LNC Sues Angela McArdle Continuing a Multi-Year Harassment Campaign

The LNC filed its petition on October 1 in Travis County. It pleads eight counts, demands a jury, and seeks between $250,000 and $1,000,000 plus punitive damages. The petition points to $32,465.38 paid from 2023-24. The SIC called $49,600 "the maximum damages the LNC could reasonably expect to win," and said a lawsuit would likely cost more than that. D&O insurance would not cover the LNC's costs as a plaintiff, and a judgment could never land. The committee left room for a donor-funded effort or pro bono counsel.

Twenty months later, the forced campaign continues.

20 months passed after McArdle resigned from the LNC after efforts to push her out when litigation was not even recommended in the first place. The claims were small, the potential damage to the party vast. Arguably, the party has been living a soap opera of its own making ever since. The Judicial Committee in considering the LNC's ridiculous actions declared:

"As Libertarian Party members, we are rather dismayed that the LNC has devoted untold hours of manpower and Party resources over a nine-month period in pursuit of tarnishing the reputation of a former Libertarian Party Chair, who resigned from office on January 25, 2025, two days after the effort began. While RONR confers no strict obligation to abandon disciplinary proceedings against an officer who resigns, it does advise that 'it is usually best for all concerned to offer him the opportunity to resign quietly . . . ,' as '[i]t is usually in the best interests of the organization first to make every effort to obtain a satisfactory solution of the matter quietly and informally.' It appears that, for whatever reason, the LNC has chosen to take the opposite tack."

The harassment campaign started in 2024 and hasn't let up since.

McArdle's attorney has also already warned of counterclaims for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The campaign began months before Freedom Calls surfaced. In early May 2024, weeks before the National Convention in Washington, LNC member Beth Vest sued McArdle and the LNC in D.C. Superior Court, asking the court to remove her and bar her from serving again. Former LNC Chair Nick Sarwark promoted the suit and raised money for it. Delegates re-elected McArdle at the convention anyway while the suit continued.

Five months later, LNC Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos filed a second derivative suit. The Kennedy Victory Fund, one of her grievances, now fills multiple paragraphs of the LNC's petition.

The "Allies" organized right after the election. LPAlliance says it formed in November 2024 and lists recruiting and endorsing slates of LNC candidates among its programs. Its administrator Amanda Griffiths is now LNC Vice Chair. Within weeks, Jake Porter began publishing on Swing Vote Strategist and Freedom Calls. His Freedom Calls story ran January 21, 2025, and McArdle resigned days later. She says she resigned after being told the matter would go away. Instead, Sarwark told every Libertarian on January 25 to email the LNC and demand an investigation into what he called embezzlement, fraud, and corruption. On February 2 the LNC formed the SIC. On June 9 it adopted the SIC's report and resolved that she was "unfit to serve." The Chair voided those resolutions on August 18 over notice defects, and the LNC replaced them on August 24 with a censure.

Sarwark stayed close to it. In August 2025 he urged LNC officers to take Vest's place as plaintiff, and Nekhaila replied that the resolution declaring McArdle unfit had already given Vest what her suit sought. Nekhaila has called Sarwark Vest's "front man," though not her lawyer. Vest disputes the assertion.

The court dismissed Vest's case on October 24, 2025, without reaching merits. Eleven months later, the LNC filed its own suit. That makes three lawsuits against McArdle in 29 months.

The piecemeal lawsuit that doesn't even have authorization.

The authorizations that followed came in small steps and named McArdle alone. In December 2025, Chair Steven Nekhaila mailed her a demand for just under $50,000, a figure in line with the SIC's math (Chair's report, Dec. 6, 2025). On March 16, 2026, the Executive Committee voted 4-2 to retain Bernabei & Kabat on a $10,000 retainer at $650 per hour, and the Chair ruled the vote out of order three days later for lack of budget authority. On April 19, the LNC voted to fund a $10,000 retainer for litigation against McArdle.

The board met on August 2 in executive session first, then subsequently raised the 2026 Legal-Proactive budget line by $80,000. An amendment directed $40,000 to existing New Mexico legal bills and mediation and earmarked $40,000 "for potential legal action against former Chair Angela McArdle." They passed together, 13-2-3. The minutes name no claims, no counsel, and no defendant other than McArdle, and record no donor funding or pro bono arrangement.

A week later, an August 9 Executive Committee agenda item asked the committee to "approve the draft complaint prepared by counsel and authorize the Chair to initiate civil litigation against the former Chair Angela McArdle."

The petition goes well beyond every one of the votes. It names Padgett in five of eight counts. Martin's written demand to the board, posted to the LNC public list on October 7, says no record shows a vote to add Padgett as a defendant, and none shows a vote engaging LeBlanc Firm PLLC, which signed the petition as lead counsel.

What is the LeBlanc Firm PLLC? It is a small Houston- and Austin-based Texas business law practice, and the solo attorney practice of Jared G. LeBlanc who has a history of representing both the Libertarian Party of Texas and the Democratic Party of Texas.

Martin's letter also says no record shows the two-thirds Executive Committee vote that Policy Manual § 1.06(2) requires for the suit as filed. That section further requires the Chair to tell all LNC members of the lawsuit, its purpose, and its estimated cost before filing. Martin claims directors asked for the draft complaint before filing and were refused. On October 6, Chair Evan McMahon said only the Executive Committee and the Litigation Committee had received it, and that they were notified according to the policy manual.

The Upside Down World of McArdle Haters

The petition says McArdle hid her relationship with Padgett, but its timeline says the board learned of it in August 2023, approved his contract retroactively on August 30, and extended it in November. The LNC still wants every cent of the $32,465.38 paid under that contract. The SIC found McArdle proposed Padgett by name as her domestic partner. The petition itself says the related-party rule was not adopted until October 1, 2023, after that contract.

The SIC's valuation only covers Freedom Calls. The report says no board member or staffer knew Padgett owned it, but they did know the vendor. However, this framing is easily debunked. Hannah Kennedy, who later became interim executive director, approved ten of the fourteen invoices. Outside accountants processed them, and the LNC's 2025 budget carried a $4,000 monthly line for Freedom Calls. Despite these traceable records, the petition still calls the award unilateral and says the LNC hired the company because of McArdle's silence.

The petition seeks the full $49,600 paid to Freedom Calls, while the SIC report's overpayment estimates run from $30,880 to $45,400. Those figures came from Adrian Malagon, then an LNC board member. The committee interviewed him as a witness, and Nekhaila later asked him to audit the Freedom Calls call data. Malagon had also helped organize the January 2025 demand that McArdle explain herself or resign, and he co-sponsored the ballot to investigate her. The SIC report named no outside valuation experts.

The LNC is asking for money they never had a claim to.

Two counts accuse McArdle of diverting fundraising that belonged to the LNC. The LNC is essentially making a claim over any of McArdle's private activities unrelated to her role as LNC chair. The petition points to $630,000 raised for Rescue the West and $91,077.93 sent to the Libertarian Unity PAC.

The report found McArdle disclosed the PAC as a possible conflict within a week of its FEC filing, before any money arrived. Of the $91,077.93, $81,970.14 went to an LNC-held account for the Kennedy campaign's allocation under the joint fundraising agreement. On Rescue the West, the report found no Party donor funds went to the rally. On Swing Vote Strategist, the Kennedy campaign's chief operating officer told the committee McArdle's work justified the $32,000 paid to the company. The report still faulted her for failing to disclose it and for misleading board members.

The petition's diversion claim rests on the assumption that the LNC could have collected the $630,000 itself. Martin's demand disputes that assumption. It says $500,000 of the money came from a single committee within one week, more than any one committee could lawfully give the LNC across all accounts in 2024, and that anything above $41,300 could only have funded restricted accounts. The SIC made no finding of a diverted opportunity.

The risk this poses to the National Party is substantial.

To put it plainly, McArdle is being punished for her success in advocating her political goals. The petition rests partly on McArdle's speech and political association, including the Rescue the Republic rally, an email to members, and her social media posts.

If a court dismisses those claims under the Texas Citizens Participation Act, it "shall award" the moving party its costs and reasonable attorney's fees (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.009(a)(1)). The act is the TX version of Anti-SLAPP. Anti-SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. These are lawsuits filed by powerful entities, such as corporations or government officials, with the primary intent of silencing critics or intimidating them into silence by burdening them with the high costs of legal defense, rather than seeking a legitimate legal victory. To counter this, Anti-SLAPP laws are state statutes designed to protect individuals exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech or petition.

These laws allow defendants to file a special motion to strike the case early in the litigation process, often before discovery begins. If the defendant shows the lawsuit targets protected speech on a matter of public concern, the plaintiff must then establish a prima facie case for each element of its claims by clear and specific evidence. If it cannot, the case is dismissed and the court must award the defendant its attorney's fees and costs. A defendant's motion is due within 60 days of service. If the court dismisses the speech-based claims, the LNC pays McArdle's legal fees on top of what it has already spent on the case.

Austin Martin sent his director objections to the latest petition.

Martin's demand says that once a defendant files a counterclaim, an LNC nonsuit no longer ends the case. Pleading more than $250,000, with Level 3 discovery, a jury, and counsel takes the case off the expedited track and places the bill extremely and unreasonably high.

Martin sent his written demand to the Chair, the Secretary, and every director on October 6. It invokes D.C. Code § 29-411.03, the prerequisite to a derivative suit on the LNC's behalf. The demand has no binding force on the board. It starts a 90-day clock that would end January 4, 2027, and Martin says waiting that long would cause the LNC irreparable injury.

It asks the board to freeze legal spending beyond what preserves the LNC's position, issue a litigation hold, and give every director the engagement letters, invoices, votes, and approved draft complaint. It asks for a full-board vote on a nonsuit by October 20, or at minimum dropping Padgett and the speech-based allegations in paragraphs 31 to 36. It also asks the board to investigate any director or officer who committed LNC funds beyond what was authorized, require each director who voted on the suit to state any conflict in writing, and terminate the contract of LNC counsel Oliver Hall.

The demand also takes aim at the SIC itself. It says Nekhaila chaired the committee that interviewed Padgett in 2023, then served on the SIC and listed no potential conflicts (SIC pp. 1, 11). It says Hall called that acceptable and describes Hall as similarly conflicted. Every LNC member who served on the SIC had already voted to approve the budget lines that included Freedom Calls, and LNC counsel knew the details of the LNC's legal issues through his role. The people investigating the program had already funded it and knew of it, which created a conflict.

Martin sends all of this from the middle of an open fight with most of his colleagues, one he says dates to his first whistleblower activity concerning McArdle. On September 30, a week before the demand, the board opened an email ballot to revoke his ability to trigger the public forwarder. Nekhaila, Kelly Nguyen, Olivia Hayse, and Keith Thompson co-sponsored it, and Martin says no one told him what conduct it punished. Voting closed on October 7, the day the demand reached the public list.

If the board rejects or ignores the demand, Martin reserves the right to seek a court-ordered inspection of records, file a derivative proceeding, and refer matters to the authorities. He notes that the same D.C. standard of conduct the petition invokes against McArdle applies to every director who authorized the suit.

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