Huntington Beach mayor pro tem ordered to pay nearly $120K in attorney fees
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An Orange County judge has ordered Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Butch Twining to pay nearly $120,000 in attorney fees to Ocean View School District Board of Trustees President Gina Clayton-Tarvin, after Twining lost his defamation case against her.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin tentatively ruled last week that Twining owed $119,959.05, using a 1.45-times multiplier on fees. On Monday, both sides submitted to the tentative ruling, forgoing their right to an oral hearing.
Twining filed suit last December, seeking $25 million in damages after Clayton-Tarvin made critical posts on social media regarding his involvement in a Charlie Kirk rally at the Huntington Beach Pier on Sept. 10, 2025.
Clayton-Tarvin countered with an anti-SLAPP motion, designed to protect those exercising their 1st Amendment rights of free speech, and Griffin granted that motion in March.
Now, her lawyers will be compensated for their work, and it’s coming out of Twining’s pockets.
“The facts of the matter really are that he’s been wrong since day one,” Clayton-Tarvin said of Twining during an interview Monday. “He was wrong to file the suit. It was out of place, it was unnecessary, it was frivolous. And worse off, he’s a sworn defender of the U.S. Constitution, and he just wanted so badly to get revenge on me for telling the truth about his whereabouts that he would do anything to destroy me. That really speaks to his lack of character, and the fact that I think he’s unfit for office.”
Twining denounced hate groups at the city council meeting held six days after the vigil. He was sworn in as the city’s mayor pro tem in December, making it more than likely he will be Surf City’s next mayor in 2027, assuming the traditional rotation of seats is followed.
Twining said the vigil last September was taken over by white supremacists, who started chanting phrases including “White man fight back” on a 14-second video that went viral and was posted by Mark Bixby of Surf City Sentinel. Twining is seen for a split second at the end of the video.
He has squabbled online for years with Clayton-Tarvin. He posted Ocean View School District test scores online in 2024 and was critical of Clayton-Tarvin, who was running for reelection at the time and has been a member of that board since 2012.
“It’s [$119,000], and for me. It’s not make or break,” Twining said of the judgment in an interview Monday. “It is what it is. If anybody watches her gloat, they understand that she’s not a nice person. I’ll just put it that way. I don’t think she’s a nice person. I think she wants to continue to harass me, and that’s fine. I just consider the source. She’s a nothing, and that’s the way I’ll always feel about her.”
He reiterated that he was neither a white supremacist nor a racist. Additionally, he challenged Clayton-Tarvin to donate the funds, adding that he has donated about $114,000 to local Huntington Beach charities in the last 18 months.
“I think that 90% of the people know in their heart of hearts that I had nothing to do with the white supremacists, that I am not a white supremacist,” Twining said. “They know that I didn’t march and chant with them. I think that 90% of the people know that, but a lot of the people just want to make an issue out of it and attack me. And I’m a big boy, I can handle it.”
Clayton-Tarvin did not back down from her posts, including an Instagram post on Sept. 13 in which she said that Twining participated in a “white supremacy rally … an all-out hate rally staring [sic] the extremist MAGA city council member, Twining, he can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble.”
“If you don’t want to be known to be in the presence of white supremacists, then don’t put yourself in the middle of white supremacists,” she said Monday. “Don’t walk amongst them, don’t chant amongst them. Don’t stand next to them and hang up campaign signs with people who are self-proclaimed Proud Boys. Don’t do that.”
