Amid Scandal McArdle Resigns, Mises Caucus Collapses

Within 2 weeks of scandal breaking the national party changes direction in public repudiation of McArdle's chosen replacement, the founder of the Mises Caucus

Within two weeks of releasing my bombshell Substack, detailing the Libertarian Party Chair covered up continuing to pay her domestic partner $4,000 per month through a hidden Delaware LLC after the board ended his contract, the party has changed course by electing a new chair and denying her chosen replacement the position.

Angela McArdle. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

On January 23rd, two days after releasing the Substack, the Libertarian National Committee launched a vote to decide if they would begin an investigation of McArdle.

Travis L. Bost: I move that this Board adopt the following resolution:

Resolved, that a committee comprised of Meredith Hays, Paul Darr, Bill Redpath, Andrew Chadderdon, and Steven Nekhaila be appointed by the Libertarian National Committee to investigate allegations of misconduct by our Chair, Angela McArdle, which, if true, cast doubt on her fitness to continue in office, and that the Committee be instructed, if it concludes that the allegations are well-founded, to report resolutions covering its recommendations.”

The co-sponsors were
Keith Thompson, on behalf of Paul Darr.
Adrian Malagon, on behalf of Meredith Hays.
Adam Haman
Travis Bost

On January 25th, less the four full days after the Substack was released, Chair McArdle announced her resignation shortly after midnight as the board was voting overwhelmingly to launch the investigation.

McArdle attempted to pick her replacement, founder of the Mises Caucus, Michael Heise. Heise, a paid Libertarian Party contractor hired by McArdle, was responsible for the takeover of the Libertarian Party in 2022 which led to McArdle being elected Chair.

Despite an aggressive email campaign from the Mises Caucus and state Chair’s forcing national committee representatives to resign, the majority Mises Caucus endorsed Libertarian National Committee abandoned the caucus founder and elected At-Large Representative Steven Nekhaila as Chair in a 9-6 vote this past Sunday.

Heise was grilled by LNC members for his endorsement of Donald Trump and his claims that he would not release the names of private donors who would pay him to become Chair.

There appears to have been an agreement between non-Mises caucus endorsed members and the Mises Caucus endorsed members who wanted to change direction from Heise and McArdle to move Mises endorsed Nekhaila to Chair, non-Mises Region 3 Representative Paul Darr to Vice Chair and former McArdle ally Regional Alternate Adrian Malagon to At-Large Representative.

The vote on Malagon is still ongoing. He is extremely controversial considering his past behavior on the board includes commentary on the weight and physical appearances of fellow board members.

McArdle has not taken the news from the past couple of weeks well as was reported by Brian Doherty at Reason Magazine.

In response to written questions from Reason about Porter's accusations regarding LNC payments to Freedom Calls, McArdle wrote: "The LNC is reacting as best they can in the face of constant attacks by unstable litigants like Caryn Ann Harlos, and my cyber stalkers Todd Hagopian and Jake Porter. I have retained an attorney to deal with the aggressive cyberstalking by these men. I will be working with new appointees in the Trump administration to find out if the FBI and State Dept have been involved in the attacks on the LP and me. There are lots of unclassified documents on Reason Magazine and yourself, Brian Dougherty [sic], in the State Dept archives. We know the feds have a strong interest in disrupting the Libertarian movement, especially at a moment like now when we have freed Ross Ulbricht - the biggest political victory the LP has ever achieved."

Commentary: Why did this bring down Angela McArdle and the Mises Caucus down so quickly?

I’ve released a series of investigative reports showing former Chair McArdle withheld information from the board about meeting with Trump at Mar a Lago, received over $700,000 in payments from Robert Kennedy supporting PACs, and that her domestic partner was being paid secretly through a hidden Delaware LLC through the party’s controversial and legally questionable joint fundraising committee.

Each of these stories were big. This story was different though. It didn’t involve Kennedy money, which while showing a major conflict of interest, was able to be brushed aside by the committee as not harming the party. I have been told these previous articles were “nothingburgers”. I disagree and believe that these stories should have caught the committee’s attention.

That said, this story involved misleading the LNC, potentially causing them to violate their fiduciary duty, and opened them up to member criticism regarding declining membership and fundraising. It brought potential legal issues up for the committee as well.

Obviously, the board was not doing its due diligence. Part of the reason was there was a culture where board members were ridiculed for asking questions of the chair. Additionally, the Chair took on the role of Executive Director, which allowed her to authorize the contract with no oversight.

In this case, the board was confronted with something they couldn’t cover their eyes to any longer. They turned on McArdle because they had to. The LNC had to break from the Mises Caucus completely to restore credibility and to save the party.

There are also some inner conflicts that I am sure existed where at least one member of the board may not have been a fan of Heise or McArdle and didn’t want to defend her when the report came out.

It was leaked to me by several sources that the Mises Caucus was telling their leaders that they had to support Heise as part of a plan to bring in “Kennedy Libertarians” as members and donors. I was also told by a state chair that they were planning to keep a joint fundraising committee ongoing with Kennedy. I should note, Heise was paid by a Kennedy PAC last year while working for the Libertarian Party.

There are two derivative lawsuits that are headed either in discovery or about to be in discovery although it is unclear how these recent changes impact that. It is likely this information would have eventually been discovered if the suits weren’t eventually tossed. The legal system is slow though and this information could have taken most of 2025 to be discovered if it ever was.

Remember Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. One of them is:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”

Attempts to overtake the Mises Caucus were scattered or were focused on out-organizing the Mises Caucus. They targeted a variety of people such as Michael Rectenwald, Dave Smith, Michael Heise, Angela McArdle, Tom Woods, etc. This report didn’t mention the LNC or Mises, etc. as no one other than McArdle was responsible. Sure, the cult atmosphere created by the Mises Caucus allowed this to happen, but McArdle is responsible here. It also didn’t require anyone to whip votes from delegates, which takes a ton of time and doesn’t always work.

Years ago, I was in a political training class and the discussion was “How do you defeat the Soviet Union in the battlefield”. The answer was you go after the leadership and without it they won’t be able to adjust.

The Mises Caucus is very top down controlled just like the Soviet Union was. Their messaging, strategy, and tactics are almost entirely centrally planned. McArdle was the de facto head of the Mises Caucus. When she and Heise lost control of their own hand-picked LNC, they lost control.

Heise overplayed his hand when he ran for Chair without first having the votes. They barely won the LNC at the last national convention and lost the Presidential nomination. With their support divided, it is likely they cannot rebuild and remain a collapsed caucus.

Where do we go from here

It is my hope that the current LNC majority alliance continues to work together to restore strong party operations and that the delegates return the party to strong principled messaging going forward. We aren’t the party of Bill Weld nor the party of RFK Jr. and Donald Trump.

We won’t keep things going in a positive direction if we play the “I told you so” game and I will not engage in it. This is a time of healing and working with people we don’t necessarily want to. The board took my reporting seriously and did the right thing and for that they should be commended.

In 2026, we can pick a new LNC and hopefully repair the damage caused. Until then, it is a divided LNC that hopefully sticks together to do some good and investigates party bank accounts, contracts, and the joint fundraising agreement.