OGDEN, Utah – The court fight about alleged wiretapping is over, but there’s plenty of acrimony still swirling between two camps of Utah Republican Party activists.
Three Weber County Republicans recently dropped a civil lawsuit they filed in 2018 against two other Republicans.
Bob McEntee, Lynda Pipkin and Elizabeth Carlin, who were members of the GOP State Central Committee at the time, sued Daryl Acumen and Giles Witherspoon-Boyd after a fractious party meeting in North Salt Lake on Sept. 9, 2017.
The Weber County trio alleged that Acumen, a party activist, and Witherspoon-Boyd, a technology provider, intercepted communications of committee members during the meeting. They were accused of hacking to gather texts and other data for political leverage.
The Weber County GOP officials were part of a party faction known as the “Gang of 51” that was fighting to preserve the party’s tight control over its caucus system.
Acumen was an advocate for an opposing faction, which supported provisions allowing some candidates to qualify for the ballot by gathering voter signatures.
Acumen, who is Black, denied the wiretapping allegations and accused the plaintiffs, all white, of racism.
In April 2020, Acumen was dropped from the suit in a settlement with the plaintiffs, leaving Witherspoon-Boyd as the sole defendant.
Then the case against Witherspoon-Boyd was dropped in November.
In an interview this week, Witherspoon-Boyd said he wants it known that the case was baseless. He said the litigation has cost him business and has made him question his allegiance to the party.
Witherspoon-Boyd said he wasn’t even a part of the caucus battle; he was just there at the meeting, lending his technical expertise for free, to “help speed up the voting.”
“I was working on tools to help the party and make things easier to use,” he said.
No evidence was provided showing any wiretapping or hacking, he said.
“They have nothing, absolutely nothing,” Witherspoon-Boyd said.
But now he has legal bills and a hindrance to his business because of publicity about the suit.
Witherspoon-Boyd, a data security auditor and software designer in Orem, said he knows of three deals he lost after potential partners googled his name and read about the lawsuit.
“This is the problem with our legal system,” he said. “Now I am in debt, and the Republican Party was not there to help me, even though I volunteered to be there to help them.”
Witherspoon-Boyd said those behind the suit automatically linked him with Acumen because both are Black.
“I didn’t even really know Daryl,” he said. “We’re not friends.”
McEntee, an Ogden landlord and a defense analyst, who’s still a member of the GOP State Central Committee, said he and the others decided to drop the suit because “we just kind of thought it’s not worth it.”
“We just saw that we didn’t want his money, but we did want an acceptable admission or an apology,” McEntee said.
When it became known during the Woods Cross party meeting that committee members’ text messages had been seen, “we said we didn’t sign up for that,” McEntee said.
Although they dropped the case, “the lawsuit did show that we don’t like it (the alleged wiretapping and privacy violation),” McEntee said.
McEntee also rejected notions that any racial animus was involved.
“When someone hacks your computer, is that really about race?” he said. “You will not scare me off with race-baiting accusations.”
He said he is “thankful” that Witherspoon-Boyd “is a conservative Black man and a Republican.”
In any Utah lawsuit, “you’re looking at white plaintiffs” because of the state’s overwhelmingly white population, McEntee said.
“In this case, these were the guys in the back with the computers,” McEntee said. “I don’t care if they were Polynesian, Caribbean, it wouldn’t matter.”
Witherspoon-Boyd said that with current controversies about Black Lives Matter and COVID-19 restrictions, “As a Black man in Utah, it has been harrowing, at least.”
Is he still a Republican?
“I don’t know where I stand,” he said. “As a man in my position, I can see why Colin Powell said, ‘Don’t call me a Republican.’”