Thoughts and Prayers for the National Rifle Association
It’s just about a given at this point that the leadership of organizations based on fear and loathing will end up as grifters.
Today’s case in point is the National Rifle Association, defendants in a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of New York (where they were chartered in 1848) alleging that senior leaders used charitable donations for family trips to the Bahamas, private jets and lavish meals that shaved $64 million off the organization’s balance sheet in three years, turning a surplus into a financial crisis.
To nobody’s surprise, the N.R.A. has responded by filing a federal lawsuit against the office of the attorney general, Letitia James, claiming her action was politically motivated and violated the organization’s First Amendment rights.
But New York wasn’t the only jurisdiction with the NRA in its sights. The attorney general of Washington, D.C., filed suit against the N.R.A. and its charitable foundation, alleging that the N.R.A. misused millions of dollars of the foundation’s funds.
The NRA is a non-profit, and baked into that status is an inference of existing for the public good. That status means the organization is supposed to meet certain standards. They don’t. And AG James, representing the state of New York, aims to put them out of business, along with gaining restitution for misused funds.
“The NRA’s influence has been so powerful that the organization went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets,” said a statement announcing the action in New York. “The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse, which is why, today, we seek to dissolve the NRA, because no organization is above the law.”
Following an 18-month investigation, the suit, filed in state court in Manhattan names the NRA as a whole and four senior executives including Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice-president most people would believe is its leader.
From the Guardian:
LaPierre, in charge of the NRA’s day-to-day operations for nearly three decades, stands accused of spending millions of dollars on luxury black car services and private jet trips, including eight visits to the Bahamas, as well as accepting expensive gifts such as African safaris, hair and makeup for his wife and use of a 107-foot yacht. He also engineered a $17m post-employment contract for himself, according to the lawsuit…
...At a news conference on Thursday, James said NRA leaders “used millions upon millions from NRA reserves for personal use” and failed to comply with the organisation’s own internal policies along with state and federal law. The NRA “has operated as a breeding ground for greed, abuse and brazen illegality”, James added. “No one is above the law.”
The NRA has been a major force in conservative political circles, and used its considerable political power in support of Donald Trump in 2016.
This lawsuit, which will take years to play out in court, is already being cast as a liberal assault on a conservative institution that had recently pledged to spend $10 million in advertising in support of the President’s re-election campaign.
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1291411817185652736?s=20
(The NRA can’t move its assets to another state amid the investigation, and if dissolved as a New York entity, would have to start over largely from scratch.)
Signs of trouble within the organization have been apparent in recent years, most notably the decision by Lt. Col. Oliver North to step down as NRA president last year. Apparently the man at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal couldn’t stomach what he was seeing.
From the Washington Post:
The NRA’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, wrote a letter to the board Thursday accusing North of plotting to remove him from the group by threatening to release to the board “damaging” information about LaPierre. He claimed North, a former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel perhaps best known for his role in the Iran-contra affair, was pressuring him to resign over alleged financial transgressions.
“Delivered by a member of our Board on behalf of his employer, the exhortation was simple: resign or there will be destructive allegations made against me and the NRA,” LaPierre wrote in the letter, which was published Friday by the Wall Street Journal.
Now we know what North was upset about. And how LaPierre was determined to do anything to stay on a lucrative gravy train. Unless you’re willing to believe an ultra-conservative war “hero” had suddenly gone over to the dark side, the details in the lawsuit make it clear just how corrupt the organization had become.
Although the NRA has denied the connection, a Senate investigative report characterized the group as a Russian asset.
From Rolling Stone, which traced back the interactions between the group and assorted Putin allies back ten years:
The NRA spent an unprecedented $30 million to install Trump in the White House. Putin has a long track record of illegally financing nationalist opposition groups in the West. If the Kremlin’s NRA outreach culminated in pumping vast sums into the group’s coffers, America’s lax campaign-finance regulations would have posed no obstacle. “There are so many ways that a group like the NRA could be used to channel Russian money into a race, it’s shocking,” says Robert Maguire, who investigates “dark money” for the Center for Responsive Politics. In a letter to Congress, the NRA has denied wrongdoing; it has not denied accepting Russian money.
The notion that the flag-waving NRA of Eddie Eagle has allied itself with the Russian bear, and the government of former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin, can be hard to fathom. But an investigation by Rolling Stone establishes deeper ties between the NRA and Russia than previously reported. The record reveals this union was the product of a sophisticated Russian influence campaign nearly a decade in the making. By November 2016, Torshin greeted Trump’s election victory as a foregone conclusion, specifically pointing to his and the president-elect’s joint connection to the NRA. “This striking personality has fascinated me for a long time,” he tweeted, in Russian. “Was sure of his victory.”
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All of this corruption is in addition to the NRA’s role in acting as a cheerleader for the small arms industry, which essentially paid the group to squawk about people’s Second Amendment rights being in danger every time gun sales went down.
All I can say is “thoughts and prayers.”
My thoughts are with the victims of gun violence enabled by the NRA’s advocacy for no restrictions on purchases and opposition to research into the causes and costs of shootings. I’m also praying for double jeopardy; years in prison and a permanent stint in whatever passes for hell.
We as a nation have been held hostage by a well financed cabal of crooks posing as patriots for too long.
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Lead image by vishnu vijayan via Pixabay