The tantalizing leaks have spilled out in the weeks since the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Indianapolis devolved into civil war.
Amid anxiety over falling revenue and mounting legal trouble has come news that the gun group’s longtime chief executive, Wayne LaPierre,
billed $275,000 for purchases at the Zegna luxury men’s wear boutique in Beverly Hills. Its largely ceremonial president, Oliver L. North, had a contract worth millions of dollars a year. And a litany of payments benefited prominent officials, like the $60,000 for advertising on a TV show featuring the rock musician and N.R.A. board member
Ted Nugent.
But behind the internecine squabbling lie deeper financial problems. A review of tax records by The New York Times shows that, to steady its finances, the powerful lobbying group has increasingly relied on cash infusions and other transactions involving its affiliated foundation — at least $206 million worth since 2010.
The role of the foundation is among the issues being examined in a new investigation into the N.R.A.’s tax-exempt status by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. The N.R.A. and the charity received separate letters last month from Ms. James’s office ordering them to preserve pertinent records, according to several people who had seen them.
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Many of the latest revelations came in a cache of internal documents posted online and spotted last week by a reporter
for the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website. In addition to his Beverly Hills wardrobe purchases, Mr. LaPierre, who earns more than $1.4 million a year, billed
$267,000 in personal expenses, including flights and limousine service for trips to the Bahamas, Florida, Nevada, Budapest and an Italian lake resort, the leaked documents show. He even arranged for Ackerman to pay an intern’s rent.
As for Mr. North, while the N.R.A.’s presidency is traditionally unpaid, he was agitating to change that — in spite of a lucrative perk, a contract with Ackerman that, according to Mr. LaPierre, paid him “millions of dollars annually.” And Ackerman has been reaping $40 million a year, even though its signature product, the online streaming service NRATV, has minuscule web traffic.
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Oliver L. North’s departure as president was announced at the N.R.A.’s annual meeting in April.CreditScott Olson/Getty Images
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Oliver L. North’s departure as president was announced at the N.R.A.’s annual meeting in April.CreditScott Olson/Getty Images
Many N.R.A. officials have said its woes are overstated. Opponents “are trying to paint this false narrative that we’re in deep financial trouble, and I think it’s wishful thinking on their part,” Todd Rathner, a lobbyist and longtime N.R.A. board member, said in an interview.
a recently leaked letter, Mr. North said that for the last year, the firm had been paid nearly $100,000 a day, “draining N.R.A. cash at mind-boggling speed.” (An N.R.A. official said that characterization “reflects a misinformed view.”)
The power struggle has yet to abate. On Tuesday, Allen B. West, a former congressman, became the first board member since the convention to call on Mr. LaPierre to resign. He accused the current leadership of “outright lies” and said board members had not been made aware of the controversial spending practices. “It is imperative that the N.R.A. cleans its own house,” Mr. West
said in a statement.
In response, Carolyn Meadows, the N.R.A.’s new president, and two other senior officials said that board members had been apprised of the issues and had ample opportunity to delve into the details at the Indianapolis convention.
tweeted last month for the N.R.A. to “stop the internal fighting, & get back to GREATNESS — FAST!”
Despite the president’s ardent support for the N.R.A.’s agenda, he has been part of the problem. The $128 million in dues the group reported in 2017 was the lowest since 2012; fund-raising often slips when Republicans take over the White House and N.R.A. members’ worries recede.
“We have an unusual business model,” Mr. Rathner said. “The more successful we are, the less money we make, but clearly that doesn’t stop us from doing the job our members expect us to do, and as history has proven, we find ways to make it back each election cycle.”
Threat and Response
The call came at 2:58 p.m. on a Wednesday in April.
Mr. North was on the phone. He had called a senior aide to Mr. LaPierre to convey a message. Mr. North warned that if Mr. LaPierre didn’t retire, a damaging letter would be delivered to the N.R.A. board.
Mr. LaPierre was taken aback.
“I was forced to confront one of those defining choices, styled, in the parlance of extortionists, as an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he wrote to the board. “I refused it.”
N.R.A. perks.
Marion Hammer, a longtime board member and lobbyist, received $270,000 in consulting fees from the gun group last year. The N.R.A. also paid David Keene, a former president, $40,000 last year, even as he was enmeshed in the scandal involving
his one-time business partner Maria Butina, a Russian who
pleaded guilty to being a covert foreign agent.
And there was the nearly $14,000 Ackerman paid over three months, at Mr. LaPierre’s request, to rent an apartment in Virginia for a young woman who was then a summer intern, and is now an N.R.A. employee.
“The N.R.A. was introduced to this young lady by her father, who is a local first responder and longtime N.R.A. member,” said Andrew Arulanandam, an N.R.A. spokesman, who added that the accommodation was made after housing at a nearby university, where interns typically stayed, became unavailable.
Ms. Meadows, the new president, called the revelations “stale news — being recycled by those with personal agendas.”
Such payments are likely to be scrutinized by Ms. James’s office, which is examining “transactions between the N.R.A. and its board members, unauthorized political activity, and potentially false or misleading disclosures in regulatory filings,” according to a copy of a letter sent to the N.R.A. and reviewed by The Times. (The attorney general of New York has jurisdiction because the N.R.A. was established there.)
Federal rules
restrict transactions that confer economic benefits on high-ranking employees of tax-exempt organizations. A
number ofsuch transactions have already
drawn scrutiny, and others are emerging.
wrote to two prominent N.R.A. officials to complain that because of the group’s “difficult financial situation, I am spending much more time on the road raising money” than expected.
his own open letter that “the things that are taking place within the organization, I feel are things that corrupt Congressmen would be doing” — not, he said, the leaders of the “oldest civil rights organization in the country.”
appeared in a commercialopposing the measure, and was criticized when he later helped
block itfrom going into effect.
When Mr. Laxalt ran for governor last year, he had the N.R.A.’s
endorsement and A+ rating, and was fiercely opposed by gun control groups. He lost to Steve Sisolak, a Democrat who in February signed
background check legislation into law.
“That is Exhibit 1 of their diminishing power, and their inability to do what they used to do,” Mr. Feinblatt said.
Mr. Rathner, the lobbyist and longtime N.R.A. board member, sees it differently. The organization’s members, he said, pay their dues “to protect them from anti-gun legislation and anti-gun policies, and quite frankly, we gave them a president who appointed two good Supreme Court justices and over 100 lower court judges to protect them for a generation or two. And we did that because that’s what our members expect us to do.”
