All things NRA
mickeyrat
Posts: 38,547
couldnt see where to put something like this. Posted another article a couple weeks ago about shady looking payments to board members.
this article goes a bit more in depth on the overall picture....
By Carol D. Leonnig ,
Katie Zezima and
Tom Hamburger
June 14 at 6:30 PM
Katie Zezima and
Tom Hamburger
June 14 at 6:30 PM
The National Rifle Association spent growing sums on overhead in 2018 even as it cut money for core activities such as gun training and political efforts, ending the year deeper in debt, new financial documents show.
The gun rights group’s 2018 financial report, which was obtained by The Washington Post, portrays the longtime political powerhouse as spending faster than its revenue rose.
The records show that the NRA froze its pension plan for employees at the end of last year, a move that saved it close to $13 million, and obtained a $28 million line of credit by borrowing against its Virginia headquarters.
Despite that, the nonprofit group, four affiliated charities and its political committee together ended the year $10.8 million in the red. In 2017, the six groups ended the year with a $1.1 million shortfall.
Brian Mittendorf, an Ohio State University accounting professor who has studied nonprofits, including the NRA, and examined the 2018 report for The Post, said it depicted “a bad year for them financially.” He compared the NRA to a person living paycheck to paycheck, leaning on credit cards with very little cushion.
“They’ve never exhibited extreme financial conservatism,” Mittendorf said. “They’ve largely spent what they could.”
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam declined to address the group’s financial trends but said the annual report shows the organization making “financial and administrative decisions that work in the best interests of its members.”
“In the last three years, the NRA has raised more than a billion dollars, played an important role in getting President Trump elected and continued to successfully defend the freedoms of gun owners everywhere,” he said. “That is the true measure of the organization.”
In a letter in May to NRA members, a group of board members and past presidents said the organization is on budget for 2019. “Our financial house is in order,” they wrote.
The new details about the NRA’s finances come as the 2020 White House race gets underway; the organization is expected to be a key ally once again for Trump. But the group is also facing pressure on multiple fronts.
The New York attorney general is investigating the NRA’s tax-
exempt status amid recent revelations of lavish spending by chief executive Wayne LaPierre and top vendors. Among the expenditures were nearly $275,000 in personal charges at a Beverly Hills men’s store and more than $253,000 in luxury travel to locations such as Italy, Budapest and the Bahamas.
NRA officials have said the expenses were made over a long period of time and were necessary for LaPierre’s fundraising and public appearances.
The Post reported this week that money also flowed to 18 members of the group’s 76-member board of directors, which is tasked with overseeing the NRA’s finances.
The allegations have infuriated many longtime NRA members, who are demanding transparency about how their dues are being spent.
Amid last year’s financial crunch, the organization cut funds for gun training, a key purpose spelled out in the NRA charter. Spending for educating gun owners about safety and marksmanship dropped by nearly a quarter from 2017 to 2018, from $42.6 million to $32.7 million.
The group also pulled back from politics, spending just $9.4 million during the 2018 midterm elections, down from $27 million in the 2014 midterms, according to campaign finance filings compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
At the same time, the NRA’s spending last year on legal fees, travel, entertainment and office supplies rose — making up about 12 percent of the budget.
The group and its associated entities reported spending roughly $8.7 million in 2017 and $10.1 million in 2018 on travel and entertainment. They spent nearly $69 million on fundraising, up from $55 million in 2017
Professor Howard E. Abrams, a tax expert at Harvard Law School, said the NRA’s spending on overhead was “extraordinarily high.”
“It is surprising that an organization as well-known as the NRA would have to spend that much on administrative and fundraising costs,” he said. “That is money that isn’t going to legislative programs, safety and training programs, and other core activities. It is sort of a cost of running the business. But it is a big cost.”
Steve Hoback, an NRA life member who used to work in safety and training at the organization’s Virginia headquarters, said he was angry that the group cut back on what is supposed to be its central service to members: gun safety and training.
“For administrative costs to go up at the same time that one of the core missions of the NRA is going down, that has me incensed,” he said. “I’m livid at that.”
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Overall, the spending of the NRA and its associated groups outpaced revenue. In 2018, the NRA and its affiliates brought in $412 million and spent $423 million. In 2017, they had revenue of $378 million and spent $379 million.
The annual report, together with state filings, shows that the NRA has run a deficit for the past three years.
Despite spending more than it took in, Abrams and other tax law experts noted, the NRA has reserves: It reported nearly $145 million in total net assets.
From 2017 to 2018, legal and audit spending jumped from $12.9 million to $33.5 million. Legal expenses for administrative purposes rose nearly 400 percent, accounting for the largest increase, from $4.6 million to $21.9 million, the records show.
The rise in legal fees came as the NRA was contending with congressional inquiries into its ties with Russia, as well as various state investigations.
The NRA’s spending on legal fees has been questioned by board member Oliver North, who detailed his concerns in a memo this spring in which he said “extraordinary” legal expenses paid to the group’s outside lawyers, the Brewer law firm, were “draining NRA cash at mind-
boggling speed.”
North was ousted from his post as president of the board in April after LaPierre accused him of attempting to extort him and the organization. His attorneys have declined to comment.
Arulanandam said the NRA’s legal expenses have increased “as the NRA defends the interests of its members against attacks like those orchestrated by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Michael Bloomberg,” a major backer of gun-control efforts.
“Our members expect the NRA to stand and fight when it comes to advocating for their constitutional rights,” he added. “They certainly don’t expect us to back down and bank their membership dues.”
A spokesman for the Brewer law firm declined to comment.
The annual report obtained by The Post was made available to board members at the NRA’s annual convention in the final week of April, according to people familiar with its distribution. Details in the report were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
The report was prepared by the NRA’s longtime independent auditor, RSM, which submitted a letter to the board describing the financial statement on March 13, according to the document.
The detailed financial statement combines the yearly expenses and revenue of the NRA, which is set up as a nonprofit social welfare organization; its PAC, the NRA Political Victory Fund; and four affiliated charitable groups: the Special Contribution Fund, the Civil Rights Defense Fund, the NRA Foundation and the NRA Freedom Action Foundation.
The consolidated statements in the 2018 annual report mask some of the challenges facing the main group, Mittendorf said. For example, in 2017, the six groups together had $6.5 million in unrestricted net assets to use as they chose — while the NRA alone had a $31.8 million deficit in that category, according to the annual report and tax filings.
The NRA has borrowed against its Fairfax headquarters, which has an assessed value of $40.4 million, the report and public filings show.
As of December, the NRA owed $25.4 million on the line of credit it negotiated in September and is paying interest of 3 percent, according to the annual report. That debt must be repaid in 2021. The NRA also owes $17 million on a 2017 credit agreement that comes due in October of this year.
Tax experts said nonprofits’ revenue often fluctuates year to year, particularly if they are affected by the election cycle. But most organizations that have high volatility in their revenue have cover for the off-years, Mittendorf said.
“The NRA doesn’t have that cushion, and we’re seeing the consequences,” he said.
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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By Beth Reinhard ,
Katie Zezima ,
Tom Hamburger and
Carol D. Leonnig
June 9
A former pro football player who serves on the National Rifle Association board was paid $400,000 by the group in recent years for public outreach and firearms training. Another board member, a writer in New Mexico, collected more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications. Yet another board member sold ammunition from his private company to the NRA for an undisclosed sum.
The NRA, which has been rocked by allegations of exorbitant spending by top executives, also directed money in recent years that went to board members — the very people tasked with overseeing the organization’s finances.
In all, 18 members of the NRA’s 76-member board, who are not paid as directors, collected money from the group during the past three years, according to tax filings, state charitable reports and NRA correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.
The payments received by about one-quarter of board members, the extent of which has not previously been reported, deepen questions about the rigor of the board’s oversight as it steered the country’s largest and most powerful gun rights group, according to tax experts and some longtime members.
The NRA, founded in 1871 to promote gun safety and training, relies heavily on its 5 million members for dues. Some supporters are rebelling publicly and questioning its leadership.
“I will be the first person to get in your face about defending the Second Amendment, but I will not defend corruption and cronyism and fearmongering,” said Vanessa Ross, a Philadelphia-area bakery owner and lifetime NRA member who previously worked at the Virginia headquarters managing a program for disabled shooters.
Among the revelations that have burst into public view: CEO Wayne LaPierre racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel, invoices show. Oliver North, forced out as president after trying to oust LaPierre, was set to collect millions of dollars in a deal with the NRA’s now-estranged public relations agency, Ackerman McQueen, according to LaPierre. And the NRA’s outside attorney reaped “extraordinary” legal fees that totaled millions of dollars in the past year, according to North.
The dueling allegations, coupled with multimillion-dollar shortfalls in recent years and an ongoing investigation by the New York attorney general, threaten the potency of the NRA, long a political juggernaut and a close ally of President Trump.
The NRA said its finances are healthy and that the allegations of misspending are unfounded. In a statement last month, a dozen board members said they have “full confidence in the NRA’s accounting practices and commitment to good governance.” LaPierre declined to comment.
The gun rights organization’s board includes firearms industry executives, conservative leaders, gun enthusiasts, and a handful of sports and entertainment celebrities. Among its members, whose names are not listed on the NRA website, are former Republican congressman Bob Barr of Georgia, basketball star Karl Malone and Joe Allbaugh, who served as the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the George W. Bush administration. (The three are not among the directors the NRA reported paying.)
continues....
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July 3
Twenty young children had just been gunned down by a semiautomatic rifle in their classrooms in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, and inside the hardened bunker of the National Rifle Association, rattled officials were wrestling with rare feelings of self-doubt.
In the past, the gun rights organization had responded to mass shootings with unapologetic, high-profile attacks on any attempt to restrict firearms. But several senior NRA officials — laid low by images of sobbing parents planning their children’s funerals rather than tucking presents under Christmas trees — thought the organization should take a less confrontational approach this time, according to multiple people familiar with the internal debate.
Over the objections of some top officials, however, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre struck a defiant posture. In fiery public appearances crafted by Ackerman McQueen, the organization’s longtime advertising firm , LaPierre announced that the group would create a model program to train armed security guards who could protect schools from shooters, saying that was the only measure that would keep children safe.
Then LaPierre and his wife left for the Bahamas, a trip they billed through Ackerman McQueen — and was ultimately paid for by the nonprofit organization. Their post-Christmas flights to and from Eleuthera, known for its pink beaches, cost the NRA nearly $70,000, according to internal documents and people familiar with the trip.
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the couple was on official business, doing outreach to donors and supporters, whom he declined to identify.
After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, “Wayne’s main concern was being respectful of the victims and their families,” he said. LaPierre, as leader of the NRA, sought “to figure out a way to harden our schools” while also defending the Second Amendment, Arulanandam said.
New details about how the NRA handled the tumultuous moment show how Sandy Hook —one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — divided the leadership of the powerful gun rights organization. The episode also showcased the symbiotic relationship between LaPierre and Ackerman McQueen, an alliance that defined the NRA for more than three decades, several former officials said.
During that period, the bills for LaPierre’s wardrobe and his private jet travel flowed through the Oklahoma-based ad firm, recently revealed internal documents show, a practice that critics say shrouded the nature of the costs from some NRA leaders and members. At the same time, Ackerman McQueen collected tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees and kept a tight grip on the NRA’s aggressive messaging, according to documents and people familiar with the dynamics.
In recent months, a bitter legal dispute over control of the NRA has fractured their longtime alliance, spilling the revelations about the organization’s finances into public view. Ackerman and the NRA are now estranged, locking in warring lawsuits. The tumult led to the resignation last week of longtime NRA lobbyist Christopher W. Cox, whom the NRA has accused of participating in a scheme to oust LaPierre. Cox has denied the allegations.
The factors that would later fuel this remarkably public civil war were already at play in on Dec. 14, 2012, when the NRA confronted perhaps its worst political crisis in history. On one side was Cox, who was pushing for the group to take a lower-key approach amid a wave of national outrage. On the other was LaPierre, who decided to go on the offensive.
Four months after the massacre, a raft of gun control measures failed in Congress. But outrage about lawmakers’ inaction after the loss of so many young lives in Newtown also spurred a resurgence among groups fighting to restrict firearms.
'Kids are getting shot'
A man and child leave the funeral for 6-year-old Jack Pinto on Dec. 17, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
The mass shooting at Sandy Hook, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were killed, scalded the country.
President Barack Obama wiped away tears as he spoke that day about the children who had died. When he visited Newtown two days after the shooting to talk privately with families who had lost their loved ones, he later said, he saw something he’d never witnessed before: the stalwart Secret Service agents on his detail quietly weeping.
The tragedy immediately led to a clamoring for new limits on firearms. Obama vowed that gun control would be a “central issue” of his second term.
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Some NRA leaders girded for what they considered inevitable: congressional action to revive the federal ban on assault weapons that had expired in 2004. Several senior officials and longtime leaders thought the killing of children required the group to alter its normally defiant response to mass shootings and keep a low profile — at least in the immediate aftermath, said people familiar with internal discussions.
“Everyone was saying, ‘Are we doing the right thing here?’ ” one former NRA employee said, describing internal discussions about whether the group should consider a modest gun control compromise or alter its aggressive posture. “Kids are getting shot. Is there something else we should be doing?”
Cox, a seasoned political strategist, wanted to head off efforts to restrict firearms and thought that a combative approach at that time was unwise and could invite a public backlash, said multiple people familiar with the debate.
But LaPierre ultimately agreed with Ackerman McQueen that the NRA had to forcefully counter growing public calls to rein in weapons.
Cox, who did not respond to requests for comment, did not attend a news conference that LaPierre held a week after the Sandy Hook shooting.
As soon as LaPierre stepped before hundreds of reporters at the Willard hotel in Washington on Dec. 21, he made it clear that the NRA would remain fiercely opposed to any gun control measures.
The NRA chief announced that a task force would create a program, later called NRA School Shield, to help train armed security guards to protect schools from shooters — and preemptively defended the group from those he predicted would criticize the idea.
“Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word ‘gun’ automatically become a bad word?” LaPierre said.
He then delivered the line that would become a mantra of NRA hard-liners: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
LaPierre ridiculed gun-free school zones as welcome signs to insane murderers and warned of “monsters . . . who walk among us every day.”
“The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them,” he said.
Two days later, LaPierre went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to promote the NRA’s new shield program. “If it’s crazy to call for putting police and armed security [guards] in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” he said.
When Obama later voiced skepticism that putting more guns in schools would keep children safer, Ackerman McQueen produced a video that alluded to his daughters’ Secret Service protection, calling him an “elitist hypocrite.”
“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the narrator intoned.
There were signs that some inside the NRA were uncomfortable with the focus on Obama’s daughters. Jim Baker, one of the organization’s top lobbyists, said at the time that he considered the ad “ill-advised,” adding, “I don’t think it was particularly helpful.”
In a statement, Ackerman McQueen officials said that the firm’s job was to help the NRA respond to news and public events, as it did after the Sandy Hook massacre, and that LaPierre was the final decision-maker on the strategy to propose armed defenders in schools.
“Throughout the entire relationship with the NRA, Wayne LaPierre controlled every aspect of NRA public communications,” the firm said.
Po Murray, chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, whose four children graduated from Sandy Hook Elementary before the shooting, called the approach taken by the NRA and Ackerman McQueen “corrupt and irresponsible.”
“We felt the NRA’s position after Sandy Hook was completely insensitive and so out of touch when we were going through such a significant amount of trauma,” she said.
Arulanandam said that LaPierre “had great compassion for those impacted by this horrific event” and was seeking to find a way to “protect our most treasured resource — our children.”
“These events, sadly, all too often become politicized by people on all sides of the conversation,” he said, adding: “At the same time, during these events the media demands that we defend our position on the Second Amendment.”
After his combative public performance, LaPierre left town.
Three days after the mass shooting in Newtown, he charged $39,947 for a private jet to Eleuthera, according to internal travel records detailed in letters this spring from Ackerman McQueen’s chief financial officer to LaPierre, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Washington Post.
On Dec. 27, the LaPierres flew to the island, NRA officials confirmed. The organization has previously said that LaPierre, as the public face of the organization, must travel by private plane for security reasons.
Arulanandam, the NRA spokesman, said the couple’s week-plus visit to the Caribbean resort area during the winter holidays was a business trip related to donor outreach. The organization declined to provide details, saying it was against NRA policy to discuss individual donors.
“There was a business trip after Christmas 2012 involving donor outreach and the recruitment of influential NRA supporters and members,” Arulanandam said. “Wayne is responsible for a campaign to raise almost $400 million annually, so he travels extensively on behalf of the Association — even over the holidays.”
Susan LaPierre, co-founder of the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum, a coalition of female philanthropists who support the Second Amendment, traveled with her husband to “assist with NRA business and development efforts as she frequently does,” Arulanandam said.
After ringing in the New Year in the Caribbean, Wayne LaPierre charged another private air charter on his Ackerman McQueen credit card: $29,100 on Jan. 3 to fly from Nassau, Bahamas, to Dallas, according to internal documents and people familiar with his trips.
NRA officials said LaPierre flew to Dallas to attend donor and member events there as part of a hunters’ sporting exposition.
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William A. Brewer III, a lawyer for the NRA, has said that the vast majority of LaPierre’s travel involved “donor outreach, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.” He said that the NRA chief routed some travel expenses through Ackerman McQueen for “confidentiality and security purposes,” but that this method of billing has since been modified.
Ackerman McQueen said the firm footed the initial bill for LaPierre’s travel at the NRA’s instructions.
“Ackerman McQueen did not have any knowledge of the plans or details of the expenditures in question, all of which the NRA client claimed had a sound business or security rationale,” the firm said in a statement.
For several months, the deaths of the Connecticut schoolchildren continued to spur public cries for action. Polls showed that 90 percent of Americans supported new legislation to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.
In a letter dated Jan. 3, 2013, that was sent to congressional lawmakers, Cox said the NRA wanted to be a “constructive voice” in the debate about how to prevent the next school massacre. He stressed his opposition to a ban on assault weapons, but said the organization supported efforts to keep all weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.
The tragedy spurred a rare bipartisan effort on gun control in the Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a pro-gun Democrat, and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) joined forces to expand background checks to cover a major source of gun sales: unlicensed dealers at gun shows and online vendors.
Parents of the Sandy Hook victims visited Washington to pressure lawmakers to act, carrying pictures of their children: a freckle-faced boy smiling with a missing front tooth, a 6-year-old boy in his favorite Superman shirt.
But by the time of the final vote on April 17, their chance of victory was slim. Some Republicans said the bill was unfair to gun owners because it would require them to pay for a background check to exercise their right to buy a gun. The NRA had vowed to “score” senators based on their vote on the legislation, stressing that they would face consequences for supporting it. The organization asked it members to flood senators with letters, emails and phone calls.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said that Sandy Hook was a turning point for the NRA and that “its leaders chose the course of extremism and refused to even consider common-sense laws supported by most Americans.”
As a cluster of Sandy Hook parents gathered in the gallery to watch the key vote, a Republican-led filibuster blocked the measure, with four Democrats joining to oppose it. The Senate also blocked other measures Obama sought to ban certain military-style rifles and limit the size of ammunition magazines.
The visibly angry president declared that it was a temporary loss.
“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he said, vowing to try again. “Sooner or later, we’re going to get this right.”
Julie Tate, Alice Crites and Katie Zezima contributed to this report.
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Go back and watch Wayne’s public statements in the aftermath and admit you’re proud.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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NRA NRA NRA, guns guns guns.
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Cincinnati 2014
Greenville 2016
(Raleigh 2016)
Columbia 2016
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June 26
Infighting at the National Rifle Association exploded Wednesday, when the powerful association severed ties with its longtime public relations firm, suspended operations of its fiery online TV station and lost its top lobbyist.
The latest turmoil emerged just a year before the critical 2020 presidential elections when the NRA’s ability to influence the outcome could decide the fate of gun rights.
Lobbyist Chris Cox, long viewed as the likely successor to longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre, was placed on administrative leave about a week ago by the NRA, which claimed he was part of a failed attempt to extort LaPierre and push him out.
It also came within hours of the association officially severing ties with Ackerman McQueen, the Oklahoma-based public relations firm that has shaped some of the NRA’s most memorable messages in the past decades.
Cox had been the executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, since 2002. He was credited with leading efforts to allow a decadelong ban on “assault weapons” to expire in 2004, an achievement that allowed the gun industry to resume selling what the industry calls “modern sporting rifles” and critics claim are used too often to exact mass carnage.
His resignation was confirmed by NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. No other comment was immediately made about his departure.
Cox did not immediately return a message seeking comment. However, when he was suspended, Cox said in a statement obtained by The New York Times that allegations he had been part of a group seeking LaPierre’s ouster were “offensive and patently false.”
“For 24 years I have been a loyal and effective leader in this organization,” he said.
Cox played his usual prominent role at the NRA’s annual meeting in Indianapolis in April, and there was little public evidence that he and LaPierre or the NRA’s board of directors were at odds. Infighting spilled out during what is normally a pep rally of sorts among gun-rights enthusiasts when Oliver North , then the NRA president, threatened to expose questionable personal and travel expenses unless LaPierre stepped down. Instead, LaPierre turned the tables on North and accused him of trying to extort him into submission.
Joel Friedman, a longtime NRA board member, told The Associated Press his first reaction when he heard that Cox was stepping down was surprise. He said he saw no indications during the annual meeting that Cox was in a dispute with LaPierre.
LaPierre announced Cox’s resignation in an email sent Wednesday to staff and NRA board members that was obtained by the AP. The letter also said an investigation will continue into allegations that North sought to extort LaPierre and that the storied Marine veteran was aided by Cox, a claim first laid out in a lawsuit filed June 19.
In the past few months, the NRA has filed several lawsuits against Ackerman McQueen, accusing it of refusing to document its billings and of seeking to undermine the association. Ackerman McQueen has countersued, claiming the NRA is trying to renege on its financial obligations and smear the public relations firm.
Last year, NRA began asking all of its vendors for detailed documentation about its billings after New York authorities began threatening to investigate the NRA’s nonprofit status. The NRA was founded shortly after the Civil War and is chartered in New York, giving that state broad authority to investigate its operations.
During its two decades by the NRA’s side, Ackerman McQueen was responsible for crafting the association’s aggressive messaging, including the now-famous “From my cold dead hands” line uttered by actor Charlton Heston in 2000 as he vowed to resist any effort to take away his guns. The line became a rallying cry for gun owners around the country.
Ackerman McQueen also created and operated NRATV. In a statement posted Wednesday on the NRA website, LaPierre said it would no longer be airing live programming and would be evaluating the station’s future. It wasn’t clear what would happen to its prominent hosts but there appeared to be no signs those on-air personalities, who are employees of Ackerman McQueen, would find spots at the NRA.
In a lawsuit, the NRA said some of its members had questioned NRATV’s weighing in on “topics far afield of the Second Amendment.”
In a statement Wednesday, Ackerman McQueen accused the NRA of trying to avoid its financial obligations by shuttering NRATV and implied its financial woes are partly the result of now paying for high-priced lawyers.
“When given the opportunity to do the right thing, the NRA once again has taken action that we believe is intended to harm our company even at the expense of the NRA itself,” the company said.
“For Ackerman McQueen, it is time to move on to a new chapter without the chaos that has enveloped the NRA,” the statement continued. “Ackerman McQueen will continue to fight against the NRA’s repeated violations of its agreement with our company with every legal remedy available to us, but we will always be proud of the work that we completed during our 38-year relationship on behalf of the individual citizens that are the NRA.”
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July 2, 2019
NASHVILLE — Even as the National Rifle Association has been consumed by relentless and increasingly public infighting, Wayne LaPierre has maintained a firm grip on its leadership.
Now one of the gun group’s major benefactors says he is preparing to lead an insurgency among wealthy contributors to oust Mr. LaPierre as chief executive, along with his senior leadership team. Such a rebellion would represent a troublesome new threat to Mr. LaPierre, as his organization’s finances and vaunted political machine are being strained amid a host of legal battles, most notably the New York attorney general’s investigation into its tax-exempt status.
David Dell’Aquila, the restive donor, said the N.R.A.’s internal warfare “has become a daily soap opera and it’s decaying and destroying the N.R.A. from within, and it needs to stop.” He added, “Even if these allegations regarding Mr. LaPierre and his leadership are false, he has become radioactive and must step down.”
Until that happens, Mr. Dell’Aquila, a retired technology consultant who has given roughly $100,000 to the N.R.A. in cash and gifts, said he would suspend donations — including his pledge of the bulk of an estate worth several million dollars.
He said he was among a network of wealthy N.R.A. donors who would cumulatively withhold more than $134 million in pledges, much of it earmarked years in advance through estate planning, and would soon give the gun group’s board a list of demands for reform.
That dollar figure could not be verified, however, and Mr. Dell’Aquila declined to provide a list of the other donors, who he said were not ready to go public. But a second prominent donor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is a senior firearms industry executive, said he was also suspending a plan to give more than $2 million from his estate, as well as halting other donations, and was backing Mr. Dell’Aquila’s effort.
“The donors are rebelling,” the executive said, adding that he believed that the leadership turmoil was “helping to destroy, temporarily, the strength of the N.R.A. as one of the strongest lobbying groups.”
The extent of any rebellion is difficult to discern, and the N.R.A. insisted it still had the firm backing of its donor base. Mr. LaPierre has also retained the support of the N.R.A.’s 76-member board, with fewer than a handful of public defections, and it would take a three-fourths vote by the board and one of its committees to oust him. But there have been signs of wavering grass-roots support, including a recent announcement by Greg Kinman, a gun enthusiast with more than four million followers on YouTube, that he was cutting ties with the N.R.A.
The turmoil of recent months has already stoked fear among some Republicans that the N.R.A.’s political potency could be blunted heading into the 2020 elections. In a tweet early Tuesday morning, President Trump assailed the investigation by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, saying the N.R.A. was “a victim of harassment by the A.G.”
Carolyn Meadows, the N.R.A.’s president, said in a statement that “we are disappointed whenever donors choose to suspend their support of the N.R.A., but we hope to win them back.” She added: “People may resist change, but they embrace progress. We’re experiencing that right now at the N.R.A. There’s an energy within the N.R.A. that is hard to describe — and we continue to earn the support of millions of loyal members.”
The group also provided statements from two of its largest donors, who are among those still backing Mr. LaPierre.
“We are sticking by the N.R.A.,” said Dr. John Thodos, an orthodontist who lives in Florida. “They are the No. 1 fighter for freedom.” John and Barbara Rumpel, Florida-based donors who have put their real estate in a trust to benefit the N.R.A., said they “support what Wayne and his team are doing.” They added, “Getting through this New York issue is the top priority for the N.R.A., and they’re working like heck to fight these malicious attacks.”
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Both Mr. Dell’Aquila and the second donor want Mr. Cox to return to the N.R.A. and become its chief executive.
Wayne LaPierre, left, appeared to triumph in the gun group’s internal power struggles. Christopher Cox, center, and Oliver North, right, both stepped down from leadership positions this year.
“He brings continuity and stability,” Mr. Dell’Aquila said, adding that Mr. Cox had emerged from the recent wave of scandals with cleaner hands than Mr. LaPierre. “We can get consensus with Chris replacing Wayne.”
Mr. Dell’Aquila said he had not spoken to Mr. Cox about the matter and had not seen him since a fund-raiser last year.
The N.R.A. is moving on from Mr. Cox and is expected to announce Tuesday that Jason Ouimet, a deputy at its lobbying arm, will assume Mr. Cox’s former post, according to a person with knowledge of the appointment.
The N.R.A. has been burdened by high structural costs and escalating legal bills as it copes with the New York investigation and a bitter legal fight with its former advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen. The N.R.A.’s member dues fell in 2017 to their lowest level in a half-decade, as concerns about gun control ebbed after Mr. Trump’s election, but they rebounded last year, increasing by a third, to $170 million, while contributions grew by 24 percent to $165 million.
Even so, the N.R.A.’s net assets fell sharply last year and the organization was forced to freeze its pension fund. It also took more than $30 million out of its charitable foundation in 2017; it recently increased a line of credit, backed by the deed to its headquarters, to $28 million; and it borrowed against life insurance policies taken out on top executives.
An avid hunter, Mr. Dell’Aquila, 58, was interviewed at his house in Nashville, sitting in front of a large stuffed black bear. He played offensive lineman for a year at Princeton before injuries ended his football career, and he once was featured in The Baltimore Sun for eating two 48-ounce steaks in one sitting at a Shula’s Steak House. He’s been a member of the N.R.A. for about two decades, and considers himself a true believer. (“It’s our Second Amendment, it comes after our First Amendment, it’s what allows us to be a free country,” he said.)
Mr. Dell’Aquila was listed in an N.R.A. publication as having pledged more than $1 million, making him one of a small number of contributors at that level; he belongs to the Charlton Heston Ambassadors, a group for those who make large pledges of support, named for the actor and former N.R.A. president.
In a series of interviews and emails, Mr. Dell’Aquila cited numerous concerns. He was troubled that a former N.R.A. president, David Keene, had been caught up in an investigation over his ties to Maria Butina, the Russian who pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as a foreign agent. He was disturbed after The New York Times reported this year that Tyler Schropp, a senior N.R.A. executive, had an interest in an outside company that had received $18 million from the N.R.A. He was also dismayed by a recent New Yorker story tying the N.R.A.’s former longtime chief financial officer to allegations of embezzlement at a previous job.
“I don’t know if these stories are true or not true,” he said. “My No. 1 concern, frankly only concern, is that our Second Amendment rights are preserved and the optics of negativity that are directly harming the N.R.A. institution ceases.”
Mr. Dell’Aquila said he had approached high-ranking N.R.A. officials to express his dissatisfaction as recently as April, when the N.R.A. held its annual convention in Indianapolis, but was not satisfied by their responses. And he said the board had recently been removing critics of Mr. LaPierre from key oversight committees.
“I decided the best way to be effective is to start a grass-roots effort to demand from the N.R.A. leadership accountability as well as transparency,” he said.
His demands include the resignation of Mr. LaPierre and his senior leadership in time to put in a new team for the 2020 elections. In addition to Mr. Cox’s return, he wants Allen West, an N.R.A. board member and former Tea Party congressman opposed to Mr. LaPierre, installed as the group’s president. (Some of Mr. Dell’Aquila’s demands echo those of Mr. West and others.)
He would also shrink the board to 30 members from 76; stop paying consulting fees to board members; dismiss the N.R.A.’s accounting firm, RSM; remove past presidents from the board; and cut costs by holding meetings in central locations. He lamented that an upcoming board meeting was to be held in Alaska: “What are the optics of that?” he said. “It’s negative. It’s self-inflicted.” He adding that the N.R.A. could find board members who “would do this for free, and it keeps us clean in the liberal papers.”
Mr. Dell’Aquila said he had come to his decision reluctantly, and had always been treated graciously by Mr. LaPierre and his wife, Susan.
“I’m not pro-Mr. LaPierre, and I’m not anti-Mr. LaPierre, I’m just simply being objective and trying to save a historic institution from itself,” he said. “Right or wrong, the buck stops with Mr. LaPierre, because this occurred underneath his leadership, and he’s ultimately accountable.”
Correction: July 2, 2019
An earlier version of this article misstated the criteria for removing Wayne LaPierre from his position at the N.R.A. It would require a three-fourths vote by the board and one of its committees, not a two-thirds vote.
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