The Coup that Failed: Liars Never Prosper...

Is this what the board didn't want published?

...at least in the long run. 

The 8th Commandment isn't a suggestion.  

The truth about the attempted coup at LifeSiteNews is coming out and it's ugly. You can read the whole sordid tale at Chris Jackson's Hiraeth in Exile. 

A short synopsis: Some of the board members and the co-CEO, Robert Hoover, didn't like the direction that LifeSiteNews was taking under Westen. They didn't want any criticism of Pope Leo's actions. They wanted to change the brand of LSN. What exactly that new brand would look like we don't know. 

So they took a survey. Only about 20% of the employees responded. The board claimed everybody gave John-Henry Westen a thumbs down. Stephen Kokx, the journalist fired at the same time as Westen, responded to the survey. He disputed that tale since he did not give negative comments about Westen. How many others are with him? I don't know if Maike Hickson, whom I know personally, responded to the the survey, but following the coup she quit in solidarity with Westen.

The survey results haven't been released. (Does this sound familiar? Were they channeling Pope Francis?) 

Chris Jackson began his article with this:

LifeSiteNews was never supposed to be respectable.

It was loud, confrontational, unapologetically pro-life, and willing to say what other Catholic outlets wouldn’t: that the Church is in crisis, and that the problem isn’t just secularism, it’s the men in miters enabling it. For over two decades, John-Henry Westen was the face of that mission.

And last week, the board tried to get rid of him.

Thanks to a leaked recording and statements from former employees, we now have a clearer picture of what really happened behind the scenes. It wasn’t just a personnel dispute. It was an ideological knife fight, thinly veiled as an “administrative decision.”

The attempted coup failed, for now, and you have yourselves to thank! You let your voices be heard and it had an effect. As of July 18, 2025, Westen has been reinstated as CEO and President of LifeSiteNews, though “subject to administrative review and investigation.”

But the deeper problem remains. A once-militant Catholic news outlet is now infested with careerists, climate liturgy defenders, and opinion-policing board members who seem more scandalized by alleged sedevacantists than by sacrilege in Rome.

What bothered me most in the article was the involvement of Bishop Joseph Strickland. I hoped that he was another victim of the lies rather than an active participant in the coup attempt. But that's hard to believe based on the leaked audio of the board meeting [Source] which is available here. [I have not listened to the entire audio, only the first half hour. It's obvious that the anonymous sender thought the audio would sink Westen. The act seems to have backfired. Most of the employees (80%) did not reply to the survey, so to make the survey the hammer was dishonest.]

Jackson ends his article with this:

This wasn’t just a leadership shakeup. It was an attempted course correction: a quiet, donor-friendly decapitation of LifeSite’s traditionalist legacy.

The goal? Soften the tone. Broaden the appeal. Distance the site from “radicals” who question papal legitimacy or the morality of synodal documents. In short: become another respectable Catholic outlet that laments the crisis but never names its architects.

If Westen had gone quietly, the purge would be complete. But thanks to the work of Stephen Kokx, Liz Yore, Frank Walker, Steve Bannon, and the outcry from you, dear readers, it has been exposed and stopped…for now.

The question going forward isn’t just whether Westen keeps his job. It’s whether LifeSiteNews keeps its mission.

If you want even more drama, there are some very interesting comments from Jackson's readers here. There are also some legitimate criticisms of Westen's promotion of questionable visionaries here.

For now, John-Henry is back. Let's pray for LSN and all the employees. I am frankly tired of the internecine warfare and this may be my last post on this soap opera. God knows the truth. I suspect much of it has more to do with egos and personality conflicts than substance. 

For a brief announcement about Westen's restoration go to Catholic Vote.