Silenced Before a Verdict: The LNC’s Campaign Against Region 1

A Vote on a Report the Board Has Not Seen

LNC Chair Evan McMahon called a special meeting for Friday, October 16 at 7:30 pm ET. The board will discuss the report of the Special Investigatory Committee (SIC) on Region 1 Representative Austin Martin and adopt “any motions appertaining to its findings and recommendations.” The report is not due until October 15, and the Chair’s notice says it will reach the board 24 hours before the vote.

The LNC Policy Manual sets longer minimums. Section 1.11(1) requires that all reports reach the LNC at least five days before a session. Section 1.02(7)(5) requires at least five days’ notice for an electronic meeting of a committee with ten or more members. The notice names no physical location. Friday’s schedule cannot meet the first rule, and the call for the meeting fell 54 minutes short of the second. The list copy of McMahon’s call is stamped 12:24 am UTC on October 12, which is 8:24 pm ET on October 11. Five days before the 7:30 pm ET start is 7:30 pm ET on October 11.

Martin says he has been removed from every LNC list. McMahon’s notice went to Entire LNC, LNC Public and the forwarder.

The meeting follows a year of measures against Martin, an elected regional representative. The board restricted his communications after its own Chair ruled an earlier, broader version out of order.

Two Ballots Aimed at Martin’s Email Access

On September 12, the day the Libertarian Party of Hawaii held its special convention, Secretary Jonathan McGee opened an email ballot on a motion by At-Large Representative Steven Nekhaila to suspend Martin’s access to his austin.martin@lp.org account for fifteen days. The motion named no conduct. Martin raised a point of order arguing it was a disciplinary suspension without a trial, and McMahon ruled it out of order on September 14, after.

Sixteen days after that ruling, McGee opened email ballot 20260930-01. It moved to revoke Martin’s ability to trigger the public forwarder and to have the Secretary forward “all relevant business” for him. Nekhaila, Kelly Nguyen, Olivia Hayse and Keith Thompson co-sponsored it. The motion set no end date and also named no specific conduct. Region 1 Alternate Sonja Feintech objected on the thread that no ballot existed while a Region 1 objection was pending. McMahon ruled her out of order. Martin asked what offense he was being punished for. McMahon told him twice that vote threads were reserved for votes, and directed him to stop. The ballot passed 12-2, with four not voting. Flores and Robson voted no. On October 8, McMahon told staff to disable the forwarder “from now until 1pm ET October 15th, 2026,” the same day the SIC report is due.

Removed from Every List

Martin says he learned on October 10 that he had been secretly removed from the LNC Confidential list. He says he has also been dropped from the business list, LNC Public and Entire LNC, while his lp.org address still works. He says he now receives board mail only when a colleague copies him, including discussion of his own SIC and affiliate.

Martin says he learned of the October 16 meeting about himself through other people talking about it online. Section 1.02(7)(6) of the Policy Manual directs the Chair or Secretary to send the meeting notice to each member and alternate of the committee. If Martin’s account is right, that is a third problem with the notice.

An Investigation with no Public Charges

McMahon noticed the SIC motion on September 7, three days after Martin moved a Freemasonry disclosure resolution. Martin says the SIC was planned well before that resolution and regards it as retaliation for exposing misconduct inside the LNC. The board adopted the motion on September 13. It directs the committee to review written complaints about Martin’s behavior as Region 1 Representative under the Policy Manual. That is the only public description of the inquiry. The public has not seen the complaints, the names of the complainants or the Policy Manual provisions at issue.

The board elected the committee by online approval ballot, and McGee reported the results on September 26. The LNC members chosen were McGee, Michelle Wigington and Griffiths. The non-LNC members were Michael Chianese and Doug Craig.

McGee administered and reported the election while standing as a candidate in it, and he voted for himself. He received 15 approvals, the most of any LNC nominee. He is also the officer who now forwards Martin’s business under the forwarder motion. Griffiths voted for that restriction while serving as one of Martin’s investigators.

Reported by Martin

Most of the major steps against Martin came after each report he made about misconduct inside the LNC, often within days. His reporting has run along two lines. One concerns how LNC officers and counsel handled the McArdle matter. The other concerns the LP Alliance, its ties to the International Alliance of Libertarian Parties (IALP) and Atlas Network-linked organizations, and the breach of the party’s membership data. The record is in “Austin Martin’s Last Post on the LNC List?”, drawn from Martin’s October 8 public chronology.

He called the 2025 McArdle investigation fraud, and Chair Nekhaila accused him of breaching ethics and fiduciary duty. He filed an ethics complaint against Treasurer Bill Redpath over undisclosed conflicts, and LNC counsel Oliver Hall withdrew a pro bono offer on the New Mexico matter, alleging Martin’s bad faith with no evidence, explicitly because Martin raised ethical objections. In March 2025, the board censured Martin and Chadderdon for a recorded whistleblower call in which Redpath acknowledged those conflicts, calling it a breach of Executive Session. Martin says no recorded vote placed that call into executive session, and the record agrees with him.

The restrictions escalated over time. Then-chair Nekhaila barred Martin from contacting counsel outside formal business, then cut off his LNC email in 2025, and the board censured him twice. Region 1 has also been shut out of litigation oversight, first on the New Mexico matter and then on the McArdle suit.

The Appeal

On October 11, Martin sent the Judicial Committee a notice of appeal under Bylaws Article 7, Sections 5 and 8, copying McMahon and McGee. The notice appeals the suspension of his rights as a member of the LNC. His argument has two parts. First, the LNC has no power to suspend the membership rights of a regional representative, in whole or in part, when acting outside a meeting. Second, because the LNC has claimed that power anyway, the individual appeal in Section 5 should apply to him.

Article 7, Section 8 says a regional representative may be removed and replaced only by the affiliate parties in the region. The suspension provisions in Article 6, Section 7 and Article 7, Section 5 name officers and At-Large members. The appeal reached the full board only through Feintech, who forwarded it to Entire LNC and the public list.

One Day to Read, One Night to Decide

On Friday the board will act on a report 24 hours after receiving it. The Policy Manual sets five days. The LNC considers this met because the notice said a report will be delivered – while keeping the contents secret. The report addresses unspecified “complaints” the public has not seen, about a representative who has been removed from all LNC lists.

The board has done the same rushed job before. In 2025, the LNC adopted an investigatory committee’s report on former Chair Angela McArdle at a special meeting, and it later voided the resulting resolutions over notice defects. Martin dissented from that report.

We will be tuning in on October 16, so keep an eye out for updates on this story.

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