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In Part 5 of the Case Against McKoon, I discussed how Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon violated numerous substantive party rules in promulgating an unauthorized, 9-page non-disclosure agreement (NDA). McKoon required candidates running for statewide party office to sign that NDA, subjecting themselves to oppressive penalties, in exchange for receiving a list of delegates attending the Dalton Republican Convention. Because violating the NDA would actually cause no damage to the Georgia Republican Party itself, and any conceivable damage could only be experienced by the individual delegates, the McKoon NDA was structured as a contract containing a “liquidated damages clause.” That means the Georgia Republican Party would not have to prove damages, only that someone violated the agreement, in which case the violator would have to pay the party $25,000 per each count proved in court.
McKoon was careful to keep his name off of the NDA notice. Instead, McKoon’s accounting director would be the point person notifying the candidates. But, of course, under party rules the accounting director, a paid employee, would have no authority to promulgate such a notice. She would only have undertaken that task if directed to do so by someone whom she reasonably believed to possess that authority. Thus, we can sleep assured that the NDA notice was drafted and delivered to candidates by the authority of Chairman McKoon, and not the accounting director, nor anyone else. No one else would have been in position to do so.
Because the NDA sent to the candidates for statewide party office was written in the form of a contract, the agreement required signatures from both a promiser, that is, he or she who would be a candidate for party office, and who would thereby promise not to disclose certain things, and a promisee, that is, he or she who would represent the Georgia Republican Party in receiving those promises, and who obviously wouldn’t want anything the contract prohibits to be disclosed. (See signature block below.) But because the NDA was a contract requiring both parties to sign, rather than a unilateral NDA in which only one party signs, one meaningful question for all candidates to consider would be to ask who among all possible promisees representing the party would be the actual individual to sign those contracts. Being a contractor of 40 years myself, maybe its just me, but when I’m signing a contract, I always try to understand with whom I am contracting.
Some have speculated that the promisee, in other words the individual who receives the promisers promises on behalf of the party, would be Republican Party General Counsel Alex Kaufman. Even if that were a viable alternative, should Kaufman execute those contracts, his signature would only be as legal representative, or surrogate, for the real promisee. But Kaufman is not authorized by party rules to sign for the party anyway. According to Sections 5.7 A&B of the party rules, the general counsel can only provide legal advice and somehow apparently vote at meetings of the State Committee and State Executive Committee, even though he is not an elected party office holder.
That means the contract promisee representing the party could only have been Chairman McKoon, himself a candidate for statewide party office. That would be true even if Kaufman and McKoon violated the rules and allowed Kaufman to sign for the chairman. There is no other way for the Georgia Republican Party to sign those agreements. According to the NDA sent to every statewide candidate for office in the Georgia Republican Party, each of them, including McKoon’s challenger for the chairmanship, would have to sign that oppressive contract, with McKoon signing as the other party, in order to receive the vitally important list of delegates attending the June 2025 state convention in Dalton. That being the case, I have a question for you: Since when is it permissible that, say, Candidate A for an elected office, is allowed to require Candidate B for that same office, to sign an egregious contract with Candidate A, and as a result Candidate A receives the right to punish Candidate B with law suits and financial ruin, in exchange for Candidate B to effectively compete against Candidate A for the elected position both are seeking? He can’t. Doing so would be an oppressive, coercive, and massive conflict-of-interest, possibly even leading to charges of election fraud, and would never stand up in an honest court. The NDA promulgated by Chairman McKoon was simply a tool to help keep him in office, and is the stuff tin-pot, third-world dictators are made of.
Oh, but you see, that is why the despot Josh McKoon could not allow his name to be on the NDA notice. McKoon had a paid employee do his dirty work. The promulgation of that NDA, along with the requirement that candidates sign it, was done in violation of party rules, and was possibly against the law, and it had Chairman McKoon’s name is all over it. It was against party rules because neither do we find that NDA agreement spelled out (1) in the party rules, or (2) in a resolution authorized by a previous state convention, or (3) in a resolution of the State Committee, or (4) in an resolution of the State Executive Committee. Under the “party rules” ostensibly governing Chairman McKoon’s activities, only those bodies would have the power to specify and authorize that NDA to be sent to statewide party candidates, and none of them did so prior to the party accounting director emailing it to each candidate.
And so, I will go out on a limb here. I will bet that no candidate who signed the NDA and returned it to the accounting director ever received a fully-executed copy sent back to them. The third-world dictator McKoon would likely never have signed those documents because doing so would place him in jeopardy of massive lawsuits from each candidate forced under McKoon’s own personal coercive policy to agree to terms he had no authority under party rules to require.
All delegates attending the Dalton Republican Convention should know, Chairman McKoon unilaterally prevented any candidate failing to sign McKoon’s own, personally-authorized and drafted egregious contract, punishable by McKoon acting as a tin-pot dictator, from receiving vitally-important delegate email addresses, which each candidate desperately needs in order to to send out campaign information. Delegates can also speculate that any campaign information they do receive via email prior to the convention, will mostly be from those candidates on Chairman McKoon’s chosen slate, and who may have received assurances that they will not be the subject of the chairman’s wrath.
Now, the circumstances I describe above are not the first instances, nor the last, in which despot Josh McKoon has substantially violated party rules, and with apparent impunity. Chairman McKoon has been in violation a party rules virtually continuously as he has been providing the services of judge, jury and executioner of party policy, practically since he took office. As a prime example, for almost a year at this point, Chairman McKoon has stood in continuous violation of party rules, failing to call either of the authorizing committees (State Committee or State Executive Committee) into session as the rules require. According to Section 4.1 of the party rules, McKoon is required to call regular meetings of the State Committee and State Executive Committee:
That is important because, only while those committees are in session, can they authorize the chairman to execute party policy. Unless those committees are called into a regular schedule of sessions throughout the year, which is why those rules are there and why those committees exist, under those same rules the Chairman has very little to no power to decide and carry out policy on his own. The Chairman is merely the “chief executive officer.” Under Rule 5.1, the chairman does not “make” policy, he only “executes” policy either spelled out under the party rules, or by virtue of resolutions duly passed by (1) a convention while in session, (2) the State Committee while in session, or (3) the State Executive Committee while in session.
So that no one misunderstand, for the chairman to execute policy, he must receive authority either from the rules, from the convention or from one of those committees. That is how the rules work. Thus, by virtue of rules 4.1 D and E above, the Chairman has the authority to initiate the process of calling of those specific meetings, and indeed MUST initiate that process, or find himself in violation of those same rules.
Let’s look at another clear example of Chairman McKoon’s habitual disregard of party rules with respect to calling committee meetings. Listen below as Chairman McKoon explains the process of certifying ballot access to the attendees of the GRA Convention:
Chairman McKoon is correct in saying that the State Executive Committee has authority over which presidential candidates appear on Georgia ballots. However, it is also that same State Executive Committee that must CERTIFY to the Secretary of State the names of ANY candidates to be placed on the ballot as Republicans. (Incidentally, no loyalty oath is required under law for ballot access.) Those certification requirements can be found in OCGA 21-2-154(a) below:
As before, if the State Executive Committee is going to certify something, Chairman McKoon must first call it into session to pass an authorizing resolution. Unless he does, no ballot certification can be authorized. That said, take a look at the following image of a recent ballot certification for a special primary to be held in June of this year (You can tell this was done hurriedly because McKoon used the form from last year, with last year’s primary date, another major mistake in the certification):
Looking beyond the error associated with the primary date, in the signature blocks appear those of Chairman Josh McKoon and Secretary Caroline Jeffords. Those individuals CERTIFIED that the State Executive Committee furnished the certificate you see. That would be difficult because the last time Chairman McKoon called the State Executive Committee into session was August of 2024, prior to the candidates qualifying to run for office, or even announcing intentions to run. Under Rule 4.1 (D), McKoon was required to conduct SEC meetings in November of last year, February of this year, and during the present month of May. Yet, no such meetings has Chairman McKoon called. That being the case, I have another question: Given that, as Chairman Mckoon says, the State Executive Committee is solely empowered under law to certify the ballot access of Republican Party candidates; and given that the Chairman never convened the State Executive Committee to obtain authorization before personally certifying the ballot access of certain Republican candidates in the upcoming special primary, how could those certifications not have been FALSELY EXECUTED by the Chairman and the Secretary, placing ballot access of those Republicans in serious jeopardy, if challenged by the opposition? Given his own words to the GRA, and the letter of the law in OCGA 21-2-154, apparently McKoon could only have usurped authority from the State Executive Committee to have executed those certifications. But what I describe is how Chairman McKoon, the tin-pot dictator, operates on virtually every party policy, and has done so since becoming party chairman.
What I just showed you is yet another example of how throughout his two-year term, Chairman McKoon has repeatedly USURPED the authority of the State Committee and State Executive Committee. One might not recognize the case I present above as an overly-serious infraction by itself, except that it points out the fact that on a regular basis an entire committee of 28 people is supposed to be making the decisions for the party that one person, Josh McKoon, has been making all by himself since becoming chairman. Throughout the time we are considering, Chairman McKoon has continued to decide and execute various party policies WITHOUT STATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AUTHORITY.
Not coincidentally, it was that same behavior, cited under the Declaration of Independence, that the American founding fathers branded King George a despot. In the case of King George, because the American-British colonists had no representation in the King’s policy decisions, King George, they contended, violated the Laws of God. They wrote, “the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Accordingly, because King George had violated the Laws of God, the colonists reasoned and declared that according to those same laws, it was their right and duty “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Now, in the parallel case before us, because Chairman McKoon, a despot in the archetype of King George, has failed to follow party rules and empanel the necessary committees who represent Republicans all around the State of Georgia, to authorize various policy initiatives before executing them, the despot chairman has repeatedly and continuously violated the applicable rules under which he is bound. The respective principles are identical. And because McKoon’s numerous rule violations are not “light and transient,” the principles of the Declaration authorize a similar removal of a despot ruler from any control over the party’s future security.
The rules I reference are the “Rules of the Georgia Republican Party, Inc.,” dated June 17, 2020, apparently recently FALSELY CERTIFIED by the signature of Chairman McKoon, enlisting his own personal authority rather than that of previous Chairman Shafer, almost five years after the fact. We discussed the Chairman’s apparent FALSE CERTIFICATION of the rules in Part 1 of this series.
And so, for the last two years, in many critical instances, the Georgia Republican Party has been conducting its affairs under the direction of what our founding fathers called a “despot,” or a “tyrant.” The tyrannical figure in our case would be Chairman Josh McKoon. I say that because the McKoon chairmanship has been nothing if not emblematic of “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evincing a design to reduce the [Georgia Republican Party] under absolute Despotism.”
Arguably, the most egregious case of the despot Chairman McKoon going rogue to initiate and carry out his own personally-authorized policy, devoid of any authority required under party rules, occurred in the Spring of 2024. That is when Chairman McKoon personally decided to execute a policy to remove the 1st Vice Chairman, Brian Pritchard, ELECTED BY THE 2023 CONVENTION, from office. And so, regardless what anyone may have heard or presently believe, because the entire process of removing Pritchard from office was executed without following Republican Party rules, it is unavoidable to conclude that Brian Pritchard remains the duly-elected 1st Vice Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party even today. Here is how all of that came down:
On April 1, 2024, Chairman Josh McKoon sent the following email to the State Executive Committee. This meeting could not be official as it did not comport to notice requirements in the Rules. During the call, no session of the State Executive Committee would be invoked:
On April 2, 2024, Chairman Josh McKoon held the informal Zoom call with several members of the State Executive Committee. Pritchard was on the call. The next day, Chairman McKoon Tweeted the following:
To be clear, there was no meeting of the State Executive Committee on the night of April 2. There was a Zoom call airing grievances against the 1st Vice Chairman. There had been no notice of a meeting. There was no invocation of a meeting, no minutes taken, no votes taken, no resolutions authorizing Chairman McKoon to do anything going forward.
Subsequently, on April 5, 2024, Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon sent out a call for the State Committee to meet. He did so citing no requisite authority to execute the call, conveying only that he was calling the State Committee to meet.
Now, was that a regular meeting of the State Committee pursuant to Section 4.1 above? If it were, the notice would say that. Obviously, this was not a regular meeting directly authorized by the rules. As it turns out, the meeting of May 10 would be a very special meeting which, as it turns out, could not authorized by Section 4.1. More on that below.
Chairman McKoon also issued the State Committee Call without providing an agenda. As you see below, according to Rule 4.1A below, a written call to meet must be accompanied by an agenda.
There is a reason for the rules to require an agenda. First of all, it is only natural for participants, who are altering their schedules and traveling, to understand why they are required to do so. Citing an agenda identifying the reason for a meeting is therefore only common decency. But more importantly, as the State Committee members would later be informed, that “very special meeting” was being called to CONDUCT A TRIAL TO REMOVE AN ELECTED MEMBER OF THE STATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. And because it was a trial, and because, as Chairman McKoon would soon state, there are no party rules to conduct a trial, party rules default to some VERY SPECIAL RULES, under Robert’s Rules of Order, rules which, as you will see below, MUST BE FOLLOWED every step along the way. And unfortunately for Chairman McKoon, among Roberts Rules are many substantive requirements which were therefore never followed and fulfilled, thus voiding the ensuing proceedings against Pritchard with the State Committee.
The formulation and proposal of an agenda to include the conduct of a trial, as well as the execution of each step required by Robert’s Rules regarding such a trial, can only be done under the auspices and authority of the State Executive Committee while in session. Again, that is because, according to Rule 3.1, while the State Committee or State Convention is not in session, the authority to conduct the affairs of the GRP is vested, not in the party Chairman, but with the State Executive Committee. The only exceptions to that rule would be an emergency. And if that were the case, the chairman would have to invoke emergency powers in his notice in calling the meeting.
Thus, to authorize this very special State Committee meeting, which could not be authorized by terms stated directly in the party rules, as well as to authorize the meeting’s proposed agenda, the Chairman must have called the State Executive Committee into session, which he never did.
The next rule Chairman McKoon disregarded was the requirement to have the charges he levied against the 1st Vice Chairman approved by the only deliberative body authorized to do so, again, the State Executive Committee. The Chairman has no authority under the rules to levy his own charges against another elected party official and take them to trial. Before making those charges against Pritchard, once again, the Chairman would have had to convene the State Executive Committee into official session to hear and deliberate under Robert’s Rules. After completing what could become a lengthy deliberation process, prescribed in detail under Roberts Rules, which I will share with you below, the State Executive Committee would have had to authorize both the charges, as well as the delivery of those charges to the accused and to authorize the scheduling of a trial to be held with the State Committee as the jury. All of that would be done in the form of resolution(s) duly passed by a vote of the State Executive Committee while in session.
Make no mistake, everything that occurred during each step along the way to remove the 1st Vice Chairman, had to first be approved by the State Executive Committee, WHILE IN SESSION under Robert’s Rules. Similarly, and in a parallel manner by which a sitting President of the United States might be impeached, first by charges voted and approved under the Rules of the House by the entire House of Representatives, and secondly, during a proper trial conducted and judged under the Rules of the Senate, under Georgia Republican Party (Inc.) rules, only the State Executive Committee has the power to levy charges against an elected party officer. And once levied, only the State Committee has the power to judge those charges.
The Georgia Republican Party is not a “one man show.” OCGA 21-2-111 defines a political party as a “committee,” together with its subcommittees, and not any individual.
Under party rules, authorized committees decide what policies to execute and they empower a chairman to execute them once duly authorized by resolutions voted and passed while in session. That’s how all this works. But, because the Chairman never called the State Executive Committee into session, none of those required steps ever occurred. As a result, Chairman McKoon sent 1st Vice Chairman Pritchard a despotic letter within which he outlined charges that only he, Chairman McKoon, had approved. McKoon sent Pritchard that message on April 4, 2024, the day before sending out the meeting notice to the State Committee:
Page 2 of Charges Sent to 1st Chairman Brian Pritchard All Levied by Chairman McKoon, Not the State Executive Committee
As you see, all charges against 1st Vice Chairman Pritchard were levied solely by the despot Chairman, Josh McKoon. No charges against Pritchard were levied by the State Executive Committee, the only source of authority sufficient to do so. McKoon invoked no authority of the State Executive Committee because he had none. He had none because he never called that committee into session to begin what could be a lengthy process necessary to remove an elected office holder. In making those charges against the 1st Vice-Chairman, McKoon represented only himself as Chairman, no authorized body as required by the rules. The party chairman had no power, in and of his party position, to levy charges proposing the removal of another elected party officer or calling the State Committee into session to deliberate over those charges. Once again, only the State Executive Committee has that power. And even the State Executive Committee must jump through every hoop prescribed under Robert’s Rules to remove an elected officer from office. Chairman McKoon never called that body into session to consider and deliberate the charges against the 1st Vice-Chairman, never received authority to convene a trial by the State Committee, and thus violated substantive party rules when on April 5, 2024 he promulgating his own charges against Pritchard and required Pritchard to sit for trial.
Also, notice in his letter to Pritchard, Chairman McKoon merely invoked authority from Rule 7.5A. Let’s draw a distinction here. Rule 7.5A only DESCRIBES certain conditions under which an elected party office holder may be removed from office. 7.5A, however, does not PRESCRIBE the procedures that must be followed by which to remove such a party office holder. Furthermore, Rule 7.5A provides no authority for the chairman, himself, to bring charges. As we have seen, unless either the rules, the convention, or an authorized body while in session provides that authority to the chairman, the chairman has no such authority.
As you just saw, in his letter to the 1st Vice Chairman, Chairman McKoon unilaterally levied charges against Pritchard for his removal. According to the despot’s letter, the specific charge he alleged against the 1st Vice Chairman was, “conduct detrimental to the best interests of the GRP.” The evidence McKoon used comprised certain instances of conduct, some of them from a quarter-century ago, and nothing that occurred during the 1st Vice-Chairman’s term of office. But again, Chairman McKoon had no authority under the rules to levy that charge, or any others, or much less call a meeting of the State Committee to conduct a trial, having invoked no authority to do so. Rule 5.1 only gives the chairman the power to “execute” the call when (1) the Rules provide, or when (2) the State Convention, or (3) the State Committee or (4) the State Executive Committee REQUIRE him to. Apart from the rules requiring regular biannual meetings, the Chairman has no authority to determine “when the needs of the GRP require” a meeting of the State Committee. Only the State Executive Committee has that jurisdiction (See 3.1 above), and outside of an emergency, only the State Executive Committee has the authority to approve a proposed agenda for any State Committee meeting.
In the case before us, Josh McKoon called the State Committee to a meeting, with no State Executive Committee authority, with no authorized, proposed agenda, and following no rules required to hold a trial.
On May 3, 2024, Josh McKoon sent an email to the State Committee members. And in that email he provided three documents. One was a draft resolution for the State Committee to consider for the upcoming trial. McKoon explained the resolution, writing, “Finally, SINCE OUR RULES DO NOT SPECIFY THE TRIAL PROCEDURES, I have provided a draft resolution for you to consider that outlines how the trial may be conducted.”
Here is how Chairman McKoon put it:
State Committee Members:
As you prepare for your deliberations next week, I thought it important to send you the following documents.
First, attached please find the transcript of the hearing held before Judge Boggs regarding the complaint of the State Elections Board against our First Vice Chairman.
Second, attached please find the exhibits admitted into evidence at that hearing.
Finally, since our Rules do not specify the trial procedures, I have prepared a draft resolution for you to consider that outlines how the trial may be conducted. I will be offering that resolution for adoption as the first order of business when we meet on Friday, May 10. The doors to our meeting room will open shortly before Noon. Thank you as always for your volunteer service to the Georgia Republican Party.
Sincerely,
Josh McKoon Chairman, Georgia Republican Party
That is where Josh McKoon really screwed up. That is because “SINCE OUR RULES DO NOT SPECIFY THE TRIAL PROCEDURES,” Rule 11.3 requires that ROBERT’S RULES TRIAL PROCEDURES BE FOLLOWED, not some ad hoc resolution McKoon cobbled together at the breakfast table and put to the State Committee to approve.
Robert’s Rules do not allow the Chairman simply to call a meeting to bring a member of the organization up on trial. Robert’s Rules do not allow the Chairman to come up with his own resolution and propose it to the State Committee to conduct a trial. As you see, purposed to achieve fairness, under Robert’s Rules there are prescribed steps, which according to Robert’s Rules, MUST BE FOLLOWED, to eventually hold a trial of a member of an organization or society.
Thus, according to Robert’s Rules, before anything else would occur, an investigative committee MUST be formed. Individuals MUST be selected for that committee. The committee MUST convene and would not be able do so without proper notice. Then an investigation MUST be performed. Once the investigation would be complete, the committee MUST meet again. Every member MUST have the opportunity for input. Because of the seriousness of the situation, that committee might meet numerous times. But finally, to get to the next step of the process, the investigation committee MUST write a report and attach it to a resolution citing its recommendations, if any, to the governing committee on how to treat the problem. In this case, the State Executive Committee would be that governing committee, and once advised of those recommendations, the State Executive Committee MUST use the parliamentary process to either move toward making formal charges and schedule a trial, or table the question, or perhaps even quash the process. What I describe is written in section 63.7 of Robert’s Rules. And at each step along the way, there are bumps in the road requiring those involved to undertake “due process.” No party or committee chairman has sufficient authority to throw the question on his back and decide these things unilaterally. For those reasons, no party chairman has authority to bypass any step along the way and shortcut matters directly to the State Committee.
But that is what the despot Chairman Josh McKoon did. According to Robert’s Rules above, again, each of the steps to which I refer “MUST BE FOLLOWED.” Because removing an ELECTED official is about as serious of an undertaking an organization might ever consider, there is no latitude in the rules governing the steps that must be taken.
But you see, Josh McKoon didn’t have time to do any of that according to the rules. Josh McKoon did not have time to convene the State Executive Committee to begin a fair and democratic process that would protect the rights of an innocent victim. No, McKoon had to get this done quickly. It was only days before the state convention, when the same body that elected Pritchard the year before, could very well have prevented McKoon from doing so.
So, what does all this mean ? It means that Brian Pritchard was never removed from office according to the rules. It means Brian Pritchard is still the 1st Vice Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. Yes, that’s right. To remove him from office, it has to be done ACCORDING TO THE RULES. As you just saw, Josh McKoon DESTROYED the rules on his way to a RUSH TO JUDGMENT. That is how despots operate. They go faster than the public can keep up with because they know the rules and how to break them, expecting that no one else reads the rules anyway. Well, some of us do read the rules. And Josh McKoon didn’t just break a few little rules. McKoon broke those BIG rules. McKoon MADE UP HIS OWN BIG RULES and inflicted his despotic will onto the party. That is what tyrants do. Tyrants do not care what the rules say and require. They do not care whether anyone’s so-called rights are trampled. Tyrants do whatever they want to do and dare anyone to stop them. That is who is running the Georgia Republican Party.
For the past two years, the Georgia Republican Party has been run by a demonstrated despot, Josh McKoon, who has consistently violated even the most sacred of rules of an organized society. He has trampled the rights of Republicans all around the State of Georgia who expect their party to run not only under party rules, but also under the laws that grant authority and ballot access to political parties under Title 21.
Delegates to the Dalton Republican Convention should realize that there are reasons despotic personalities are attracted to positions such as to become Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. There are reasons, for example, Chairman Josh McKoon would resist allowing an elected Treasurer from gaining the custody of the party’s books as party rules require. The leadership of a state political party provides a fountainhead of power for anyone who can learn how to channel the millions and millions of dollars that flow through it into the hands of selected recipients. By his actions in defiance of party rules, and in apparent disregard for Title 21 of the Georgia Code, Josh McKoon has demonstrated disdain for democratic decision-making in the party. For these reasons and more, I urge the 2025 Georgia Republican Convention to reject Chairman McKoon’s efforts and pleas for reelection.
The wisdom of the Declaration of Independence cautions us, “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” I, therefore urge Dalton delegates to resist complacency and to shout with vigor, “No More!” It is time for Georgia Republicans to stop the slide of their state party into the hands of a despotic, totalitarian regime headed by Josh McKoon. The place will be Dalton, Georgia. The time will be June 7, 2025. The purpose will be to vote Despot McKoon out. Only by doing so will the Georgia Republican Party once again become a party of the people.
