TheLiberalOC has learned that Ocean View School District trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin is being sued for defamation and false light invasion of privacy by Huntington Beach Mayor Pro-Tem Butch Twining for $25 million. The case stems from Tarvin’s “sustained and coordinated campaign to publicly brand Twining….a white supremacist and extremist.”
The lawsuit points to Twining’s attendance September 10 at an informal rally in downtown Huntington Beach the night conversative blogger Charlie Kirk was killed. The rally had no formal organization; there were no speakers or programs per se. Participants were encouraged to bring a candle and American flag. A small group of White Supremacists showed up and began chanting “White Man Fight Back” and a poorly shot video taken from behind the group by the Surf City Sentinel shows Twinning for a split second at the very last second of the video holding a candle and flag a fair distance from the protesters.
The lawsuit says Tarvin “repeated knowingly made false statements that Twining ‘gleefully chanted’ with white supremacists and marched alongside them.” Twining denies this and the video does not show Twining chanting or marching. Twining maintains that when white supremacists showed up, he and his wife left the rally. Again, there was no stage, no microphone, no bullhorns that Twining could have used to condemn the actions of the white supremacist at that moment. He did issue statements to the Los Angeles Times condemning the actions of the white supremacists.
Read the lawsuit: Twining v. Tarvin
Twining says that Tarvin’s posts about this incident on social media have resulted in death threats; he asked for posts to be removed and Tarvin did not. Twining is seeking a jury trial in Orange County.
While this writer doesn’t share Twining’s feelings about Charlie Kirk, President Trump and a host of other political issues, a quick review of the exhibits presented don’t seem to support Tarvin’s barrage of charges.
For those who need more on how defamation works when it comes to public officials – of which Tarvin and Twining both are – and public figures, here’s an explanation.
Twining will need to prove that Tarvin deliberately knew her statements about him were knowingly false and she said them anyway with the intent of harming his reputation. And she left the comments up after being asked to take them down.
For Tarvin, her burden is to prove that what she said and wrote about Twinning is the truth.
The video briefly showing Twining at the Kirk memorial shows no chanting or marching. Twining says he has a number or witnesses and I’ll bet you Tarvin will say she has witnesses too. From the filing, no witnesses are identified by name.
If this case moves forward to trial, I hope court allows me to bring some popcorn.
Just read the complaint. WOW. What was she thinking? This is a great line from the filing: “Regrettably, Defendant’s defamation of Twining follows years of escalating defamatory conduct against Twining and other public figures in the Orange County community. While Defendant has long been a prolific poster of misinformation designed to cause reputational harm, her more recent posts about Twining and others read increasingly manic and reckless, as if the author is, not only lying, but also losing touch with reality.”
Imagine a jury watching this. She done accused him, tried him and hung ’em up
instagram.com/reel/DOkcSdMDmgN/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
What conservative hasn’t she defamed?
This should be a class action lawsuit!
She is a terrible individual! It’s about time she gets a slap on the wrist for her BIG mouth ! Hopefully she’ll show up wearing something professional to court other than her blazer and sandals with her ugly toes hanging over .
This is total anatomy of a smear. What will be interesting is watching how the discovery plays out. Mark Bixby originally shared the video, so it starts there. And then you have the group Protect Huntington Beach, which was involved in spreading the message, and the well-known author Jeff Pearlman also wrote a piece about it. That’s where I first heard about this, and I thought to myself Why is he doing this? Well guess what? He quickly retracted that article and wrote another one. I think he knew Gina had played him as an idiot. But it doesn’t matter, he will still be a big part of discovery and he was part of the smear it seems anyway. In our opinion! Jeff you stepped in it, welcome to HB slime lol. Curious why Gina didn’t go right to her old buddy Vern Nelson like the good old days but somebody said that Vern‘s wife lost her shit online about Gina. I’m not sure if she had something “special” going on with Vern but the shit hit the fan so that’s why I guess she built the new team. Read the complaint, it’s brutal. Nice reporting, Dan.