JC Chair Writes 27 Pages to Say "Trust Me Bro"

Ken Moellman's defense of how the Judicial Committee filled its seats spans over 27 pages only to contradict itself.

On August 17, the Libertarian Judicial Committee voted 7 to 0 to uphold the disaffiliation of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. LNC News covered the floor strategy behind their disaffiliation in "Plotting and Rigging of New Hampshire's Disaffiliation". In the process of their appeal, LPNH raised an important question as to whether the seven people voting on the JC were properly seated to begin with.

Avens O'Brien and Ken Moellman won their seats at the May 2026 convention. Pat Dixon, Mary Gingell, David Neale, Alan Goldstein, and Chuck Moulton were appointed afterward by O'Brien and Moellman through an email ballot.

Four days after the LPNH ruling, Moellman published a 27 page document defending the appointments titled "Procedure for Populating the Judicial Committee under Libertarian Party Bylaws". Measured against the LNC Bylaws and against Moellman's account of the convention floor, the document raises more questions than it answers.

Moellman told the LNC list this document was coming and said upfront it would not be a ruling, since a committee cannot decide whether it is legitimate. He repeats that line more than once inside the document. Near the end, in section 9.5, he writes that a legal analysis he published back in July is superseded by this one and "should not be relied upon" (p. 25). He tells readers repeatedly that no single person gets to rule on this question. Then he rules out his earlier conclusion and asks readers to accept the new one in its place.

What he delivered spends fifteen of twenty seven pages weighing the objection to the appointments and lands on the conclusion that no violation of Article 8, Section 1 occurred (p. 19).

Weak foundations.

Moellman's central claim is that quorum does not apply to the email ballot that seated five of the seven current members, because quorum governs meetings and an email vote is not a meeting (p. 17). Nothing in the bylaws draws that line. Article 8 sets quorum as a condition on the committee. Article 13 only changes how a vote gets cast. It says nothing about how many members have to take part in that vote. Taken to its logical end, it's absurd. His interpretation would let one committee member fill six vacant seats alone with zero oversight. With this argument, Moellman is also attempting to settle the exact question that he says no individual gets to settle.

The other angle he draws out is 2016, when three remaining Judicial Committee members declared by email that they had the authority to fill vacancies despite sitting below quorum (p. 9). No convention and no outside body ever confirmed they were right. They simply said so, about themselves, on the same kind of question Moellman says they have no jurisdiction to decide (p. 1). He cites a past committee's opinion of its legitimacy to defend his committee's legitimacy, while saying only the convention can decide on legitimacy.

The real question of legitimacy goes back to the convention floor, where delegates never got a clean shot at filling the seats themselves in convention. Ciesielski's appeal of the chair's ruling was never put to a vote, and Bracco's follow up was called dilatory (p. 3). By the time Starr and Purcell got motions to the floor to suspend the rules for a second ballot, both needed two thirds instead of a simple majority. Both failed. Moellman assumes this means the delegates chose appointment over election.

Identifiable patterns.

LNC News has already documented how the floor vote on New Hampshire's disaffiliation was managed before it ever reached a vote. The same habit runs through this document.

Section 9.5 explains that his July analysis was written in general terms, before he went back through the party's records. The July analysis was quite different from his stance today. It called the question genuinely contestable and closed with proposed amendments for a future convention to adopt, because the bylaws as written left room for either answer. The August document drops all of that. It argues the answer was already settled, using an email ballot argument.

That is the clearest example of the pattern running through his piece. Moellman states more than once that this is not a ruling, and that a committee cannot decide whether it is legitimate. Then he does the same thing to his prior conclusion, on his sole authority, near the end of the document.

The 285 to 192 vote follows the same shape. Moellman uses the 285 to 192 vote tally to argue the convention would have reached the same result even with a full second ballot on the table (p. 5). He adds that the same number says nothing about how those delegates felt about seating more members. "The ruling did not deprive the convention of a result it would otherwise have reached... The convention body deliberately chose to leave the seats unfilled in convention and left the seats to be filled under the vacancy clause in Article 8, Section 1." (p. 6) He uses two different measuring sticks as if they're the same, but one requires a ⅔ vote and the other a majority.

The same habit shows up where he argues that a legal reading carries more weight when the person offering it has nothing riding on the result, and less weight when something does (p. 24).

No official answer.

No convention has revisited the seating question since May. The next one with any power to elect the Judicial Committee is roughly four years away. The August 17 ruling on New Hampshire also didn't touch on it. Moellman said so himself, telling reporters the ruling was not a decision on the committee's legitimacy and that only the convention that appointed the committee can make that call.

The National Committee's move to add all seven members to its distribution list does not settle it either. That action records only that the National Committee treats the group as constituted. It does not create or cure the validity of the appointments, a point Moellman's July analysis made before he made his "superceding" argument.

That leaves Moellman's writing as the only extended account of this question anywhere. No convention has weighed in. No court has looked at it. The Judicial Committee's ruling on New Hampshire did not touch it. The only account on record belongs to one member of that committee who is, in effect, telling readers "Trust me bro (on my latest conclusions, not the previous ones)".

The National Bylaws tie Judicial Committee terms to the next regular non presidential convention, which puts these seats out of reach until 2030. If Moellman's reading holds, the appointments made by two people in May cannot be revisited by any convention before then. Until that convention meets, the only ruling anyone has actually gotten on this question is one where Moellman is ruling on himself. The written decisions from the JC on their unanimous decision to disaffiliate LPNH will be published no later than September 11, 2026.

LNC News covers the governance and internal affairs of the Libertarian National Committee. Submissions can be sent to: LNCnews.submissions@gmail.com.