Georgia GOP Cut Stembridge, Then a Fellowship Relisted Him

Ja’Quon Stembridge resigned as Georgia GOP assistant secretary on Nov. 29, 2025, after a citizen video accused him of trying to meet a minor. He was 19, the youngest person ever elected to that statewide office, and his lawyer declined to discuss the clip. Athens-Clarke County police said they did not handle the episode and that it was not part of a criminal investigation.

Four months later, Project 21 named him one of its first Freedom Fellows and left the Georgia party title on his public biography.

The Video That Never Became a Police Case

The clip that ended Stembridge’s party job did not come from a detective’s office. A group led by Angelus Pereira, which operates independently of police and tells followers it poses as minors online, filmed a confrontation and pushed it onto social platforms in late November 2025. The allegation was that Stembridge had arranged to meet someone presented as a 14-year-old boy after talking on a dating app.

It is not established in any charging document whether he believed he was meeting a minor, or whether the account on the other side of the chat was run by the amateur group. Stembridge and attorney Ron Daniels would not comment on the video or on the resignation.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The office: Stembridge submitted his resignation as assistant secretary, effective Nov. 29, 2025, and Chairman Josh McKoon announced it the next day.
• The police line: Athens-Clarke County police said the incident in the video was not handled by law enforcement and was not part of a current criminal investigation.
• The group: Pereira’s operation has no formal police affiliation and uses decoy accounts, a method Georgia public-safety officials have warned can taint later cases.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The chats: Screenshots circulated with the video have not been authenticated by police or by Stembridge’s lawyer.
• Intent: No prosecutor has filed a case that would require a court to decide what Stembridge thought he was doing.

Public-safety officials have cautioned that citizen-run stings can undermine investigations, misidentify people, and put both the target and the amateurs at risk. That warning sat next to a simpler political fact. A statewide party officer was gone within a weekend, and no case file followed him out the door.

How an 18-Year-Old Won a Statewide Office

Stembridge is a Greene County native and a political science student at the University of North Georgia. He has said he grew up in a Democratic household and got into Republican politics in 2020, after watching pandemic rules up close. In 2023 he founded Georgia’s 10th Congressional District Teen Republicans, then rose to chairman of the statewide Teen Republicans.

He announced his run for assistant secretary in March 2025 and spent the end of his freshman year driving from campus to party meetings. The Georgia Republican Party elected its 2025 to 2027 officers at the state convention in Dalton on June 6 and 7, 2025. McKoon won another term as chairman. Stembridge, then 18, won assistant secretary and became the youngest elected member of the State Executive Committee in party history.

FROM GREENE COUNTY TO DALTON

1. 2020: Begins Republican work after the pandemic, later describing government overreach as the push that got him in the door.
2. 2023: Founds the 10th District Teen Republicans and later chairs the statewide teen organization.
3. March 2025: Announces a bid for assistant secretary and campaigns through the close of his freshman year.
4. June 6-7, 2025: Wins the office at the Dalton convention on a youth-outreach platform.
5. July 1, 2025: Speaks as a guest at the Henry County Republican Party’s monthly meeting, already making the rounds as the new officer.

He told party audiences he was tired of waiting on older brokers. “I was tired of going through a middleman in order to get young people the help they needed and to help get young people engaged in the Republican Party,” Stembridge said after the election. “I figured, you know what, instead of going through a middleman, how about I just step up and do it myself?”

On his own account that spring he put the same demand in blunter terms, writing that young people “deserve a real seat at the table, without having to go through a middleman.” Delegates gave him one. The job was a two-year term on the committee that actually runs the state party between conventions, not a campus club gavel.

The Party Cut Him Loose That Weekend

McKoon’s first public statement did not describe the video. On Nov. 30, 2025, the Georgia Republican Party account posted that Stembridge’s resignation was effective the day before and that the party would fill the vacancy under its bylaws.

Statement from Chairman Josh McKoon:

Today I announce the resignation of Ja’Quon Stembridge as Assistant Secretary of the Georgia Republican Party, effective November 29, 2025.

The Georgia Republican Party will move promptly to fill the vacancy in accordance with our bylaws.

— GAGOP (@GaRepublicans) November 30, 2025

By Monday, with the clip still moving, McKoon addressed the accusation directly and then closed the party’s file. He called the claims serious and disturbing, and he repeated that they were still allegations. He also made clear that his November exit from party leadership ended the relationship.

While the GAGOP condemns any such alleged conduct, it also stands by the principle that is the bedrock of the American legal system that all people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Mr. Stembridge is presumed innocent unless and until adjudicated guilty of wrongdoing in a court of law. As Mr. Stembridge has resigned from his position within the GAGOP, any further development in this situation is entirely his own affair and does not involve the GAGOP.

Josh McKoon, Chairman, Georgia Republican Party, on X

McKoon said the party had cut ties. Stembridge took his social accounts down. The presumption of innocence was the legal line. The personnel line was shorter. He was already out, and the chair said the rest was private.

Party rules did not let McKoon hand the gavel to a friend. In a note to Republican leaders he said the new assistant secretary had to be chosen by a vote of the Executive Committee, not by appointment of the chairman, and that anyone who wanted the job should contact Secretary Suzi Voyles.

David Wortham Has the Job Now

The youth experiment lasted 175 days from the Dalton vote on June 7, 2025, to the resignation on Nov. 29. The empty chair did not go to another teenager.

County party pages that list the state’s 2025 to 2027 executive officers now name David Wortham as assistant secretary. The rest of the Dalton slate is mostly intact: McKoon as chairman, Salleigh Grubbs as first vice-chairman, Seanie Zappendorf as second vice-chairman, Voyles as secretary, Laurie McClain as treasurer. Amy Kremer remains national committeewoman. In April 2026, the 9th District GOP was already introducing Wortham by that title while urging Republicans to early-vote in the primary.

STATE PARTY OFFICERS AFTER THE VACANCY

McKoon was still described as Georgia GOP chair in May 2026, heading into a midterm year in a state both parties treat as a battleground. Party officials kept saying college-age organizers mattered. They did not put another 18-year-old on the statewide letterhead.

His Fellowship Bio Still Lists the Old Title

The Georgia party treated the video as a reason to end an official relationship. A Washington conservative shop treated the old résumé as current.

On April 15, 2026, 137 days after the resignation, Project 21, the Black conservative network at the National Center for Public Policy Research, introduced Zion King, Ja’Quon Stembridge, and Rashard Dawson as its first three Freedom Fellows. The post tagged Stembridge’s handle and linked a biography. It did not mention Athens, Pereira, or McKoon’s cut-ties letter. The National Center, which houses the Project 21 network, later posted a fellow video on its YouTube channel on July 2, 2026, under Stembridge’s name.

We're delighted to introduce you to Zion King, Ja’Quon Stembridge and Rashard Dawson — our first three Project 21 Freedom Fellows.

The Project 21 Freedom Fellowship empowers the next generation of Black conservative leaders to thrive both personally and professionally while… pic.twitter.com/1UUy8FdZFM

— Project 21 (@Project21News) April 15, 2026

The staff page still lists that office. It calls him a 19-year-old from Greene County, recites the 10th District chapter and the Teen Republicans chairmanship, then says that at 18 he “was elected Assistant Secretary of the Georgia Republican Party, becoming the youngest elected committee member in the party’s history.” The next sentence keeps him in the role: he “worked to bring more young people into the process and traveled across the state to connect with grassroots leaders.” The close is present tense. “Today, he continues to stay engaged.”

The fellowship is mentorship and a platform, funded in the announcement by the Kapetansky Family Trust, with Project 21 ambassadors named as volunteer mentors. It is not a Georgia GOP office and it cannot put him back on the Executive Committee. It is an institutional choice. The group picked a young conservative whose last high-profile title had already been stripped, and it printed that title as if the Dalton night were still the last chapter.

Critics on X were still pairing the November video with the April fellowship in September 2026. The argument they keep making is not a new indictment. It is that a network which talks about character chose the résumé and skipped the reason the résumé stopped matching the letterhead.

Amateur Stings Rarely Produce Georgia Charges

Pereira’s model is built for cameras. Georgia’s charging model is built for officers. That mismatch is why a party can lose an officer on a weekend and a prosecutor can still have nothing to file on Monday.

In December 2025, weeks after Stembridge resigned, Athens police ran into other amateur crews in the same city, including a pair at a QT on Atlanta Highway who said they had staged their own predator operation and a second group in Reese Pope Park. Officers told them they could not detain or question anyone and pointed them to an evidence-upload link. Pereira has said in later cases that police sometimes tell his unit to hold material in case it is useful, and that he keeps going even when the courts never convict.

WHY THOSE CLIPS OFTEN DIE IN THE CHARGING FILE

• No officer decoy: Georgia computer-exploitation cases are built for law-enforcement operations; a civilian pretending to be a child can leave prosecutors with a record they will not take to a jury.
• Citizen’s arrest is gone: Gov. Brian Kemp signed a 2021 repeal of the state’s citizen’s arrest statute after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, and deputies now tell amateurs they cannot hold a person for police.
• Defense and lawsuits: Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards said on Dec. 17, 2025, that a citizen sting can hand a suspect a complete defense and can expose the amateurs to civil liability.
• Chain of custody: Chats run from a creator’s phone, then posted for traffic, are a different package from a controlled undercover account logged by a task force.

Edwards was talking about a Valdosta-area video, not the Stembridge clip, but the legal problem is the same one Athens-Clarke officers described when they said they had not handled Stembridge’s confrontation and were not investigating it. Official Internet Crimes Against Children units still run their own decoy operations and still get warrants. The viral parking-lot version is a different product. It can wreck a résumé overnight. It is a weak way to open a Georgia felony file.

Stembridge has not been adjudicated guilty of anything in a court of law, which is the sentence McKoon used when the party walked away. He also has not been restored to the State Executive Committee. David Wortham holds that seat. The National Center still introduces Stembridge as a Freedom Fellow whose biography runs through a Georgia GOP office he resigned on Nov. 29, 2025, after a video police would not take as their case.