Lucian Wintrich is not backing down.Former White House Correspondent, New York Young Republican Club Press Chairman, and conservative congressional candidate has retained high-level First Amendment counsel to fight the lawsuit brought by the NYYRC under club President Stefano Forte.What Stefano Forte and NYYRC tried to frame as an internal club dispute is now becoming a major free-speech and transparency fight inside the New York Republican Party. Bailen Law, one of the nation’s premier First Amendment law firms, joined Wintrich’s fight after reviewing the case. Power attorney Mark I. Bailen has a golden track record fighting for free speech, transparency, and principle.Wintrich says the sequence is simple: he noticed club finances and operations were being concealed from the club’s board by Stefano Forte and his appointed executives. Wintrich added that “It became impossible to ignore, I reached out to the club president, Stefano, just for answers.” Instead of providing answers, Forte immediately removed Wintrich from the Board of Governors, then weaponized club funding to silence and intimidate him with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.“Republicans cannot demand transparency from Democrats while Stefano Forte and NYYRC punish conservatives for asking basic questions inside our own movement,” Wintrich said. “If everything was handled properly, release the records. Release vote approvals. Release conflict disclosures. Release the gala accounting.”The legal fight now cuts directly to a question New York Republicans cannot avoid: do conservative institutions actually believe in free speech and transparency when the questions are aimed at their own leadership?Wintrich fighting back against NYYRC’s malicious suit sets a precedent for the Republican Party and conservative movement as a whole.The message from Wintrich’s camp is blunt: Stefano Forte can answer the transparency questions with documents, or NYYRC can keep trying to litigate them away.“This is bigger than this suit,” Wintrich said. “It is about whether Republican institutions in New York are accountable to their members, donors, and conservative principle. I asked for records. They attacked. They thought I wouldn’t fight back. I’ll always fight for principle. As conservatives we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. It is up to us to set the standard and practice what we preach.”The post EXCLUSIVE: Wintrich Lands Prominent First Amendment Counsel Against NYYRC Prez Stefano Forte’s Anti-Transparency Lawsuit appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.