ProfileYAL

Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) is an organization dedicated to identifying, educating, training, and mobilizing pro-liberty advocates. YAL primarily focuses on educational outreach and building local chapters across college campuses nationwide. YAL helps these chapters grow and contribute to political campaigns.

Why is YAL Here?

On January 8, 2021, a whistleblower came forward to make allegations of rape, sexual assualt, and harassment. The allegations targeted not only the YAL President, Cliff Maloney, and VP of Grassroots Justin Greiss, but the general culture and behaviors across the entire institution.

Specifics of this post included, but were not limited to:

• YAL President, Cliff Maloney, attempting to extort a female staff member for sex
• A still current YAL VP whose attempt to carry a blackout drunk girl to his hotel room who was only stopped because he was physically made to stop by other attendees
• A Regional Director assaulting an intern in her bed at a group housing and never faced disciplinary action

This post shared text and email documents showing repeated attempts by this initial whistleblower to report some of these incidents, later follow up on there investigation status, and the lack of response from members at YAL.

Within hours dozens of women have come forward to share stories of harassment or sexual assault from YAL staffers, VP’s, and even the President. This took shape with new hashtags #YALtoo, #FireCliff, and #FireGreiss. Many of these stories have been amalgamated under this twitter thread. Note: Strong content warning for sexual assault.

There was some internal deliberation whether to add YAL to the platform as an organization or add just Cliff Maloney and Justin Greiss as individuals. Ultimately, Rebel Rabbits decided to add YAL as an organization for two reasons. FIrst, adding the organization as a whole is more in line with the spirit of the original whistleblower who referred the “open secret” that plagued YAL generally. Second, the number of women that shared stories relating to other YAL members is significant.There was also internal deliberation whether to add YAL to the platform given that allegations are not proof and we acknowledge that, however rare, false allegations are possible. This concern was alleviated for two reasons. First, the sheer number of stories from separate individuals with longstanding social media accounts within hours and days, lends great weight to the credibility of the accusations and increasingly makes the idea of a conspiracy of false allegations even more unlikely. Second, YAL has made at least two press releases indicating at least one firing was performed after an investigation was created as a result of the various allegations. On Jan 11, YAL released a press release stating “President, Cliff Maloney, and Vice President of Grassroots, Justin Greiss, on administrative leave pending the conclusion of a thorough investigation into all allegations.” On Jan 12, YAL released a press release stating that the YAL Board of Directors terminated Cliff Maloney.