South Carolina State Rep. Adam Morgan (R-20), who has launched a congressional bid against Rep. Will Timmons (R-SC), vehemently denies participating in a strategy at the 2016 convention aimed at freeing up delegates to vote for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over former President Donald Trump, though several sources, speaking anonymously, have told Breitbart News this was the case.
Multiple sources are on record denying that Morgan, who says the GOP has a “deep bench” in its primary field this year and will not commit to backing Trump, was involved in the strategy. Morgan also lobbed a series of attacks on Timmons, one of Trump’s earliest supporters in 2024, over his history with Trump. Reached for comment by Breitbart News, a senior adviser to Timmons’s campaign fired back, slamming Morgan.
As Trump emerges as the likely GOP nominee next year, this particular battle represents a microcosm of what’s happening in intra-GOP fights from coast to coast whereby almost every Republican candidate, with rare exception, is trying to tie themselves to Trump—and make their opponents appear anti-Trump. That’s what makes this particular fight so interesting: Both candidates are making the pro-Trump case about themselves – Morgan doing so while refusing to endorse him – and the anti-Trump case about their opponents.
At the 2016 convention, nine states had petitions with majorities of delegates in what looked like enough to force a roll-call vote on the convention’s rules, in a larger effort by a group called Delegates Unbound, though the it fell apart when three states opted to rescind their petitions, the State reported at the time:
A petition to join the revolt circulated in South Carolina’s delegation but never got off the ground.
Of the state’s 50 delegates, only 16 signed on, falling short of the majority that supporters needed to submit it, said Stephen Brown, a Cruz supporter who headed up the petition effort among Palmetto State delegates.
The State noted that those behind the plan were largely “anti-Trump activists, playing a long-shot hope that they could avoid nominating the bombastic billionaire.”
Morgan, who was elected at the state convention as an alternate delegate, helped in the Delegates Unbound-style initiative among South Carolina delegates to try and nominate Cruz at the convention instead of Trump, several sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Breitbart News.
However, Morgan – now-chair of the South Carolina State Freedom Caucus, refuted these sources in a statement, telling Breitbart News via text message, “I definitely wasn’t involved in that,” adding, “it sounds like fake news from my opponent’s campaign.”
Breitbart News also spoke with Brown, who admitted in a phone call to leading the charge for Cruz in South Carolina but denied Morgan had any involvement in the process.
“I was right in the middle of it, from South Carolina, and Adam Morgan was not in any way involved, and for anybody to say he was involved is simply not true,” Brown said.
“I never had a conversation with Adam Morgan about this. We’re right here in South Carolina – we’re from the same county – I never had a conversation with him about it,” he added. “In fact, he wasn’t even a delegate; he was an alternate or something, so it wasn’t like I was afraid to go to him. He just wasn’t a player to have a vote.”
He added Morgan “wasn’t in any emails with me, communications, phone calls; he didn’t meet with us at the convention, so he was just not involved in the process in any way, period.”
Brown, who sources say was seen in the front row of Morgan’s campaign launch, also emphasized that the “Republican Party and their delegates to the Republican National Convention have only been bound to vote for the individual who won the or Caucus or the primary from an individual state… twice in the history of the party,” with those years being in 1976 and 2016.
Those who were opposed to Trump gaining the nomination were “looking at ‘What else can we do? What things can we manage,’ and this whole concept that if we can convince delegates to vote their conscience, we thought we had a chance to be able to top him from winning, and Cruz could be nominated at the convention,” noted Brown of the weeks-long effort in the lead-up to and at the convention. He supported Trump in the general election after he secured the nomination and subsequently voted for him twice, he said.
Morgan also put Breitbart News in contact with Nathan Leupp, the former Republican chairman of Greenville County, who said that he was a delegate in 2016 and that Morgan, he, and others at the Cleveland convention were “all against” the scheme, adding though that several people from Greenville were part of the effort.
However, one source provided their own text messages from April 2016 – several months before the convention and after the South Carolina primary, which Trump won – that they sent to another individual stating that Leupp and Brown were backing Cruz. The source added that Brown is a mentor to Morgan and said Leupp is an employee at Morgan’s company. Sources also provided Breitbart News with images of Morgan with failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush and former Gov Nikki Haley (R-SC) during one of her campaigns.
Morgan pictured with 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush (Source: Provided to Breitbart News)
Morgan with Bush and Haley at a Haley campaign event. (Source: Provided to Breitbart News)
He was also pictured with establishment GOP strategist Karl Rove at the 2016 convention.
Months before the convention, on February 27, 2016, at the height of the GOP primary, Morgan made his disdain for Trump, at least at the time, apparent in comparing him to Star Wars villain Jabba the Hut.
A Twitter user likened Jabba the Hut to the “grandfather of the snot in the mucinex commercial.” Moments later, Morgan responded, “no, no…. Jabba the Hut = Donald Trump.”
“You’re saying he’s self-serving, out-for-profit, slimy looking villain?? Come on—Jabba wasn’t that bad,” the Twitter user responded, drawing a like from Morgan.
“Regarding social media posts from 7 years ago, I along with many conservatives at the time had concerns that Candidate Donald Trump wasn’t a conservative, and I poked fun at a number of the candidates,” Morgan said in a statement to Breitbart News. “My opponent also had concerns with Trump and was a key Rubio supporter and donor in 2016. After Trump won the nomination, I fully supported him, voted for him twice and endorsed him in 2020. More importantly, I have been the leader of the America First movement in the South Carolina Legislature and look forward to taking that fight to Washington.”
“My opponent has an embarrassing record of compromise, absenteeism, and cowardice,” Morgan added. “He is understandably worried to face the voters in the upcoming primary. But spreading fake news and trying to ride the President’s coattails won’t work. Our voters are too informed to fall for that, and they are ready for a true America First fighter.”
He also highlighted comments Timmons made in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots, in which Timmons wrote, “the actions yesterday by those who breached the U.S. Capitol are the very definition of domestic terrorism,” and called for their prosecution to “the fullest extent of the law.”
Additionally, Morgan shared a letter he co-signed on November 11, 2020, asking for Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate voting irregularities in the election in an effort to draw a contrast with Timmons.
Timmons notably objected to the certification of the 2020 election results as a Congressman before January 6 and also scored Trump’s endorsement in 2022, a year after his initial comments about January 6. Moreover, he has been part of Trump’s South Carolina leadership team for the 2024 campaign since January.
Breitbart News reached out to the Timmons campaign for a response to Morgan, and senior adviser Luke Byars slammed the state representative.
“When Adam is not lying about his own failed record or William Timmons’ strong conservative record, he’s spinning because he tried to steal the nomination from Donald Trump,” Byars said. “The facts are clear. Congressman Timmons stands with President Trump and Adam Morgan does not.”
Breitbart News was unable to locate an online footprint of Morgan’s 2020 endorsement of Trump, which he referenced. When asked if he could provide a link to a news story or press release as evidence of the endorsement, he said it might not have been a particularly “newsworthy” endorsement considering his status as a state representative but claimed he did so at a “Greenville County GOP watch party of the Trump re-election announcement.”
Leupp said the Trump campaign had asked the Greenville GOP to host a watch party and said they did so at their headquarters, where Morgan “would have been supportive” of Trump.
“His family owned our building, so I had Adam kind of there and do a little – like a welcome kickoff thing for President Trump’s announcement kickoff, so he would have been supportive at that point,” he said.
Yet the Post and Courier reports that Morgan has not committed to endorsing anyone in the presidential primary as of November 16 as Trump continues to coalesce the base and regularly polls with more than 60 percent of support.
Timmons touts endorsements from GOP heavyweights, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) thus far.
Morgan has the backing of Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC). Norman is the only House Republican to endorse former Haley for president, who is starting to be seen as the GOP establishment’s top long-shot candidate to take on Trump. She also enjoys the backing of Americans for Prosperity Action, a group linked to Charles Koch and other establishment Republican megadonors, which reportedly plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to try and stop Trump in the primary.
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