Readers will be shocked, truly shocked, to learn that the file (17 Mb, zipped) that Miquel Duque sent to the entire LNC did not stay within that body.
We tip our hat to the Fakertarians group on Facebook, which somehow obtained the documents that were described by the LNC as a ‘breach of confidentiality’ by Miguel Duque. As the documents were sent by him (in the form of a 17Mb zip file) only to the LNC, we decline to explain how confidentiality could have been violated. We also received a copy, but it was embargoed until today, so Fakertarians published first. We quote their press release:
“Much has been made the last several days about documents sent to the Libertarian National Committee by LNC Region 1 Representative Miguel Duque. LNC Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos has described the documents as “petty mean girl gossip,” while LNC Chair Angela McArdle has stated that they include “awful comments,” including ones she made.
“We at Fakertarians have received the documents from a source. They include conversations between McArdle and others, as well as a memo sent to the Libertarian National Committee in May of 2023 outlining several different issues, including McArdle’s assertion that “the takeover is turning into a disaster.” The documents also feature a Mises Caucus discord chat that features several members of the LNC, including McArdle, talking about various LNC business. Also included is an explanatory document that seems to be from Duque himself that outlines the corruption that he asserts is running rampant throughout the LNC.
“In the interest of transparency, and because we believe Libertarian Party members deserve to know what’s going on in their party behind closed doors, a Google Drive link for the documents is below. We will be diving deeper into what’s featured in the documents as this story progresses.
“The link is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13odD8qIufVvwIisAG96Rc263R10jfMeT” Fakertarians, Facebook post
Recognizing that we have readers here have a wide range of political interests, we are moving the Libertarian Party drama theater coverage to our sister publication Third Party Watch. We have already published there a series of additional articles on the Duque documents. Ownership of Third Party Watch has been transferred from the Outsider Media Foundation to the Libertarian Policy Institute, where it will have considerably greater freedom to do investigative reporting on third party misadventures. Independent Political Report will continue to give coverage of all third parties, political movements, and the like.
Caucuses are kind of dumb. Glad I’m independent .
Another unfortunate example of caucus wars. The director of the Classical Liberal Caucus (CLC), Jonathan Casey, appears to be the source for the Fakertarians file dump after an analysis of the “START HERE” introductory document showed a “jtcas” as the author. Mr. Casey admitted to being the source in the CLC Discord chat.
Dirty little secret:
NDAs are almost entirely impossible to enforce for political campaigns and organization for a variety of reasons. They exist entirely as an honor system and a scare tactic. Cry as they want, trying to sue over a violated NDA will only lead to more sunk cost. That being said, it will be hilarious if they do.
IANAL but I don’t think an NDA will protect the confidentiality of a conversation that breaks ether an election law or an employment law.
Quoth Ryan:
“Reading through everything I’ve probably been too critical on Angela McArdle”
Mea culpa as well. To a degree, and in specific instances, she seems to have been the adult in the (secret) room, attempting and failing to get the LNC to stop doing some bad things and to stop f*cking around with BS that doesn’t help fundraising, etc.
That said, the f*cking around and BS was kind of baked into, and an essential ingredient in, the whole Mises PAC takeover scheme. Even if they meant to discard it once in power, it’s like arsenic. Even if you stop taking it, the amount you already took stays in your system, continuing to do damage.
ThirdPartyWatch.com has now publish the entirety of the Angela Memorandum as a three-part series.
“This is a whole lot of nothing.”
If this were a real company, an employment lawyer would be filing a lawsuit on breach of confidentiality as it relates to employee conduct discussing HR issues with non-members. And it would get settled on good terms for the former employee quickly with the supervisor then either removed from his or her position or told to find another job. You want to complain to your spouse about your employees. Probably not to the letter of the policy but fine. Don’t put it in a public discussion forum like Discord with people you don’t know that anyone can read and screenshot. You’ll have a hard time defending that. Giant no-no as anyone that has taken 10 minutes of company training on that can yell you. The chat stuff is wrong but those were private 1-on-1 conversations not meant to be shared. The stuff written on Discord is pretty inexcusable in contrast.
Feel part of the problem is everyone using stuff like chats and Discord as their version of engagement. It just leads to all this high school passive aggressive bullshit. This all reads like a Board that suffers because they never talk to one another in person.
Oh look, they are meeting in person this coming weekend. That should be fun.
This is a whole lot of nothing. Duque shouldn’t have released private conversations. If his goal is to run for chair this doesn’t help.
Reading through everything I’ve probably been too critical on Angela McArdle, but that’s part of being leader. You take credit when times are good, you get blame when times are bad. Applies to our country’s presidents as well.
Like to leave the “this is fake” and “gotcha” stuff for a minute:
1.) Leadership of organizations are entitled to have private discussions.
2.) If you try to do everything in private discussions, you’re going to find lots of grumbling from the common folk in said organizations and they’re going to attempt to find out what is really going on.
3.) Misrepresenting what’s going on publicly versus what you say privately only lasts so long.
To what I read from McArdle’s statement, it’s not surprising that Dave Smith isn’t running for President. The discussion around him had died and I took it as likely when Josh Smith announced his candidacy. (With both him and Amash, it’s not surprising to me neither of them want to run for the 2024 nomination with the current state of the party.)
It seems from her complaints on committees a lot of people took the position but once they had it did nothing, either due to it was more work than they thought or because they had no interest in doing the work or did not want to be part of a team.
“Members have asked me what we are doing. We spend lots of time in executive session, dealing with lawsuits and personnel issues. I haven’t had the time to put together another rally or anything else to move the party forward politically because I’ve been consumed with personnel, administrative and legal tasks. The rally was a high point. We have fallen very low since then.”
I feel this speaks volumes. The personnel, administrative and legal tasks…that’s effectively the job right? The rally is something political candidates do while campaigning. How many rallies does Ronna McDaniel organize? Also, the “legal tasks” you elected to take those. You’re not the defendant in those lawsuits.
George – the Messes Cock-Up that runs the LNC has not buried Libertarian/conservative cooperation. Since the New Deal, libertarians have cooperated with limited government conservatives such as Robert Taft (self-described liberal) Barry Goldwater, Phil Crane and others.
The Messes group just wants to work with conservatives who are anti-liberty To pursue alliances with Trump Republicans the Messes group has dropped the pro-choice plank from the LP platform, even though pro-choice Republicans are more likely to listen to Libertarians than MAGA Trumpers are.
Many conservatives oppose Trump; many of those are becoming more libertarian on abortion and marijuana in the process. I see it with the Never Trumper Republicans who get time on CNN and MSNBC. Those are the conservatives we need to ally with, not supporters of the Russian stooge.
Ted,
This was done too quickly to be faked. It must have been government agents right… wink wink nudge nudge you know what I mean.
Anthony Dlugos writes us:
The good news/bad news situation here is this:
The Mises led current leadership is once and for all burying conservative-libertarian fusionism. I don’t think the Libertarians who have shed tears over the descent into madness have stopped to consider the service Mises and their alt-right cohorts have provided to us.
The bad news is that I don’t think I’ve yet seen the understanding of just how much of this enterprise has to be junked and re-imagined in order to prevent this from happening again.
Incompetency! Back stabbing! Bickering! Intra Party fighting! Corruption!
Mean tweets! Fake News! Lies! Aggressive behavior!
It certainly seems the LP is, at long last, ready to compete on a level playing field with the denizens in Washington and in the GOP and Democrat parties.
I did look. Documents can be faked. You have to consider where they came from. This group openly hates Mises. Did Duque work with them to produce these “documents”? What is their end game? Why are you making Duque out as a hero when he’s the problem?
Ted,
You haven’t even looked at the documents have you?
What a surprise, a group who hates Mises is sending “documents”. Not buying this at all.
If anyone is corrupt, it’s Duque in my opinion.