Huntington Beach mayor pro tem sues local school board president for defamation
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Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Butch Twining has sued Ocean View School District Board of Trustees President Gina Clayton-Tarvin for critical remarks she made about him in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination.
The defamation lawsuit was filed in Orange County Superior Court, with Twining’s attorneys seeking a jury trial and $25 million in damages.
Twining attended a vigil for Kirk on Sept. 10, the same day that the 31-year-old conservative activist was killed at a debate event in Utah. The vigil at Huntington Beach Pier Plaza was organized by the Orange County Young Republicans.
Twining, himself a Republican, said the event was taken over by far-right white supremacists. He said he left the vigil with his wife and others soon after.
A 14-second video that went viral, posted by Mark Bixby of Surf City Sentinel the day after the vigil, shows men chanting “White man fight back.” Twining is seen for a split-second near the end of the video holding an American flag and a candle.
“They started chanting something, and a lot of us couldn’t understand what they were saying because they had a big bullhorn and a mic,” Twining said in an interview with the Daily Pilot on Tuesday. “You know how muddled that can get. But when we finally figured out they were chanting ‘White men fight back,’ we all look at each other and we go, ‘We’re out of here.’”
Clayton-Tarvin made social media posts criticizing Twining afterward. An Instagram post made on Sept. 13 said that he participated in “a white supremacy rally … an all-out hate rally staring [sic] the extremist MAGA city council member, Twining, who can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble.”
In a post on X on the same day, Clayton-Tarvin said that Twining “was there gleefully chanting amongst alt right white supremacists.”
Twining said he asked Clayton-Tarvin to take the posts down, but she refused, so he decided to take legal action.
In an interview with the Daily Pilot, Clayton-Tarvin called Twining’s lawsuit “nonsense.”
“He’s a public person, he’s an elected official,” she said. “He’s subject to scrutiny. I am one of his constituents, you know? He’s criticized me many, many times. He’s criticized the children of the Ocean View School District, the parents, the teachers. It’s OK. He’s allowed to do that, just like I’m allowed to criticize what he does.
“He was there, and that’s the truth of the matter. That’s the bottom line.”
Twining, who was first elected to the City Council in 2024, this month was voted by his colleagues to serve as mayor pro tem. He said Clayton-Tarvin’s posts have damaged his reputation to the point that he was getting death threats.
He denounced hate groups during a statement made at the Sept. 16 meeting of the City Council, six days after the vigil.
“I like to move on, but [Clayton-Tarvin] made it impossible,” Twining said. “The death threats … were really bad for like two or three weeks. Just comments in passing, people putting their finger pistol up to their neck and clicking the trigger. That was happening quite often, and that’s too much for something I never did.
“All I know is that we went there for a Charlie Kirk vigil on the night of his assassination. For her to throw that crap out there, that garbage, [that vitriol is] exactly why Charlie Kirk got assassinated. She immediately put a target on my back, and she knows that. She goes, ‘Oh, you’re a public official, I can say whatever I want about you.’ But I have got volumes of Gina Clayton-Tarvin posts, threatening people from defaming her. She’s just a hypocrite.”
Twining has criticized Clayton-Tarvin’s leadership of the school district in the past. She said that his lawsuit was being used as a political tool, a weapon to silence her, but Twining maintains that was not the case.
“I’m targeting her because she targeted me and I got death threats,” he said. “It has nothing to do with how I feel she has stewarded the OVSD. That’s probably a conversation for another day.”
Clayton-Tarvin, who was first elected to the OVSD Board of Trustees in 2012, was voted by her colleagues as president during last week’s meeting for the sixth time.
“I’m an elected official, and I understand the 1st Amendment and free speech,” she said. “People can criticize elected officials; it’s normal. The problem is that Mr. Twining is especially sensitive. He’s a sensitive man. When you are in elected office, you have to have thick skin, which Mr. Twining does not.”
Twining admitted that he knows defamation suits can be tough to prove, but added he doesn’t think this one is very hard. He said Clayton-Tarvin’s posts following the vigil damaged his reputation “enormously,” to the point where he was receiving calls from employees at his former company, Twining, Inc.
“If that’s what she wanted to do, hey, job well done, mission accomplished,” he said. “You have damaged my reputation, but I plan on getting it back.”
