using a disorganized meeting to hold a flawed election to pick a new chairman and oust more than 100 people.
Chaos ensued during the Warren County Republican Committee’s (WCRC) February 12 mass meeting in the town of Front Royal as ballots were inexplicably passed out to Democrats, dozens of Republicans were blocked from entering the venue, and at least one person was allegedly physically pushed by the sheriff of the county.
The mass meeting occurs every two years, serving as a membership reset and an election for chair and other positions. Scott Lloyd, the WCRC secretary, was running for chair against local attorney David Silek, who insiders have called a “RINO.”
In a county that went almost 70 percent for President Donald Trump in 2024, the way the GOP is being hijacked should be of concern for Republicans across the country.
Scott Lloyd (left) and David Silek (center) — WCRC Feb 12, 2026, via Matthew Perdie / Breitbart News
Included in the shady cast of characters and entities implicated during discussions with whistleblowers are Silek, 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.
The people turned away at the door to the building, supposedly to avoid violating the building’s fire code, were “tilted heavily in my favor,” Lloyd told Breitbart News in a Thursday interview.
People were also left in confusion after being turned away at the door after 7:00 p.m. without any notice that it would be the cutoff time. The mass meeting was advertised as being from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with registration beginning at 6:00 p.m., and no mention of people not being able to register to vote if they arrived after 7:00 p.m.
Eyewitnesses recounted how ballots were haphazardly doled out to voters who made it inside without verifying who they were, with several people somehow ending up with two ballots.
With Virginia being one of the roughly 30 percent of states that do not offer a party affiliation question during voter registration, the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) determines who is eligible to vote in committee elections by having participants sign attestations, or pledge forms.
However, witnesses reported that attestations were not uniformly required nor collected during that meeting, a vulnerability in the voting process that made it easier for known Democrats to cast ballots while many actual Republicans were denied entry.
The GOP Data Center database was utilized by people on the credentials committee to determine who was Democrat or Republican, based on their voting history. People who showed up in the database as Democrat voters and were denied ballots for their Democrat voting record later somehow ended up with ballots, according to one witness.
Sheriff Cline campaigned on social media for Silek, telling her Facebook followers to show up and vote without needing to be a member of the committee.
On top of that, outgoing Chairman Tom McFadden, Jr. was not even present when the meeting was opened, in violation of committee bylaws.
Lloyd, who was serving as secretary as well as running against Silek for chair, was baffled to see the completely disordered nature of the meeting. Concerned that those being blocked at the door by the fire marshal would not be allowed in, he suggested allowing the group of people who were already inside to vote, then having them leave to make room for the second group. After quickly discussing this and reaching a verbal agreement with Silek, the voting proceeded.
Many people stuck outside never got their chance to come in and vote, however.
“I told everyone, ‘If you’re in line, you can vote,’” a local Republican activist who spoke under the condition of anonymity told Breitbart News. “I went upstairs. Apparently the door wound up being reopened to the outside, at which point the sheriff’s husband was sent downstairs to turn people away.”
Sheriff Cline’s husband, George Cline, admitted to turning away at least nine people in a comment on Facebook.
“I heard a lot of commotion [outside],” the Republican activist recalled to Breitbart News. “There was a lot of dispute over that, because there were these people who already signed their little pledge form saying that they’re a Republican and that they’ll support the Republican nominee.” The activist mentioned how those people coming to vote were holding the attestation forms in their hand, “but they were being turned away.”
He continued, “There were people who were there who came upstairs telling me that their spouse wasn’t allowed in, or somebody that they invited wasn’t allowed in, and seeing if I can make an exception. But at that point, the credentials committee report was already read to the committee… and we already had a set number of people in there who could vote.”
After the vote, Lloyd said he was informed that the second group of people did not come in.
Following four attempts at hand-counting the ballots, committee officials said Silek won with 225 votes to Lloyd’s 206.
“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 said. “So I’m going to look into what happened before I concede anything.”
Approximately 480 people showed up to vote, yet the final number of ballots counted was reported as 431 — which is disputed as initial counts did not match up and multiple whistleblowers said that ineligible people voted.
David Silek (center) — WCRC Feb 12, 2026, via Matthew Perdie / Breitbart News
One woman who spoke with Breitbart News alleged that Sheriff Crystal Cline, the Sheriff of Warren County, assaulted her that night, recounting how she and her husband waited in line and made it inside the building before being stopped at the door to the room where the voting was taking place by the fire marshal and sheriff.
“The line was moving, and then all of a sudden we were stopped by the assistant chief of the fire and rescue and the Sheriff… the fire chief was in uniform, he had his blues on, and the sheriff was in civilian clothing,” she said. “Well, they stopped everybody in the hallway from entering into the room to register and vote and participate in the meeting. And when I asked the fire chief why they were not letting us in, he said because there was a capacity issue.”
The woman, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said she was eventually given verbal permission to enter the room by the assistant chief of fire and rescue.
“I walked in between both of them, and then all of a sudden, I was forcibly pushed by the sheriff” she said. “I wasn’t forewarned. You know, you would think that she would have said, ‘Please wait,’ or ‘Don’t go in,’ right?”
A complaint was later filed to the Virginia State Police.
Of those who were allowed inside to cast their ballots, there is a big question over how many were actually Republicans, or leftists who came to vote for Silek, who has called people “right wing extremists” for protesting Samuels Public Library’s stock of books pushing transgenderism on children.
Whistleblowers noted that Sheriff Cline and her husband are heavily invested in the policy debate over the library, which essentially operates as a non-governmental organization (NGO) while receiving county funding without oversight. Despite being called a public library, it is actually privately-run.
Photos obtained by Breitbart News show George Cline’s construction business on a plaque displayed inside the library under a $1,000 donation list, and screenshots of a social media post show his wife, the sheriff of Warren County, describing people whom she says want to “defund the library” as a “radical Catholic group” — when in reality they were just against books telling children about gender transitions. In an edited version of the post, Sheriff Cline changed the verbiage to blame an “extreme radical group,” removing the word “Catholic.”
A dramatic and unfair rule change also occurred during the mass meeting — Cullers, the chair of the county Board of Supervisors, was appointed to chair the WCRC Rules Committee for the evening and announced that they would be slicing committee membership by more than 50 percent.
“You would think that, at a time when 480 people showed up to a Warren County Republican Committee event of any kind, that we would be welcoming as many people into it as possible,” Lloyd said. “But the exact opposite has happened, where they’ve changed the structure to limit the membership to 102 when we had the opportunity to have a maximum of 251 people on the committee.”
Another woman who is involved in local Republican politics described the series of events as a “takeover” or “coup.”
“I guess the best way to explain it would be that a small faction of Republicans have weaponized the local Democrats or liberals, or whatever you want to call them — Marxists, in certain instances — they’ve weaponized those people and those members in order to regain control of the Republican Party,” she said.
Their goal “appears to be to take out all of the Catholics,” she theorized, alleging that County Supervisor Henry once “made a comment in a meeting that we had a ‘Catholic problem that needed resolving.’”
Whistleblowers also noted a close connection between Henry and the Clines.
According to the woman, Cullers is fresh off a four-year ban from the WCRC because she used her political action committee (PAC), dubbed Preserve Warren County, to endorse a Democrat delegate candidate.
Local news outlet Royal Examiner reported on the PAC in May 2025, stating, “For many members, the tipping point came during the heated controversy surrounding the Samuels Public Library.”
Back on the night of the fateful WCRC mass meeting, a known Democrat who allegedly acts as a “mole” was appointed as the official timekeeper.
George Shanks, husband of Warren County Treasurer Janice Butler Shanks, had been previously banned from the WCRC when it was discovered that he was simultaneously a member of the Warren County Democrat Committee, the woman explained.
“There were some Facebook posts and whatnot that made it clear that he was on both committees and was acting as a troll or a mole in the Republican committee… He was kicked out of our committee and banished,” she recounted. “So why on earth would they name him to be timekeeper? That was super weird.”
In a video captured by a whistleblower, another known Democrat who professes to be a leftist on social media can be seen casting a ballot for committee chair.
The man in the video is married to an administrator of a Front Royal Antifa group on Facebook.
Yet another whistleblower who spoke with Breitbart News recounted how the first meeting went following the takeover, describing how he found out that he had been removed from the group after officials sliced membership to 102.
“So originally I didn’t know there was a meeting — never got an email, didn’t find out about it. Usually the meetings are on Thursday nights,” he said.
He received a text from a friend in the committee asking where he was, saying the meeting had started an hour earlier than it usually did.
“I checked the website. The website said 7:00 p.m. on Thursday night, and then I found out through the grapevine, someone who was at the meeting said, ‘Hey, are you coming to the meeting? It’s starting now,’ and it was six o’clock.”
He jumped in his vehicle and headed to the meeting, finding very few familiar faces.
“I would say probably 75 percent of the people who were in the room were not people who had been present at meetings. They were all new members. They were all much older Republicans, kind of an older crowd. Didn’t see any of the young folks who had been there in previous meetings that year.”
On election night at the mass meeting, he said he was told that he could submit his application to reset his committee membership at the next meeting, but that ended up not being the case.
When he arrived at the meeting, officials told him, “Oh, you’re not a member.”
“I said, ‘Yeah, they told me I could just do an application at this meeting.’ They said, ‘Oh, we don’t have any membership forms here,” he recounted.
The outgoing vice chair, Aiden Miller, apparently tried to protest this but was shut down by Silek, the newly elected chair.
“David [Silek] said, ‘You’re out of order. Be quiet. We’re not voting on that tonight.’ And Aiden kind of kept trying to talk about it, and David just straight up shut him down, said, ‘You’re out of order. We’re not talking about this.”
The whistleblower also described how Matthew Perdie, a video producer for Breitbart News and fellow former WCRC member, was also informed of his removal at that meeting.
“Perdie asked, ‘Hey, why was the meeting changed from seven to six? No one was told about the time change.’ And David Silek said, ‘You’re not a member, you’re not recognized. Be quiet,’” the source recalled.
Silek then asked Sheriff Cline to remove Perdie from the meeting.
People standing around the sheriff “basically manhandled Perdie out of the room,” the source said, noting that Silek quickly moved on to appointing committee officers and wrapped up the meeting.
After the meeting closed, Perdie attempted to get answers from Silek and his supporters to no avail.
“David, do you want to explain why I’m not in the party anymore? You’re intentionally ignoring me with a posse, so does anybody want to explain why the party is capped at 102 members?”
While Silek did not respond, George Cline quipped back, saying, “You weren’t on the list.”
Lloyd also told Breitbart News that he was treated hostilely by Silek when he went to drop off his secretary paperwork at that meeting.
The leftist tactics used to cut out real conservatives from the group parallels Democrats’ effort to gerrymander Virginia and cut out a majority of the Republican representation.
The major notion held in common by Lloyd, Perdie, and the other four whistleblowers is their passion to have fair representation in the Warren County Republican Committee, and their willingness to expose the takeover to conservatives nationwide.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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