The organization “Libertarian Party of New Hampshire”, recently disaffiliated from the national Libertarian Party by vote of the Libertarian National Committee, has used LNC Bylaws to appeal its disaffiliation. They present an actual appeal statement as well as Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C, Exhibit D, Exhibit E, Exhibit F, and Exhibit G.
Michael Seebeck, former Secretary of the Libertarian Party Judicial Committee, has already written an amicus rejecting the LPNH’s claims.
We will present our Editorial analysis of the appeal at a future date.
You are correct that counsel did a good job. It is night and day from the terrible job done by the first-year personal injury attorney who AI-wrote the last attempt to nullify the resolutions against McArdle. The LPNH attorney is an experienced litigator, you can tell. But he had to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. He is also a Republican lobbyist which doesn’t help LPNH”s appearance of being in bed with the Republicans. I also did not feel any great portion of it was written by AI which is refreshing. The Austin Martin AI slop is incoming. If that happens, I am not writing a reply, but having AI write a reply and clearly label it as such.
The LPNH’s attorney does a fine job of clutching at every available straw. It’s really an excellently-done appeal given the weak case which, however, has one interesting feature. The Appeal confesses that the charge against the LPNH is true.
The original motion to disaffiliate had one great weakness, namely there was no support at all presented for the second ground for an appeal, to wit, the contents of the LPNH X page.
However, as explained by Caryn Ann Harlos in her amicus, the disaffiliation motion is not required to list the fine details of the charges.
I would have preferred the details and do encourage the LNC to adopt a Policy Manual requiring it, but the Bylaws as written do not require it, and anticipate evidence being submitted for their review, not limited to a review of extant evidence. Which the LPNH would not want since they are relying so heavily on their post-disaffiliation “repudiation” for their defense. If the JC could only consider evidence explicitly presented at meeting (but since the LPNH had already been in mediatory talks with Nekhaila in the past, they are fully aware of the issues) then the LPNH has zero defense to the Trump endorsement. Procedure for the sake of procedure seems to be their argument, because no fundamental fairness was violated. They got aware with abysmal brand damage for far too long. Lest anyone yell “its about mean tweets, and you tweet mean things!” there is a large difference in an official brand account then a personal one. Kauffman’s terrible person account is only relevant to the extent that as he is the one behind the LPNH account it can be used to show what the meaning of the posts are. Brand accounts are an entirely different story. The Free State Project had a similar issue with him.