Will no one stand up to the corruption on the LNC?
Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on July 14th, 2009 by Sean Haugh
Below is an item I asked to be submitted for the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC). I tried to do this quietly and through normal channels, but sadly have been rebuffed. Following that will be some follow up correspondence on the matter and a long overdue correction of some of my past reporting, including an apology to Regional Representative Stewart Flood for implying he had behaved inappropriately.
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First, the original request itself:
This is a request from Sean Haugh to have an item placed on the agenda for the July meeting of the Libertarian National Committee in St. Louis.
In a memo to the LNC dated 4/21/2009, Treasurer Aaron Starr spun a very lengthy tall tale in an attempt to justify purging At-Large Representative Lee Wrights from the Committee. In that memo, Starr committed several acts which must be addressed directly by this Committee, in order to protect the integrity of the Party which Starr so blithely damaged.
If the Committee takes no action in this matter, it will be endorsing Starr’s actions, thus sending some very damaging messages to the membership, as well as exposing itself to legal liability. With one exception below, whatever specific action should be taken is up to the Committee. I only ask that some action be taken.
Issue 1: The Treasurer openly discussed the personal donor history of both myself and Lee Wrights in order to carry out internal party warfare.
Donor information should, in general, be considered private. There are exceptions, such as the legal demands of reporting to the FEC and thanking donors publicly for their recent donations. Beyond such examples, however, it has always been the policy of the LNC to keep such information private.
The reason why this is a sound policy should be readily apparent. If prospective donors knew that the LNC does not value their privacy and can not be counted upon to treat their financial records with discretion, they may well feel inhibited to make any future donations. If a member feels that their contribution may later be cited for a purpose other than the benefit of the party, they have an incentive to cease being a member.
Issue 2: The Treasurer instructed the [Acting] Executive Director to change my donor records in order to carry out internal party warfare.
Attached please find documentation that the [Acting] Executive Director [Robert Kraus], based upon transparently false information supplied by the Treasurer, determined that a perfectly legal contribution I had made was illegal, and issued a refund for said donation. When I refused to accept this “refund” check, it was counted as a donation made by me in April 2009, when I made no such donation. My requests to have my donor records corrected have been met with silence.
There are certain administrative functions that must be kept totally neutral, insulated from any internal disputes we may have. The willingness of the Treasurer and the [Acting] Executive Director to politicize these core administrative functions is a profound breach of ethics that cannot be tolerated. In the corporate world, our [Acting] Executive Director would have been fired immediately for such behavior.
My one specific demand is that my donation records be corrected so that they accurately reflect my donation history. Since the Treasurer and [Acting] Executive Director refuse to do so, I am appealing to the Committee as a whole to enact this correction.
Issue 3: The Treasurer deliberately lied to the Committee about FEC regulations, including deliberately misrepresenting the opinion of our professional consultant on this matter.
The notion that paying for someone else’s membership is a violation of FEC regulations is nothing but a transparent and absurd lie. I am stunned that anyone would claim to believe this for one moment. The situation the Treasurer described amounted to a simple internal bookkeeping error, with no FEC reporting implications whatsoever, which should have been corrected without controversy.
As proved when the Chair put the question to our consultant directly, her advice does not conform with how our Treasurer represented her advice to the Committee. By doing so, the Treasurer impugned the reputation of someone upon whom we rely for legal services.
If the Treasurer is willing to lie so blatantly to the Committee both about the law and the advice of our professional consultants, how can you possibly trust anything else he reports to the Committee?
Issue 4: The Treasurer, in his official capacity, indulged in slanderous speculation about my motives.
In his memo, the Treasurer speculated that I knowingly violated campaign finance law, and also that I knowingly attempted to influence LNC elections with my contributions. Considering current case law, to raise such slanderous notions and then dismiss them does not insulate him from legal liability. Writing as an officer of the Party, he thus exposed LNC, Inc. itself to this legal liability. I have not closed the door on the possibility that I may need to take legal action in this matter, and if I deem it necessary, LNC, Inc. would definitely be a defendant.
Your fiduciary responsibility to the membership demands that you take action to ensure that the Treasurer is disciplined for his behavior, and that these gross breaches of ethical behavior by an officer of the Party never happen again.
yours in liberty - Sean Haugh
[reference to attachments]
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First, a minor correction: After receiving legal advice, I understand that when I used the term “slander,” the more accurate term for Starr’s behavior is “libel per se.” In real English, if you make up malicious lies designed to impugn a person’s professional reputation, saying at the end something like, “but I don’t really believe this,” is absolutely no defense against a charge of libel. In fact, the charge becomes easier to prove because in case law, these statements are automatically presumed to be malicious.
It just now occurs to me that Starr also openly discussed the donation history of Ruth Bennett in that memo, for no other reason than to cite an example.
Here is a follow up email I sent to our Chair Bill Redpath, with a copy to Flood, under the subject line “an easy out”:
Bill, by now you have seen what I have submitted for the agenda for St. Louis. You can make this all go away of you simply make sure my donation records are restored to the truth. Don’t buy anyone’s bullshit that it can’t be done or that it has anything to do with FEC reporting. Don’t reply with anything other than *proof* that it has been taken care of. If you can do that, I will be happy to report in public comment at the beginning of the meeting that my concerns have been resolved to my satisfaction. How you deal with Aaron Starr and Robert Kraus is your problem, but feel free to inform Starr that including me in his actions detailed in his memo of 4/20 [sic] was the dumbest thing he ever did. I just pray that you realize by now that taking Starr’s advice has only caused you and the party great harm.
If you can’t or won’t do this, well, know that I don’t bluff. I am going to keep taking this to the next level until I get satisfaction on this one specific point. Stewart has counseled me, I believe wisely, to let it all go, and I believe that I can, except for this one nagging point of my own donation records being changed to a lie to carry out internal party warfare.
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Simple enough, right? Apparently when dealing with someone so intent upon acting with no moral integrity in this matter, no, nothing is that simple.
Several LNC members have forwarded to me parts of the conversation about setting the upcoming agenda. In reference to my request for this item to be heard, Redpath stated, “I don’t think what Donny Ferguson wrote was such that it should be an agenda item, it would be a personnel matter to be handled by the Chair and ED anyway…”
Here Redpath most disingenuously refers to a prior complaint of mine, regarding the content of some “Monday Messages” which come from our office. That complaint has been quietly resolved to my satisfaction. Ferguson was cautioned to no longer promote Republican candidates and office-holders in these messages, and he has not repeated the error.
Note that this statement came a few days after the correspondence quoted above. Redpath knows full well what my request for an agenda item was about.
Flood, in this same exchange, stated, “I later received several documents that Mr Haugh told me that he would be sending. While he included a list of charges and copies of the April 2008 check and the April 2009 refund letter that we have already received from Mr Kraus, he submitted no other evidence to support his extensive list of charges.”
Let me directly address him here: Stewart, the Starr memo of 4/21 is the “other evidence.” I did not include it because you are already in receipt of it. This again is very weakly disingenuous attempt to avoid the real issues.
Read the Starr memo yourself, and as you do, ask yourself these questions:
Is it acceptable for an officer of the party to publicly discuss the donation history of members in order to carry out internal party warfare?
Is it acceptable to change donor records to contain lies constructed to carry out this internal party warfare?
Is it acceptable for an officer of the party to lie to the committee about the law and the advice of our professional consultants?
Is it acceptable for an officer of the party to expose the LNC to legal liability by engaging in libelous behavior while writing in his official capacity?
Stewart, if you find all of these acts to be perfectly acceptable, by all means, continue to object to any discussion of them at your next meeting.
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Although I have just criticized Flood over this, I do owe him a correction and apology for an item of my own past reporting.
In my articles on the LNC budget passed in December, I highlighted the line item showing $5000 going to Ballot Base, a company owned by Flood, who happened to be the prosecutor for the witch trial of Angela Keaton at that same meeting.
Flood, Kraus, and Starr all gave me information showing that this $5000 is not going to Ballot Base and was never intended for that purpose.
Flood reiterated that the LNC’s relationship with Ballot Base ended shortly after the system failed in our attempt to allow Ron Paul supporters to use it to call New Hampshire voters. Flood stated that there has been no business relationship with the LNC since then-ED Shane Cory ended it in early 2007, and there were no intentions at that time to start a new one.
Since then, Flood did enter into a new business relationship to provide similar services to Libertarian candidates. My investigation of that revealed that no money has been paid to Flood or his company by the LNC for these services. In fact, Flood has conducted this business in an incredibly scrupulous, ethical and legal manner, involving some personal and professional sacrifice.
For this, Flood should be commended. Although I did not go so far as to commit “libel per se” as Starr so blithely has done, I apologize to him for anything I said which might have led someone to believe he was receiving a corrupt payoff from the LNC.
Kraus confirmed Flood’s account. He explained that this $5000 was intended for more general candidate support, such as buying voter registration lists for candidates or sponsoring candidates for Leadership Institute or similar training. Both Flood and Kraus denied the $5000 was listed on the Ballot Base line.
Starr confirmed that he had indeed listed the $5000 on the Ballot Base line, but claimed the purpose was as Kraus described, for more general candidate support. Starr said he just put it there because it was the closest existing budget line to that purpose. Looking at the budget document, this is correct. The only other line under “Campaign Candidate Support” is the equally obsolete Candidate Tracker program.
This means that instead of eliminating obsolete line items and replacing them with accurate ones, inaccurate descriptions are used to describe how the LNC intends to spend our members’ money.
While the explanations became detailed to the point of confusion, they ring true. There was never any payment intended by the LNC to Ballot Base or Flood for any reason.
What we have here instead is simply another example of the lies and incompetence of Starr, fitting his now well-established pattern of attempting to deflect blame for his sins and errors onto someone else.
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One final observation: I hate it that I am always so full of complaints about the unethical and incompetent behavior of LNC officers and staff. I would love nothing more than to let it all go so that we can all move on with our lives. However, as long as Starr and Redpath continue to invoke my name as they attempt to justify their misdeeds, I simply cannot allow that to stand.
Bill Redpath, prove to me that you have fixed my donation records and I will leave you to deal with the membership regarding the other aspects of the corruption of your administration.
Sean Haugh is assistant editor for Liberty For All. Sean is married to longtime Libertarian Pam Adams, and they have a family of three dogs and five cats. Besides them, Sean loves God, Liberty, and Oklahoma Sooners football. Write to Sean at seanhaugh@mindspring.com.
