New York Young Republicans Club accuses exiled member of defamation after public fallout

MANHATTAN (CN) — The New York Young Republicans Club on Wednesday filed a $5 million lawsuit against its former press committee chairman, media personality and provocateur Lucian Wintrich, claiming the 37-year-old defamed and disparaged the group after their annual gala in December.

In the 18-page lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, Wintrich is accused of breaching the club’s non-disparagement and confidentiality agreements after he was frustrated that “certain media personalities” like Nick Fuentes — a controversial right-wing influencer widely criticized for antisemitic comments — were not invited to the event.

“This is the worst event they’ve ever thrown,” Wintrich told Politico at the Dec. 13 gala.

The group claims that Wintrich then voiced additional grievances with attending reporters, “complaining that the organization had refused to seat certain persons, whom defendant had invited personally to attend the gala, in the exact location defendant desired.”

Fuentes isn’t specifically named in the lawsuit, but Wintrich bemoaned on social media that he had been banned, writing on Dec. 20: “Nick had a paid-for seat — he was someone’s guest at their paid-for table. Those folks vetoed it. So a guest doesn’t even have the right to choose who sits at the table they spent 15k+ on.”

Following the event, Wintrich was stripped from his committee position within the organization. Since then, the club claims he’s been looking to “seek revenge” against the Young Republicans with an ongoing defamation campaign.

Just five days after the gala, the group says Wintrich covertly recorded a private member meeting, singled out one female member, and posted it to X to his 21,000 followers with the caption: “I gotta say, I’m really gonna miss these HIGHLY productive @NYYRC board meetings where we have obese chicks on camera driving through traffic while stuffing their face while folks say absolutely nothing for 3 hours in the background.”

The same day, the group claims Wintrich called the Young Republicans’ attorney an “actual retard,” and baselessly accused the club’s president of engaging in “obvious misconduct” — before attaching a photograph of the club’s vice president and describing him as an “albino ginger.”

A cease and desist letter followed, but the club says Wintrich “rejected, and even mocked” their efforts to stop him. He made a podcast appearance on Dec. 29, where he claimed he was actually fired for “conducting an internal audit” to uncover financial mismanagement within the organization, claims the group wholeheartedly rejects.

“Simply put, defendant’s published statements are a series of wholesale fabrications maliciously designed to malign and harm plaintiff and its members, motivated by an apparent desire to take revenge on plaintiff and falsely paint himself as a ‘whistleblower’ who was removed from the organization for uncovering criminal activity,” the club claims.

In a statement to Courthouse News, Wintrich said he voiced his grievances in private first.

“Instead of answering records requests and governance questions, the response was escalation: lockout from communications, a cease-and-desist demanding sweeping silence, and then a lawsuit seeking $5 million and broad injunctions,” Wintrich said. “Calling an event ‘the worst they’ve ever thrown,’ or referring to a sizable person as ‘fat,’ is plainly evaluative opinion.

“Turning that into a multimillion-dollar legal campaign is designed to chill speech and deter the very oversight that prompted my initial inquiry. It’s disgraceful to see a storied organization reduced to gag-order demands and secrecy, then acting offended when it’s met with appropriately blunt responses.”

The Young Republicans seek $2.5 million for each of the two causes of action against Wintrich: defamation and violating his NDA. They also want a court order requiring Wintrich to delete the disparaging posts and to keep him from defaming the group’s members in the future.

He has a colorful past as a media personality. In 2016, the openly gay Wintrich created “Twinks4Trump,” a photo series featuring scantily dressed men sporting Make America Great Again hats.

A year later, he was one of youngest members of the White House Press Corps at 28, working for the conservative news site The Gateway Pundit. Wintrich was arrested at the University of Connecticut in 2017 following an altercation with a heckler while he delivered a speech titled “It’s OK to Be White,” but the charges were dropped the following month.

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