NRA lawsuit: who are the four leaders accused of
corruption?
Wayne LaPierre, Wilson Phillips, Joshua Powell and
John Frazer have held leading positions at the National Rifle Association
Joanna
Walters in New York
@Joannawalters13
Thu 6 Aug
2020 21.05 BSTLast modified on Thu 6 Aug 2020 21.16 BST
A lawsuit
by Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, has sued the powerful
National Rifle Association, and also its four top leaders in an attempt to
expose alleged corruption and misuse of funds.
Who are
they and what are they accused of doing?
Wayne LaPierre
The NRA
executive vice-president and chief executive has led the group for 39 years.
His best-known mantra, repeated after mass shootings in the US, including in
schools, is: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with
a gun.”
He has
called for armed guards at every school in America and he leads lobbying
efforts against any new laws proposed to curb gun sales, or any restrictive
interpretation of the US constitution’s second amendment about the right to
bear arms.
Thursday’s
lawsuit alleges he “has exploited the organization for his financial benefit …
[and] to continue, by use of a secret ‘poison pill contract’, his employment
even after removal and ensuring NRA income for life; and to intimidate, punish,
and expel anyone at a senior level who raised concerns about his conduct. The
effect has been to divert millions of dollars away from the charitable
mission.”
He is
accused of diverting NRA funds for “trips to the Bahamas to vacation on a yacht
owned by the principal of numerous NRA vendors … costly black car services,
gifts for favored friends”.
LaPierre
was invited to the White House two weeks after Donald Trump took office in
2017, after the NRA donated at least $30m to his election campaign.
Wilson Phillips
Phillips
was a former treasurer and chief financial officer of the NRA for 26 years,
until 2018, when he retired.
He is
popularly known as “Woody” and is described by the lawsuit as being “among the
senior executives LaPierre handpicked to facilitate his misuse of charitable
assets”. He and two other fellow defendants are described as having been hired
despite a lack of skills and experience.
Phillips is
accused of facilitating millions of dollars in entertainment and travel
expenses incurred by NRA executives and being improperly billed to the group
and evading IRS requirements.
A report in
the New Yorker last year alleged that before working for the NRA, in the early
90s, Phillips was quietly fired by a consultancy firm in Washington DC after a
$1m embezzlement.
He was
hired for the NRA by LaPierre in 1993. Between 2005 and 2017 he was paid at
least $10m, the New Yorker said, citing available tax filings.
Joshua Powell
Powell is a
former NRA chief of staff and executive director of general operations.
According
to the lawsuit, Powell was fired by the NRA in January 2020 for falsifying
expenses. He allegedly exploited his NRA credit card and ran up huge bills at
“a high-end Italian restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia”.
Before that
Phillips nearly tripled his salary in less than three years, to $800,000,
despite three complaints of abusive behavior, and evidence of illegal conduct
and inappropriate spending, the lawsuit says.
He began
working for the NRA in January 2017, brought in to “modernize” the NRA, and in
December 2018, LaPierre created the role of senior strategist for Powell.
Powell was
accused of sexual harassment in the workplace, which he denied, according to an
investigation by the Trace and ProPublica.
Millions of
dollars of NRA funds were misappropriated with Powell’s assistance, the lawsuit
says, and he secured contracts that secretly benefited family members.
John Frazer
Frazer is
the NRA corporate secretary and general counsel. When the native New Yorker
joined the NRA, he is described in the lawsuit as having only had only “a brief
18-month tenure in private practice and was unprepared to manage the legal and
regulatory affairs of the NRA”.
He has been
the secretary and general counsel and ex officio director of the NRA since 2015
and has worked at the NRA since 1993, the lawsuit says. Attorney General James
seeks his ousting from the group.
He is
accused of assisting LaPierre in diverting millions in NRA funds for the chief
executive’s allegedly luxurious lifestyle.
“Frazer
permitted the NRA to secretly pay millions of dollars to several board members
through consulting arrangements that were neither disclosed to, nor approved
by, the NRA board,” the lawsuit says.
He
allegedly signed off on false financial filings to the authorities by the
group, including documents submitted to the New York Charities Bureau.
‘I don’t trust them any more’: how the NRA became
its own worst enemy
NRA
The most powerful gun lobby in the world has strayed
from its core purpose and shot itself in the foot
David Smith
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Fri 7 Aug
2020 06.12 BSTLast modified on Fri 7 Aug 2020 06.14 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/07/nra-new-york-attorney-general-lawsuit-leaders
Oliver
North cut a lonely figure as he walked through the Indianapolis airport,
quietly slipping out of the city midway through the National Rifle
Association’s (NRA) convention which was still in progress. A day later, North
announced from afar that he was not seeking a traditional second term as its
president, while it also emerged that the New York attorney general was
investigating the NRA’s tax-exempt status.
That was
April 2019. More than a year later, the turmoil that heralded North’s departure
has culminated in the New York attorney general, Letitia James, suing to put
the NRA out of business, alleging that senior leaders used charitable donations
for family trips to the Bahamas, private jets and lavish meals that shaved $64m
off the organisation’s balance sheet in three years, turning a surplus into a
financial crisis.
The NRA has
been the most powerful gun lobby in the world since another former president of
the group, Hollywood actor Charlton Heston, promised to resist efforts to prise
firearms “from my cold, dead hands”. It has fought to suppress research on the
danger of guns in society, keep open loopholes for background checks on gun
sales and even for firearms to be present in schools.
The NRA
also has been an electoral ally of Donald Trump, spending $30m to help him beat
Hillary Clinton in 2016. Democrats, gun control activists and others have
fought long and hard to curb its influence. But in the end, the NRA’s worst
enemy was the NRA. Victim of its own success and hubris, it strayed from its
core purpose and shot itself in the foot.
James’s
lawsuit is not about politics but the actions of the NRA’s leaders. Far from a
heady battle over the second amendment and soul of America, the non-profit
organisation has been brought low by allegations of petty corruption and banal
self-dealing.
The suit,
filed in state court in Manhattan after an 18-month investigation, names the
NRA as a whole and four senior executives including Wayne LaPierre, the
executive vice-president who become the face of the NRA and frequently gives
pro-Trump, red-meat speeches to thunderous applause.
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.
North, a
retired lieutenant colonel infamous for the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s,
exited the NRA accusing LaPierre of behaving like a dictator. Chris Cox, the
NRA’s longtime lobbyist, quit after being accused of working behind the scenes
with North to undermine LaPierre.
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 is
subject to New York law because it is registered as a not-for-profit
organisation in New York, where it conducts most of its financial transactions.
In the
current toxic political climate, less than three months before an election, the
theatre of James, a female African American Democrat from the liberal bastion
of New York, seeking to dissolve the NRA will inevitably be seen through a
partisan prism. On Thursday the US president branded the lawsuit “a very
terrible thing”.
But
although the NRA has been seen by conservatives as a champion of the
constitutional right for ordinary Americans to keep and bear arms, the conduct
of its leaders has left many members with a sense of betrayal. The organisation
went from a surplus of almost $28m in 2015 to a $36m deficit in 2018 and has
been plagued by factional infighting and a legal battle with its longtime
advertising agency Ackerman McQueen.
Thomas
Laumann, 60, an NRA member since 1984, said on Thursday: “I don’t feel good
spending any of my hard earned dollars on an organisation that’s full of graft
and corruption. If they’re not out there defending the rights of the people or
advocating for safety, but just more advocating for lining their own pockets,
it’s almost like the politicians in Washington.
“Even if
half of what has been reported is correct, it’s still a terrible violation of
trust by members of the NRA. The people that are in charge are very powerful
and they’ve run roughshod over it and they’ve buried what has happened. The
only thing that would satisfy me would be for these individuals that I feel
have transgressed our trust as a group to leave the organisation.
“They’ve
alienated many, many young people that are strong proponents of all rights,
including our second amendment, and pushed them aside. The old guard that’s
there is not going to give in. It’s been their cash cow for decades. They’ve
done some good but I would say the news that’s come to light in the last two or
three years, I don’t trust them any more.”
Laumann, a
building and grounds supervisor from Wales, Wisconsin, added: “I understand the
mission but for all the money they’ve collected through charitable foundations
and donations and honorariums when people pass, I think they’ve greatly abused
it for personal gain. It’s disheartening that everyone we try to trust, that we
thought was doing right for the community, for the good of everyone, is now
become corrupt.”
More than a
hundred people are killed every day by gun violence in America. The NRA has
found its influence waning in the face of gun control groups such as Everytown
for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, funded by the billionaire and former New
York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
John
Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said: “Even casual observers
of the NRA can see that the organisation has changed over the last four decades
from a safety focused non-profit to a front group for gun manufacturers and a
personal piggy bank for its leadership. As attorney general James said today,
the NRA leadership was determined to loot the organisation’s assets.”
Shannon
Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, said: “I want to offer my thoughts and
prayers to the NRA,” – inverting a common Republican refrain after mass
shootings.
She added:
“The vast majority of NRA members actually support commonsense laws, like a
background check on every gun sale. It is the leadership, the organisation,
that has become so radicalised and they are propped up by greedy gun
manufacturers. The bottom line is that they accumulated wealth and power as a
special interest. They are certainly not a gun safety organisation.
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