Commentary: Why did this bring down Angela McArdle and the Mises Caucus down so quickly?
We continue our coverage of how the LP got here. This article, dating February 2025, is from Jake Porter’s jakeporter.substack.com. Jake’s work is supported by subscribers to his substack
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.
I’d like to know who is behind the “Defend the Guard” effort?
It helps candidates get elected if they show some concern for the issues that the voters are concerned about. But over the years they hasn’t been a lot of concern over issues such as food, shelter, clothing, job, and urban transit.
There is an unwritten rule in sales that tells us if you cannot attract customer you won’t be in business long. And in my 45 years in the LP and for 8 years I looked for the LP prior to 1980 and in the years since then I have seen little or no concern for issues that effect the welfare of most of the voting public.
Nice admission of cointelpro-style tactics, and the animus to attack people rather than ideas.
That’s the ugly truth about the subversion of the LP right there.
Where exactly is the admission of COINTELPRO-style tactics? The people were attacked because their actions were corrupt, and their focus has been on gaining power rather than adhering to principles. The Mises Caucus raised these people up and supported their attempts at taking power while ignoring principles.
If the LP has been subverted, it’s been by the likes of Heise, McArdle, etc., who coddled and pandered to the authoritarian right embodied through MAGA and their culture war. Those are the ones you can blame for subversion, instead of the people who are actually reporting on and revealing the corruption.
Have you actually studied cointelpro tactics? I took an interest in that once, maybe 15 years ago.
The first thing they do is position themselves as ideological purists so that they cannot be attacked on those grounds. They do not ever try to persuade the group toward a more moderate position, which might actually increase popularity. Instead they, from a position of purity, try to fracture the group by exploiting dissension among less pure ideological factions. With groups or individuals who can’t be made into outcasts that way, they try to cause suspicion by accusing them of corruption or… of being cointelpro agents. In the mean time, they will do actual work which superficially is supposed to help the group, but which in actuality is ineffective.
The primary targets are the most effective leaders.
Who was the Libertarian Party’s most successful Presidential candidate? Gary Johnson. Who, within the party, was saying he wasn’t pure enough? Who keeps trying to get the party to focus on local elections rather than Presidential politics, which is our primary driver of growth?
Under which LNC Chair did the party have its best growth metrics? Nick Sarwark. Who is accusing Nick Sarwark of being not pure enough, or of being a fed himself?
The answer to both is McArdle, Heise, and the Mises Caucus. And they were successful enough to take control of the national party. What happened then? Donors dropped to their lowest levels since the 1980s partially because they eliminated things they found “wasteful”, like renewal letters. They stopped LP News. Essentially every experienced staff member was pushed to quit or was fired. They fought to keep our Presidential candidate off the ballot. They worked to funnel money to Donald Trump. They sold our national headquarters. They even stopped promoting LP candidates on lp.org for a long time.
In just a couple of years the party was effectively dismantled. They could not have been more successful if they tried. Surely they weren’t actually trying to dismantle the party.
Who was elected president during Gary Johnson’s most successful candidacy? Donald Trump. When was the Mises Caucus formed? During Trump’s presidency. To which major party candidate did McArdle work to funnel money? Donald Trump. Which major party candidate got to speak at our national convention? Donald Trump. Which candidate did Heise, McArdle, and the rest of the Mises Caucus functional or actually endorse? Donald Trump.
It’s almost like people within Team Trump had the complete dismantling of the LP in mind back in 2017 in order to make certain that nothing like 2016 ever happened, again. That’s nonsense, of course. That would make every rank and file Mises Caucus member just a useful idiot.
If any future LNC or LNC chair wants to get the train back on the tracks, so to speak, it’s imperative they go after McArdle first and foremost.
Otherwise, it’s over.