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Leaders of the centrist group No Labels abandoned a planned third-party presidential bid in April after a successful campaign by Democratic allies of President Joe Biden damaged their public appeal and undermined their ability to recruit electable candidates. Now leaders of No Labels are fighting back in three federal courtrooms with a sprawling legal-discovery effort aimed at exposing the secret machinations they believe led to their project’s demise. Leaders of the moderate Democratic group Third Way and of Investing in US, a political operation funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, are fighting to limit the document production. But documents already unsealed by the courts reveal remarkable details about private proposals for a wide range of hard-nosed tactics that would go beyond public efforts like ads, op-eds and meetings to discourage the No Labels campaign. The documents include emails exchanged between various Democratic strategists involved with efforts to oppose No Labels. “Our main focus should be brand destruction but, where possible, we also need to throw up any and all roadblocks to stop them from being successful at signature-gathering,” Lucy Caldwell, one of the anti-No Labels strategists, wrote in a document uncovered during the legal battle. A separate “Direct Action Campaign” proposal, which was never fully adopted, called for the personal harassment of No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson and her husband, Mark Penn, a former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton. The proposal to “socially stigmatize” Jacobson and Penn, according to documents revealed in court, included plans to hire clowns “to hangout on their block” in the Georgetown area of D.C., post fliers in the neighborhood attacking the couple, send a “truck carrying musical performers” to wake them up at 6 a.m., and fly banner planes over Harvard University’s graduation attacking Penn, who does a poll for the university as chair of the Harris Poll and CEO of the marketing company Stagwell. Penn did not play a role in the No Labels presidential bid, according to the group. The proposal, which was emailed May 3, 2023, names Melissa Byrne, a former organizer for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, as the proposed leader of the effort, and suggests using a mobile billboard to “shame” the couple around the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Five days earlier, Byrne had taken a mobile billboard to a Georgetown brunch in honor of the White House Correspondents’ Association to attack both Jacobson and Penn as allies of Donald Trump. “There is no place for MAGA hate in Georgetown,” the billboard declared over photos of Trump and the No Labels leaders. Byrne declined to comment for this story. No Labels leaders asked the Justice Department in January to investigate the broader effort to discourage their presidential bid as an “unlawful conspiracy” meant to deny voters choice at the ballot box. The Justice Department has not responded to the request. “These operatives had the gall to say they were fighting to protect our democracy. In reality, they undermined it at every turn with frivolous lawsuits, character assassination, and outright lies designed to prevent No Labels from exercising our constitutional right to get ballot access,” Dan Webb, a No Labels volunteer legal adviser, said in a statement. “If you are wondering why Americans are losing faith in our democracy and so many of our country’s self-anointed elites, this is Exhibit A.” The current legal discovery has been made possible by a federal civil trial in Delaware about an effort by some anti-No Labels activists to buy a NoLabels.com domain with funds from a nonprofit that does not disclose donors. The buyers then produced a website meant to appear as if it was the landing page for the organization that contained information suggesting support for Trump and his allies. U.S. District Judge Gregory B. Williams issued a temporary restraining order over the trademark violation that forced the website’s removal and authorized further legal discovery to “ascertain the identity of all individuals and organizations involved in the Infringing website and Infringing Domain,” and to determine the full scope of the infringement. Caldwell’s 2023 emails, which have been produced in court by No Labels’ attorneys, revealed communications with other Democratic activists and operatives who were involved in the public effort to stop the No Labels presidential bid because they believed it would threaten Biden’s chances of reelection. Among the targets of discovery who have tried to quash the No Labels subpoena in court in Washington is Jonathan Cowan, the founder of Third Way, who was once such close friends with Jacobson and Penn that he participated in their wedding ceremony, and Dmitri Mehlhorn, a former top strategist for Investing in US who worked with Jacobson during the 2000s and 2010s. Third Way employees Cowan, Matthew Bennett and Emily Cain have denied in court filings that they or anyone at Third Way had involvement in NoLabels.com or the trademark infringement. They have all argued that the No Labels subpoenas infringe on their First Amendment rights to political activity. A Third Way spokesman declined to comment. Mehlhorn forwarded to Caldwell the proposal for the Byrne-led social stigmatization plan, according to an email produced in court in San Francisco, where No Labels is fighting for documents from Rae Steward, a managing partner of Investing in US. The stigmatization plan had been forwarded to Mehlhorn from the personal email account of Todd Schulte, another Democratic strategist. It mentioned the public relations consultant Meredith Shiner as a potential communications adviser. Shiner said last week that she had one conversation with Schulte about the possibility of joining an anti-No Labels effort, but that there was no follow-up and she never did any work. Schulte and a spokesperson for Investing in US declined to comment. Caldwell, who worked with the organizers of the NoLabels.com effort and has worked recently with Mehlhorn at his new group, Oakland Corps, also declined to comment. In court filings, Steward and Mehlhorn said they “categorically” reject “any allegation, however veiled and circuitous, of contributory infringement” in the original Delaware website case. “As a venture investor I received thousands of proposals for political work. I forward them to my advisers for initial review,” Mehlhorn said in a statement about the social stigmatization memo. “If No Labels thinks that means I endorse those proposals, they are even dumber than I thought which is saying something.” Days after the “social stigmatization” memo was sent, Caldwell offered her own proposal to Mehlhorn about how to “neutralize the No Labels unity ticket.” She recommended against immediate “in your face” tactics like protesting outside Jacobson and Penn’s home. “Think of those tactics as flame retardant/super-scooper planes - that is, the last resort for when the fire is burning out of control and we have exhausted the options of our earlier phase,” she wrote. Instead she proposed a convening of stakeholders in coordination with Third Way. Such a meeting occurred in June at Third Way’s offices, with several former U.S. senators, anti-Trump Republican activists, advisers to the Biden-Harris campaign and former White House chief of staff Ron Klain in attendance. Caldwell also proposed finding “a disaffected No Labels” staffer to leak internal information, and targeting an ad strategy to make ballot-access efforts more difficult in states where signature gathering was taking place. She suggested using “allies connected in media/etc.” to try to obtain a complete set of No Labels polling; placing op-eds against No Labels; and organizing both moderate politicians and regular voters to reject the effort. “What does it take to revoke ballot access in places where they have gotten it already, outside of court challenges around signatures, technicalities? Probably not worth it, but interesting to consider?” Caldwell wrote. “In the future (early next year), consider other tactics that could make brand toxic substance, like hijacking their ballot line and pushing extremist candidates to muddy the NL brand.” A June 2023 email after the Third Way office meeting from Pat Dennis, president of the Democratic opposition research firm American Bridge 21st Century, offered help in placing stories about alleged misuse of donor funds by No Labels, along with assistance in legal complaints and in finding “firsthand sources” within No Labels and encouraging them to leak to reporters. “The goal is to poison the well for No Labels with their key stakeholders and destabilize their efforts internally and in the minds of the public,” Dennis wrote in his email to Caldwell. “Spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about their operation, and within their operation.” A December 2023 email sent from Third Way strategist Cain to Caldwell proposed working together on opposition research about No Labels; legal challenges to the group; and a pressure campaign to deter potential candidates from joining the ticket. No Labels abandoned its presidential effort only after potential candidates, including former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R), former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan (R) and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-West Virginia), declined to sign on. “Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run and hungrier for unifying national leadership than ever before,” the group said in a statement at the time. “But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”