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OREGON - Four election challenges have now been filed with the Republican National Committee (RNC) to dispute multiple acts of alleged election fraud committed by Oregon Republican Party (ORP) Vice Chair Angela Plowhead and National Committeewoman (NCW) Tracy Honl’s election observer Margie Hughes that led to Honl’s disputed re-election at a March 16th State Central Committee meeting.
In response to the election challenges by county and district chairmen and National Committeman Solomon Yue, Yue sent a letter to RNC Chair Michael Whatley, RNC Legal Counsel Mandy Lester, President Trump’s Senior Campaign Advisor Chris LaCivita, and the RNC Temporary Committee on Membership Disputes.
Yue’s letter, obtained by Bigger Truth, alleges that Honl, Plowhead, Hughes and ORP Secretary Jo Rae Perkins have engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the fraud and prevent a new election.
Bigger Truth hosted Umatilla County GOP Chair Suni Danforth on May 13th and broke some significant new revelations, reported for the first time in the podcast. These revelations included that an emergency ORP Executive Committee’s executive session was called on Saturday May 4 at 6:30pm to occur 90 minutes later. This meeting was called at a time that the executives, who are friendly to Honl knew that Yue would not be able to attend, as he was at an event at Mar-a-Lago at that time.
A partial transcript of the executive session was delivered to Bigger Truth shortly before the podcast aired. In it, Tracy Honl is reported to have said, “If people say no on this vote, somebody-Margie maybe or Angela- just double double check with Tyler because Jerry’s a certified parliamentarian I very very much trust his judgment, but make double sure with Tyler so we haven’t people who along with Margie who really know to cover our butt. That’s all I really wanna do is make sure our butts are covered on here and if the body says no, it’s good…”
That May 4th meeting came shortly after Honl had sent a 1000 word response to the RNC Temporary Committee on Membership Disputes along with a draft of the minutes to the March 16th meeting at which she was elected.
The problem is that the minutes for that meeting had not been published or approved. Multiple party insiders have told Bigger Truth that they believe Honl may have edited the minutes to justify her response, causing her to request the emergency meeting in part for the purpose of amending the minutes and forming a conspiracy to “cover their butts” with the RNC.
On Monday, May 6th, ORP Secretary Perkins sent a memo to State Central Committee members to announce that minutes to the March 16th meeting would be published soon but she had to “fix a couple things” first.
Danforth, in the above podcast, said that the minutes that Perkins sent out the following day were significantly inaccurate compared to her recollection of the events, in particular with relation to the events surrounding the NCW election. Danforth requested an audio recording of the meeting from Perkins in writing.
It is standard procedure to provide the recording, but Perkins denied her request and informed Danforth that she would be destroying the audio recording once the minutes are published. She told Danforth that the recording was a private recording for the purpose of producing her minutes and is not a public record. This is a clear violation of the party’s standard transparency practices.
Danforth sent a letter to Perkins and ORP Chair Justin Hwang demanding they preserve the recording.
In that election, there were 126 credentialed delegates, according to the credential committee and three candidates for NCW. In the first round of voting, Honl had 63 votes, which was one vote shy of the required 50% +1, or 64 votes, that were required to declare Honl the winner without a run-off.
Danforth indicated in the podcast that if the voting had gone to a run-off, Honl likely would have lost to runner-up Rejeana Jackson, as Hellen Heller, in third place, would have stepped down and thrown her support to Jackson.
According to written accounts by two of the observers, after the first count of votes showed that Honl failed to meet the threshold, Honl’s team began to interfere in the count.
Margie Hughes was Honl’s designated election observer. According to the rules, each candidate was permitted a designated observer, who is not allowed to participate in the counting process, only to observe and challenge. Hughes, who is the ORP Rules Committee Chair, allegedly violated those rules by handling the ballots and marking the ballots and the official tally sheet.
As a result of Hughes’ participation, in the recount of the ballots they counted only 125 total votes, after the first count showed 126. Hughes declared that the lower vote total, not the credentialed voters, formed the basis for the 50%+1 votes needed, lowering Honl’s required vote count to win to 63. The other observers were not allowed to challenge the missing ballot.
Hughes acted as the head teller, delivering the tally to Plowhead on stage, Plowhead read the tally and declared into the microphone that a run-off would be needed. According to Yue, who was seated on the stage as the National Committeeman, Honl and Hughes rushed to stop Plowhead and forcefully corrected her to declare Honl the winner.
Todd Morrill, one of the other candidates’ observers, tried to inform the body that there were problems with the procedure and a run-off was needed, but he was shouted down by Honl’s supporters and not allowed to speak. The body was never informed of the problems with the vote counting.
Morrill later wrote a five page letter documenting the errors he observed in the election. Linda Dill, the other observer, wrote a two page letter documenting errors in the election.
After the election, Secretary Perkins was asked where the ballots were stored and if they were sealed and secured. Perkins responded, “They are with a trusted friend.”
Hughes told Congressional District 2 Vice Chair Larry Moore that the ballots were stored in her personal possession after the election. Secretary Perkins admitted to all the county chairmen on a May 13th Zoom call that the envelopes containing the ballots were never sealed during that time.
In the week of April 22nd, the RNC asked Honl to provide her response to the election challenges that had been filed. Perkins then held private, unannounced “audits” of the ballots that had been stored and kept unsealed by Honl’s designated observer, Hughes. The other candidates were uninformed of the “audits” and did not have observers present.
In response to the objections, the State Central Committee was was sent a mass email giving a forced choice to either: 1. Formally approve of the results of the March 16th meeting; or, 2. Hold an electronic run-off where credentialing and chain of custody would be impossible to verify. No other options were considered, including the obvious option to hold a new in-person vote for all three candidates with proper election integrity guardrails in place.
That vote itself was held electronically, by email response. No credentials or chain of custody was provided for that vote.
After the Bigger Truth podcast with Danforth on May 13th, which was circulated widely among party members in Oregon, Hwang sent a letter to the ORP State Central Committee on May 14th. Hwang was absent at the March 16th meeting. In the letter, Hwang declared the March 16th vote final and approved by the body.
Chair Hwang also wrote, "After consulting with legal counsel from the RNC, I have determined the runoff election would have in and of itself been a setting aside of the rules and customs of procedure."
This was quickly proven a deliberate falsehood by RNC legal counsel.
The same day, Yue emailed RNC legal counsel Mandy Lester to ask if Hwang had, in fact, consulted with any legal counsel and she replied on May 15th that Hwang had not consulted with RNC legal. Lester also confirmed that the RNC Temporary Committee on Membership Disputes had received three challenges to Honl’s election and would likely discuss them next week.
After seeing that Chair Hwang had lied to the State Central Committee, Rejeana Jackson, the runner-up to Honl, submitted a fourth election challenge.
The chairs of four counties have initiated an official petition process to establish a new, in-person vote in July with an RNC parliamentarian present. The petition has already acquired signatures from more than 50% of counties in Oregon. One more signature is currently required to force a new election.
Don Powers’ shady connections and opposition to election integrity
ORP Election Integrity Committee Co-chair Don Powers weighed in strongly against the election challenges and supported Honl. He wrote on Telegram, “This is more divisive garbage coming from Yue and the Crue. One common denominator over the past two decades.”
Powers came out of complete political uninvolvement in 2021 with an apparent close relationship with Joe Oltmann, who was instrumental in turning the GOP in his home state of Colorado into a clown show and is currently traveling around the country teaching people how to “peacefully but forcefully” overthrow their local government if clerks refuse to cave to their demands of “paper ballots, one day elections, no machines.”
Powers had a criminal background and never even registered to vote until 2022 and he was instantly promoted to ORP Election Integrity Committee Co-Chair and at the March 16th meeting he was nearly elected RNC Committeeman.
After that meeting, he went live on X for an epic, drunken rant where he admitted that his mission the last two years was to remove Solomon Yue, close Trump-ally and dissident of the Chinese Communist Party who had become the 8th most senior member of the RNC.
Here is Powers in that recording, sounding clearly drunk and accusing “the establish-sh-t” of not really caring about election integrity.
That claim is particularly interesting juxtaposed to his response to state house Republican leader Jeff Heifrich demanding safeguards on ballot returns to county elections offices for a special election. Powers wrote, “Not relevant… Just like Kerry.”
Does the ORP Election Integrity Committee have a habit of opposing state elected Republicans’ election integrity efforts?
Powers admitted in his drunken rant that “For the last two years, I’ve believed that Solomon needs to go… But how do we do it? You can’t go after this guy directly. He’s too well connected… The way you do it, just like any other operation is you… interrupt their communications, their information… their flow of information and supplies, whether it be food or fuel or communications. You break down the infrastructure around them. So I’ve spent the last two years strategically, it’s not by accident, is coming out and exposing the team around them… The nastiest people I’ve ever met in my life, to be honest, are the people surrounding that S.O.B.”
Powers is a Clackamas County GOP delegate. His Vice Chair, Dan Tooze, has admitted that he is a 4th tier leader of the Portland Proud Boys, a paramilitary militia organization with suspected white supremacist ties and had been infiltrated and was involved with the conflict that occurred on January 6, 2021. To attain 4th tier status, a member must have been arrested or been in a serious violent fight for the cause.
Tooze wrote on Telegram, “I am the proud boys that led all the events. I’m sure me and the guys were there a time or Two (sic).” Tooze then posted this picture of Proud Boys members. Don Powers is circled, 2nd from the right:
In 2023, Powers was caught driving around the state with a racist effigy representing Solomon Yue in an effort to recall Yue. Powers has never denied this.
When Bigger Truth interviewed Solomon Yue a few weeks ago, he explained that he stepped down after the first round of voting on March 16th to prevent a racist infiltrator like Don Powers from going to the RNC. After the first round, Powers had 51 votes, forcing a run-off. To prevent Powers from being elected, Yue stepped down and endorsed third-place Dan Mason.
Bigger Truth reached out to Don Powers, Tracy Honl, Jo Rae Perkins, Justin Hwang, Margie Hughes, and Angela Plowhead by text and direct message with a summary of the findings in this report and a request for comment. None wished to comment.
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