Todd Hagopian, former Treasurer of the Libertarian National Committee, has call for the removal of Angela McArdle as National Chair.
Writing on X.com, and referring to the recent revelations about payments to a firm organized as an LLC by the National Chair’s boyfriend, Hagopian said
Profit/Minute Guy @ToddHagopian
I am calling on the LNC to remove the Chair. This behavior is unethical, self-dealing, anti-transparent behavior that violates both the Duty of Care and the Duty of Loyalty aspects of Fiduciary Duty. This opens her up to personal liability, and opens the LNC up to FEC challenges.
Does it expose her to prosecution?
Yes
She’s a crook.
And she managed to stack the LNC with people who are either fellow crooks or unwilling to take on crooks.
The LNC is unlikely to remove her unless she faces criminal indictment — if even then.
But perhaps a civil court in one of the derivative lawsuits could order her removal.
This is the same treasurer who oversees all payments from the LNC. I think he’s protesting too much.
The treasurer reports the revenue and expenses. The executive director spends the money within the budget. The Chair had named herself executive director at the time. She cut checks to a fundraising organization: she did not disclose the conflict of interest or self-dealing.
Why didn’t Todd speak up when he could have done something about Angela’s grifting; when he was an LNC officer and after Angela hired her live in lover and baby daddy to do consulting without asking, or even telling, the rest of the LNC…..transferring thousands of dollars of membership dues into her own pocket?
That in itself was highly inappropriate, unethical and a conflict of interest ….most boards would have done something.
LNC did nothing.
The way Angela is running LNC is cartoon like. Her unethical behavior just keeps getting worse and worse. But her bank account keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Too late Todd. Weak to speak out now.
Angela will milk every last dollar out of LP and then leave for a job in the Trump Administration.
Tod did speak up about Angela hiring her boyfriend when he was treasurer.
I spoke out against, and voted against, Angela’s domestic partner’s employment contract. Get your facts straight.
Publicly or in executive session?
Don’t remember what I said when, but I publicly voted no for sure
I am public. Todd said it on the public email list as well as on twitter
I was referring to speaking out during one of the LNC meetings over Zoom. Mark did. I don’t recall Todd speaking out or backing up Mark.
But whatever…I’m sure Todd’s email on the business list was very powerful.
And Todd did vote no.
So there is that.
I am glad Angela is gone based on her actions. Here is what I said during the Padgett vote:
“Folks, can we please just have a vote without denigrating our chair, other LNC members, or Libertarians out in the wild?
Yes, or no, that is our job. Give an explanation if you feel like it, but don’t attack someone else. This is a really simple task. To that end, I will now give a lengthy explanation of my “no” vote.
Let me be clear. I had a great discussion with Mr. Padgett last week. I think he is doing all of the things a fundraising contractor should do. He has helped us do wealth screening, manually, while we wait for our automated solution to be ready. He has made calls, sent emails, secured at least one maximum donation. The results have been that the past two months (September and October) have been our highest two months of the year.
Since the “no” vote has been taken over by reasoning I disagree with, I have decided to give mine here:
> This was approved as a short term contract only
> Was never any mention of extension possibility
> I expect a fundraiser to return 4:1 or more
> While the results are good, they are not great
> Membership response to the situation has been overwhelmingly negative
If the results are good, why hasn’t my vote changed? Without the max donation, we are still at about $100K/month (less than last year), which is better than $75K, but is below where we should be steady state. (Budget had us averaging nearly $150K/month). He should get credit for the max donation, I am just wondering aloud how much above that is driven specifically by him or should have been brought in anyway, and how much of that growth is sustainable. Will it be enough to pay for the contract extension at a 4:1 rate. You know, the only financial questions (which nobody has asked) that really matter when making a decision like this
In the past three months, we have spent money on wealth screening software, a new operations director, a new tech employee, we fired back up direct mail, we did a ballot access push, we started selling convention tickets, etc. While some of those things are not working yet, I am struggling to directly tie a 4:1 return to the current contract, without taking into account the other investments we have made. Plus, the staff should be able to do a lot more themselves going forward with the wealth screening tool, new operations director and new IT employee.
Finally, when we made this contractor decision, this was to give fundraising a shot in the arm. It was not explained that we would need a full-time employee afterward. That’s okay if things change, but then we should reevaluate the situation, I just want to remind everyone that this is an incremental ask that was not assumed to happen, so we should not just rubber stamp it, it’s not like we all agreed that we would be having this vote at that time.
If we want a full-time fundraiser, we should make sure it is in the budget, design a job description, post a job, interview candidates and make a hire. Not one of you has asked if this is in the budget, despite the fact that we have budget amendments on the agenda of the upcoming meeting. Angela asked me, so I had left the money in my proposed amendments because I figured the vote might go this way, but I am just making a point that it should have been a consideration in every vote on this thread.
That is an alternative solution. We don’t have to bring you an alternative candidate, because that is not how this should work, anyway. We need to start hiring people after a thorough interview process. That is best practice in the profit, and non-profit, world.
Thank you.”