Jury Awards Man $833,000 In Tea Party Libel Suit.

A jury in Georgia awarded James Lyle a total of $833,000 Monday in his libel lawsuit against Lee Martin and the Tea Party Patriots.

The long-standing case came to end in Cherokee County, Ga., when the jury found the Tea Party Patriots and Martin defamed Lyle, who is the partner of Amy Kremer, the former chairman of Tea Party Express.

The case began in 2011 after allegations surfaced that Martin made defamatory Facebook posts about Lyle under the pseudonym “Dale Butterworth,” stating essentially that Lyle molested the child of Amy Kremer, his girlfriend.

That molestation, it turns out, never took place. But what did take place before the accusations aired publicly on Facebook was intense interpersonal drama in the Tea Party Patriots, an organization that was initially founded by four individuals, among them Martin’s wife Jenny Beth Martin and Kremer.

In 2009, Kremer left the Tea Party Patriots and decided to align herself with a rival group called the Tea Party Express. Following the separation of Kremer from the Tea Party Patriots, Martin aka “Dale Butterworth” made a post alleging Lyle molested Kremer’s daughter.

Sad, what became of so much of the Tea Party.