The National Rifle Association (NRA) is falling apart and its CEO Wayne LaPierre is desperately trying to stay out of prison. So says a report that everyone who supports keeping our kids alive will be happy about.
Financial and legal woes have nearly crippled the organization that thinks “thoughts and prayers” is an effective gun safety strategy. It poured millions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and had shady dealings with Russia. Now new documents are shedding more light on just how bad things over at the NRA are right now.
NRA Watch reports that the organization “faces investigations by attorneys general in New York and Washington, D.C., an exodus of board members, and the “abject failure” of its ambitious propaganda arm NRATV. The organization ended 2018 with a $10.8 million deficit — the third year in a row it found itself in the red financially.”
In fact, new internal files from the NRA reveal that the organization blows a lot of money on salaries and luxury and little on their actual mission, with LaPierre himself being the prime spender.
Internal NRA documents show that the organization has spent tens of millions of dollars on executive salaries, legal bills, administrative costs, and extravagant travel, while less than 10 percent of NRA funds have been spent on its stated core mission of gun safety, education, and training.
The NRA’s own board members and accountants have called into question lavish, legally suspect personal spending by its leadership, including millions of dollars’ worth of Italian suits, private jet trips, and personal vacations for its CEO, Wayne LaPierre; and $450,000 in luxury hotels, restaurants, and cigar bars for its top fundraiser, Tyler Schropp.”
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Predictably, LaPierre has resisted all calls for an audit that would likely reveal the self-dealing, money-funneling, and insider trading that could place him behind bars.
LaPierre is reportedly “preoccupied with going to jail” and hopes his lawyer can get him out of the web of illegality he has woven.
Of course, this mess is publicly embarrassing for the NRA and LaPierre, and the organization’s refusal to support any legislation to prevent gun violence has hurt Republicans in the polls as a majority of Americans demand action instead of “thoughts and prayers.”
Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts is optimistic that the NRA is going down, and when they do, they will only have themselves to blame.
“NRA is losing at the ballot box, in courts, on the balance sheet,” Watts said. “We always talk about shining a light under the refrigerators and forcing the cockroaches to run out, and that’s really what this website does. It’s important to point out why the NRA is underwater reputationally and financially. The NRA’s policy priorities are killing us, so stopping the NRA is our top priority. But when it comes to legal issues, the secret to our success is that we let the NRA beat itself.”
Featured image via screen capture
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