Black Georgia Republican Party leader resigns after video surfaces of alleged meeting with 14-year-old boy

Social media accounts that posted the video include alleged screenshots of Stembridge’s text messages with the teen boy on a dating app.

A young Black Georgia Republican state party leader resigned from his post after just months on the job amid online allegations of being a child predator.

Ja’Quon Stembridge stepped down from his new role as the GOP’s state party assistant secretary this past weekend after a video of him being confronted for an alleged meet-up with a 14-year-old boy began circulating on social media.

In the video, Stembridge frantically pleads with a man who is recording the young Republican leader in a parking lot. Stembridge, who is 19, insists that he is 17 and asks the man to stop recording him.

Social media accounts that posted the video include alleged screenshots of Stembridge’s text messages with the teen boy on a dating app.

“You already know that s–t is wrong,” the man tells Stembridge, who apologizes for the alleged plan to meet with the teen. Stembridge, who said he did not have his ID card to prove his age, claimed he was a 17-year-old college student and had been “skipped” a grade, apparently attempting to explain his age. Stembridge is a student at the University of North Georgia.

The man recording Stembridge demanded that he “delete” his profile on the dating app, to which the young Republican leader said, “I’ll do that. I swear to God.”

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Stembridge and his attorney, Ron Daniels, declined to comment on his resignation or the allegations made in the video.

Josh McKoon, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, stated that the statewide party has condemned the “alleged conduct,” issuing a public statement that described the allegations as “serious and disturbing.”

However, McKoon emphasized that 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. The GAGOP has no further comment to offer on this situation,” he added.

In July, Stembridge, who was 18 at the time, became the youngest-ever elected member of the State Executive Committee of the Georgia Republican Party. He ran his campaign on a platform of expanding the party’s outreach with younger voters.

“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 at the time. “I figured, you know what, instead of going through a middleman, how about I just step up and do it myself?”

Stembridge hailed his election as a victory against stereotypes about the Republican Party, which is notably majority white and male.

“That party of rich white men overhelmingly elected the 18-year-old Black guy named Ja’Quon,” he said. “You’ve never seen that happen in the Republican Party. So I think that’s very significant. It shows that our party is moving in a new direction.”