As Trump Seeks 2020 Allies, the NRA’s Downward Spiral Continues
Assemblyman Todd Gloria’s bill to prohibit sales of guns and ammunition at the at the state-owned Del Mar Fairgrounds starting in 2021 breezed through the State Assembly on Thursday, winning 48-16. It’s expected to pass in the Senate and be signed by Gov. Newsom in the fall.
The National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of California have declared defeating the bill a legislative priority. Their chances of prevailing are slim and none. After many years of diminishing influence in the state, the gun lobby is also on the decline nationally.
On Friday morning President Trump hailed the National Rifle Association via Twitter, saying the group was getting “stronger & stronger and doing some really great and important work.” Oh sweet, sweet irony.
The words of praise came as both the President and the Vice President were slated to address NRA’s annual meeting in Indianapolis. As an article in the Guardian noted, “This time, however, it could be argued that the NRA needs Trump more than Trump needs the NRA.”
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1121827768453537794
The once mighty public face of the gun lobby is in trouble.
Its finances are a mess--revenues are down by $55 million, corporate supporters have distanced themselves, lawsuits have drained resources, and an scandal concerning the group’s relationship with its prime vendor for PR may precipitate an internal split.
The collapse of the NRA’s relationship with Ackerman McQueen, comes to light via a recently filed lawsuit suggesting improper billing practices.
Reporting by The Trace, in partnership with The New Yorker, casts a light on just how entangled the two organizations are/were.
The N.R.A. and Ackerman have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Top officials and staff move freely between the two organizations; Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra operative, who now serves as the N.R.A.’s president, is paid roughly a million dollars a year through Ackerman, according to two N.R.A. sources. But this relationship, which in many ways has built the contemporary N.R.A., seems also to be largely responsible for the N.R.A.’s dire financial state.
According to interviews and to documents that I obtained—federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications—a small group of N.R.A. executives, contractors, and vendors has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements.
Memos created by a senior N.R.A. employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.”
Allegations about corruption at the NRA go beyond its relationship with Ackerman McQueen.
According to the New York Times, the NRA has 41 employees, contractors, vendors or consultants that have family relationships to others connected to the NRA.
Everytown for Gun Safety has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service calling for an investigation of the NRA, saying these and other financial arrangements seem at odds with the NRA’s status as a non-profit charitable organization.
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Coincidentally, it seems, Russian asset / NRA darling Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison on the first day of the convention.
My use of the word “asset” in the previous sentence was deliberate--she was not a intelligence agent; her activities allowed Russian authorities access to insights used for spotting individuals useful in promoting their agenda.
A memo submitted to the court from Robert Anderson Jr., a former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, makes the point that Butina’s relationship with the NRA was about more than influence peddling:
It is my expert opinion that Maria Butina’s activities in the United States from approximately 2015 to 2017 were part of a deliberate intelligence operation by the Russian Federation. I assess that the main purpose of this operation was to collect in the United States, and then provide to the Russian government, information that the Russian government deemed to be of intelligence value. Based on my review of the information Butina in fact provided the Russian Official, which may have been shared with others within the Russian government, I assess that this information was of substantial intelligence value to the Russian government and that Russian intelligence services will be able to use this information for years to come in their efforts to spot and assess Americans who may be susceptible to recruitment as foreign intelligence assets.
It’s worthwhile to note Butina’s case was handled by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s national security division, not by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. While the Mueller report covered attempts to influence the 2016 election, it did not include elements of counterintelligence investigations carried out by the FBI.
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Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog, and Giffords, a gun violence prevention group, filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission this week for failing to act on multiple complaints alleging the National Rifle Association made illegal campaign contributions to Republican candidates.
The complaint is the third in four months to accuse the NRA of appearing to use a shell company to circumvent laws against such coordination.
The suit accuses the NRA of using “a complex network of shell corporations to unlawfully coordinate expenditures with the campaigns of at least seven candidates for federal office, thereby making millions of dollars of illegal, unreported, and excessive in-kind contributions, including up to $25 million in illegal contributions to now President Donald J. Trump.”
“The illegal contributions to the Trump campaign alone are up to 9,259 times the limit set by Congress. Yet the Commission has taken no action on Plaintiff’s complaints,” the lawsuit said. “In light of this unlawful and unreasonable delay, Plaintiff files this action to compel the FEC to comply with its statutory duty to act.”
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Since the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018, the NRA’s reputation has suffered.
Businesses nationwide that have severed ties with the group include:
First National Bank of Omaha, FedEx, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Allied Van Lines,
North American Van Lines, Avis Budget Group, Hertz, Alamo Car Rental, Enterprise Car Rental,
National Car Rental, Starkey Hearing Technologies, MetLife Insurance, Chubb Insurance, TrueCar, SimpliSafe, Symantec, Securian, Lockton Affinity, Paramount Rx, Wild Apricot, LifeLock, Teladoc, Wyndham Hotels.
With contributions/support reportedly 64% lower than in the previous midterm election, the NRA was outspent by its political opponents during the 2018 midterm election cycle.
The organization took down its database of candidate grades last year, with one employee telling the Washington Post, ‘I think our enemies were using that.’
More than a dozen NRA-backed congressional candidates lost in last year’s midterms.
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https://twitter.com/politico/status/1121822162245931010
Finally, I’ll return to the Guardian’s coverage:
Trump’s patronage is likely to encourage a show of NRA unity and give a temporary boost to an organisation which, after decades of dominance in Washington, may find the tide is at last turning against it.
Watts, by contrast, said Moms Demand Action has trebled in size since last year’s high school massacre in Parkland, Florida. “We have 350,000 donors and this grassroots army that is really making a huge difference in electoral politics. Lawmakers have seen the writing on the wall, that over several election cycles where we’ve gotten stronger, the NRA has got weaker, and in the midterm elections not only did we outmanoeuvre them, we also outspent them.”
She added: “The days when the NRA could whip up fear among Americans around gun confiscation or overturning the second amendment are long gone. Americans have seen that other countries can figure out how to balance both the right to gun ownership but also the right to personal safety and do not want to live in a country where over a hundred Americans are shot and killed every single day. I just think those days are over.”
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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com