Michigan GOP chair Kristina Karamo rightly ousted, say RNC lawyers

The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) top attorneys have declared they believe the Michigan GOP (MIGOP) chair, Kristina Karamo, was legitimately ousted from her position earlier this month, ending weeks of silence from the national party on a leadership crisis that has engulfed state Republicans.

The factional split within the Michigan Republican party, over ideological differences as well as personal ones, has sown chaos in the swing state party with just months to go before the 2024 presidential election. In recent weeks, tensions escalated, with two feuding groups within the state party claiming to be its legitimate leaders.

RNC general counsel Michael Whatley and chief counsel Matthew Raymer wrote in a letter obtained by the Guardian that they believed that an early January vote by state party officials to remove Karamo, who made her mark peddling election conspiracies after the 2020 election, as their chair was indeed legitimate – in spite of Karamo’s insistence that it wasn’t.

“Based upon its initial review, it appears to the counsel’s office that Ms Karamo was properly removed in accordance with the MIGOP bylaws on January 6,” they wrote in a letter to Karamo and Pete Hoekstra, who was elected to replace her by party members who engineered her ouster. They noted that the issue was not yet settled and that the RNC’s position was not final or binding.

The RNC attorneys’ opinion offers Michigan and national Republicans some guidance as they head to their winter meeting in Las Vegas at the end of the month. But it’s not a definitive resolution in the factional dispute that has festered over the last year within their state party. The letter also declared that neither Karamo nor Hoekstra would be “credentialed as MIGOP