This could mean the end of the NRA ~ fingers crossed! ~ Sooz

NRA busted giving Trump 9,259 times the legal limit: Bombshell campaign finance lawsuit
Bob Brigham / 24 Apr 2019 at 19:54 ET

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) was sued in federal court on Tuesday for allegedly failing to enforce campaign finance laws against the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Giffords, the nonprofit organization founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) after she survived an assassination attempt, sued the FEC for allegedly allowing the NRA to violate campaign finance law — including to help Donald Trump.

The new lawsuit, reported by BuzzFeed court and justice reporter Zoe Tillman, mentions the word “Trump” thirty-five times.

“Plaintiff’s complaints demonstrate that the National Rifle Association (“NRA”) violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by using a complex network of shell corporations to unlawfully coordinate expenditures with the campaigns of at least seven candidates for federal office, thereby making millions of dollars of illegal, unreported, and excessive in-kind contributions, including up to $25 million in illegal contributions to now President Donald J. Trump,” the lawsuit charged.

The lawsuit attempted to explain the scale of the alleged campaign finance violation.

“The illegal contributions to the Trump campaign alone are up to 9,259 times the limit set by Congress. Yet the Commission has taken no action on Plaintiff’s complaints,” the lawsuit said. “In light of this unlawful and unreasonable delay, Plaintiff files this action to compel the FEC to comply with its statutory duty to act.”

The lawsuit claims a “shell company” was created to bypass campaign finance law.

“By coordinating their advertising strategy in this manner, the NRA-PVF and the NRA-ILA have made up to $35 million in contributions to candidate campaigns since the 2014 election, in excess of the contribution limits, in violation of the source restrictions, and without the disclosure required under federal law. This includes up to $25 million in coordinated, illegal contributions to the Trump campaign in 2016,” the lawsuit argued.

Also on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported on the infighting at the NRA.

And Trump wasn’t the only Republican listed in the lawsuit. The lawsuit also named Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Montana state auditor Matt Rosendale, who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2018.

“Taken together, these facts demonstrate an elaborate scheme for the NRA to unlawfully coordinate with the candidates it supports for federal office, including Donald J. Trump, Thom Tillis, Cory Gardner, Tom Cotton, Ron Johnson, Matt Rosendale, and Josh Hawley, while evading detection of its violations of federal law concerning the coordination of advertising communications through common vendors,” the lawsuit argued.


https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/nra-busted-giving-trump-9259-times-legal-limit-bombshell-campaign-finance-lawsuit/

wait....Cory Gardner? is that the Colorado guy that barely won?

I don't think I will ever understand American campaign financing laws.

imperfect doesn't even come close

Some history background ~ a few "live links" in original ~ Sooz

History Repeats Itself: How Corruption Nearly Killed The NRA Twice
By Josh Kovensky / April 26, 2019 6:00 am

The National Rifle Association is in a multi-million dollar legal firefight with one of its own: Ackerman McQueen, the Oklahoma-based advertising firm behind NRATV.

The NRA portrays itself as an unwitting dupe in the April 12 lawsuit, alleging that its 40-year partner swindled it through contracts that allowed the ad firm to charge virtually unlimited expenses and potentially permitted current NRA president Oliver North to double-dip into the group’s finances.

The New Yorker followed up with a detailed report into the layers of mutual self-dealing between the NRA and Ackerman that have pushed it to the financial brink. According to the report, the gun lobbying giant is on the verge of insolvency after hundreds of millions of dollars flowed from gun owners’ memberships and donations into the pockets of NRA and Ackerman execs.

What’s missing from the picture is that today’s ongoing scandal is largely a repeat of a fiscal mismanagement fiasco that played out in the mid 1990s, featuring the same key players: Wayne LaPierre and Ackerman McQueen.

Today’s allegations about the NRA’s ties to Ackerman are “exactly the same” as what occurred in the 1990s, Jeff Knox, a lifelong gun rights advocate whose father, Neal, was an NRA board member who narrowly lost a 1997 vote to become the group’s president, told TPM.

“It’s not clear what we’re paying for, it’s not clear what we’re accountable to, we don’t have standards, and this needs to change,” Knox said.

Then, like now, the NRA was in a state of existential crisis. In 1998, a group of NRA board members delivered a 127-page packet of documents to the Federal Elections Committee demanding the prosecution of NRA management, while current New York state Attorney General Letitia James has floated probing the tax-exempt status of the organization, which is incorporated in the Empire State.

Ackerman did not return TPM’s request for comment, but has called the lawsuit “frivolous, inaccurate and intended to cause harm to the reputation of our company.”

“The NRA strives to comply with all applicable regulations and believes its control practices are fully compliant,” said NRA counsel William Brewer III in a statement to TPM. NRA Public Affairs managing director Andrew Arulanandam told TPM that the New Yorker piece was written by “a paid staff member of an anti-gun tabloid,” saying that it has concerns about the “accuracy of the reporting.”

Ackerman “created” Wayne LaPierre and the modern NRA

Ackerman’s enduring hold on the gun group can be explained in large part by its relationship with current NRA Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre, who has been with the organization for decades.

The NRA first retained the Oklahoma-based firm in the early 1980s to help move the brand away from its postbellum origins as a marksmanship group to become the nation’s foremost advocacy group for the untrammeled individual right to bear arms.

Successive insurrections within the group, starting in the 1970s, saw hardline gun activists come to prominence in the organization, with Ackerman hired to burnish that image.

Ackerman set to work on launching an aggressive mailing campaign to expand membership, pioneering the fear-inducing tactics that the NRA uses to bolster membership and contributions. It also built up the personal brand of LaPierre himself, a man whose bellicose public persona is contradicted by a shy and diminutive personal manner.

“Ackerman McQueen created Wayne,” John Aquilino, a former NRA spokesman told TPM, adding that they “fashioned him as a tough guy.”

Ackerman’s efforts worked. An ad campaign featuring celebrities like Tom Selleck and Ted Nugent holding their personal weapons with the slogan, “I am the NRA” was wildly popular, and LaPierre became something of a celebrity in his own right.

Discontent within the ranks

But some at the NRA were starting to grow suspicious of Ackerman’s influence and where the huge sums the ad firm was receiving were actually going. By the mid-1980s, the NRA’s in-house public affairs staff, including Aquilino, was ousted, and Ackerman was brought in-house at the NRA.

Former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman told TPM he saw this arrangement as a “built-in conflict of interest.”

“It never seemed right to me that they’d be willing to tell the client what the client needed, there was no review process,” Feldman said. “I felt for many, many years that Ackerman McQueen was far more important than the board of directors.”

Feldman’s suspicions proved to be well-founded.

A confidential audit submitted to the FEC showed Ackerman receiving $23.6 million in contracts from the NRA from 1993 to 1995, in part for radio shows and TV spots the group was buying. In a statement also submitted to the FEC, a group of NRA board members said that the audit showed that “cronyism was apparent between NRA and its major vendors such as the PR firm Ackerman McQueen,” adding that the company had never undergone “a competitive contract bidding process.”

Meanwhile, the NRA’s coffers were dwindling. A 1995 Associated Press story found that the NRA ran cumulative operating $69 million in deficits from 1991 to 1993. Between 1991 and 1994, the group’s assets reportedly dropped from $103 million to $47 million.

David Gross, an NRA board member during the period, told TPM that “the NRA membership was being harvested like a crop for private benefit.”

Neal Knox, then a board member, told LaPierre to fire Ackerman in 1996. Instead, the NRA signed a new contract with an Ackerman subsidiary called Mercury. That same year, Knox’s son Jeff recalled to TPM, his father began to push for LaPierre’s firing.

According to the affidavit filed with the FEC, Mercury President Tony Makris responded by recruiting actor Charlton Heston to run against Knox for an officer position in the 1997 NRA election.

“When you have Moses walk into your convention and say he’s running for the board, he’ll win,” Jeff Knox told TPM.

The Mercury higher-ups allegedly helped cast Knox as the fringier hardline candidate, and secured a Heston victory. With their man in place, former NRA executives told TPM, the advertising firm was allowed to maintain its hold on the group and continue to ratchet up its particular brand of fear-based advertising.

Three years after the election against Knox, Heston would famously use an Ackerman-made phrase to attack presidential candidate Al Gore on his pro-gun control stance, in the wake of the Columbine High School Massacre.

“I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: ‘From my cold, dead hands!'” Heston yelled at a 2000 rally.

What’s old is new again

The NRA’s current financial woes bear a striking similarity to what happened during that tumultuous period in the 1990s.

The 2019 lawsuit accuses the NRA of signing contracts with Ackerman under which the gun lobby would cover the ad firm’s “travel and related expenses.” The contracts also required the NRA to funnel money to additional third-party contractors working on NRA issues, and provide a “termination fee to cover severance payments” if the NRA’s relationship with Ackerman ended.

The terms of the contract emerged in part because the NRA has been conducting an internal investigation into whether Ackerman was systematically over-billing, potentially providing the gun lobby with inflated budgets. The NRA is seeking those documents as part of its investigation, which Ackerman allegedly refuses to turn over.

Oliver North, the organization’s president, is suggested to have signed a separate agreement with Ackerman under which the NRA would cover all of his costs, effectively allowing North to double-dip.

On top of that, the New Yorker story alleges that some of the NRA’s top vendors employed close relatives of the gun lobby’s executives, allowing money from top-dollar contracts to stay within the family, so to speak.

David Gross, a 1990-era NRA board member, recalled that during the scandal in that period, “everyone’s brother-in-law had a job providing services at a top rate.”

Documentation backs this up. The 1998 FEC affidavit accuses the lobby of “unethical, insider dealings” amid concerns that “vendors, gun manufacturers, and self-dealing board members have taken control of NRA to protect their vested interests.”

The affidavit goes on to say that “the NRA, through its public relations firm, could willingly accept inflated invoices and thus, overpay vendors,” and accuses LaPierre of failing “to follow the simplest of business procedures – having written agreements with vendors.”

Another parallel: heavy spending on media appearances. In the 1990s, a chunk of Ackerman’s spending went to publicity efforts on LaPierre’s behalf. The New Yorker story documents how NRATV — an Ackerman project — pays nearly $1 million per year to right-wing commentator Dana Loesch.

Brewer, the NRA counsel, pushed back on these allegations, saying that the NRA “has a conflict of interest policy and, where appropriate, related party transactions are reviewed and approved by a committee of independent directors.”

“Naturally, there are occasions where the NRA engages vendors who have a connection to NRA executives, employees or board members – but only when such an arrangement works in the best interest of the organization and its members,” Brewer said in the statement.

LaPierre deserves a good amount of the blame for allowing the NRA to basically relive the same scandal nearly thirty years apart, some former NRA executives say.

“He’s been Executive Vice President since 1991, so I think that’s a long enough time for him to take ownership of it,” Feldman told TPM.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/nra-lawsuit-new-financial-troubles-wayne-lapierre

And, how many times will history repeat itself before anything of substance happens to damper the NRA for good?

The NRA may just disappear up its own asshole. It's revenues are half what they were just three years ago. Their favorability ratings are dropping like a stone. Stories, like the opening post, of the corruption abounding in its executive ranks, it's ties to the Russians, it's abject failure to prop up the right wing in the mid-terms and some of it's stupid positions on gun control at the time of mass shootings have eaten deeply into it's financial and membership support. There have been reports that even some of the gun manufacturers are backing off on their support. It may not be long before it becomes an also ran in the gun sweepstakes of the U.S.

Jim wrote: "There have been reports that even some of the gun manufacturers are backing off on their support. It may not be long before it becomes an also ran in the gun sweepstakes of the U.S."

And the plot thickens ~ ~ a couple of "live links" in original ~ Sooz

NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre Claims NRA President Oliver North Is Extorting Him
By Josh Kovensky / April 26, 2019 6:10 pm

NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre says that the gun lobby’s president, Oliver North, is extorting him on behalf of the ad firm that operates NRATV, according to a letter the NRA chief sent to board members on Thursday.

LaPierre claims that North called one of his aides on Wednesday evening, threatening to send a letter containing “a devastating account of our financial status, sexual harassment charges against a staff member, accusations of wardrobe expenses and excessive staff travel expenses.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported the existence of LaPierre’s letter.

North purportedly told a LaPierre assistant that he wouldn’t send the supposedly damaging letter if he resigned his position as head of the organization and called off an April 12 lawsuit filed in Virginia against Ackerman McQueen, the gun lobby’s longtime advertising firm responsible for some of its most hair-raising campaigns.

Ackerman has also, since the 1990s, been accused by some NRA higher-ups of scamming the gun lobbying giant by systematically over-billing for its services.

The Virginia lawsuit brought by the NRA suggests that North had a separate financial arrangement with Ackerman that obligated the gun group to cover North’s “costs” for the firm while he was receiving a salary as NRA president.

North hosted a web series for NRATV called “American Heroes.” In the Thursday letter, LaPierre complains of “production shortfalls” in the series, and adds that Ackerman “appears to have responded indirectly” to the NRA’s complaints “by trying to oust me.”

The newspaper reported that after LaPierre sent his letter, North “sent his own letter to the board late Thursday evening, in which he said his actions were for the good of the NRA and that he was forming a crisis committee to examine financial matters inside the organization.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/nra-chief-wayne-lapierre-claims-oliver-north-is-extorting-him

couldn't happen to a nicer pair of guys.

Speaking of Oliver North, I wonder whatever happened to Fawn Hall. She was hot in a Farrah Fawcett sort of way.

What a surprise. Two crooks trying to out-crook one another.

Other reports say North admitted he was told he would not be "invited" to serve another term ~ ~ Sooz

WATCH: NRA’s Oliver North stepping down as power struggle roils organization
Tom Boggioni / 27 Apr 2019 at 11:28 ET

NRA President Oliver North said on Saturday he will not serve a second term and is stepping down after a bitter power struggle with executive director Wayne LaPierre.

According to USA Today, “North’s surprise move came after LaPierre charged that North, a controversial figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, was trying to drive him out of the organization. North, 75, was finishing out his first year as president this week. NRA presidents normally serve two consecutive terms in the unpaid position.”

You can read more here.

You can watch video of North’s letter being read at the NRA convention on Saturday morning below:


https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/watch-nras-oliver-north-stepping-power-struggle-roils-organization/

LaPierre is still IN, unfortunately.

macroscopic wrote:

LaPierre is still IN, unfortunately.

What unfortunately? With luck he'll keep filling his own pockets until he bankrupts the organization. Surely you aren't naive enough to believe that mob would replace LaPierre with somebody more reasonable about gun control even if they did can him. Better to bet on it's own corruption being it's undoing.

because he is a complete ass. I never wish complete asses well.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave ..." ~ ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

Turmoil creates ‘crisis’ conditions for the NRA
04/29/19 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 4/26/19, 10:16 PM ET, "Federal judge sentences Maria Butina to 18 months in prison", accessible via the end link.]

On Friday afternoon, as the National Rifle Association’s annual national gathering was getting ready to hear from the nation’s president and vice president, Russian agent Maria Butina was sentenced by a federal judge to 18 months in prison. Butina, of course, intended to influence conservative politics and the Republican Party, and she did so largely by focusing her efforts on the NRA.

At face value, that seemed like the sort of development that might’ve left a cloud over the far-right group’s convention. But as developments progressed, the Russian operative’s prison sentence was just the tip of the iceberg. As the Washington Post reported, “The typically bland corporate fare this year exploded with strife, including allegations of extortion, financial mismanagement and a leadership battle that have publicly overtaken all else at the event.”


On his way out the door, North, whose resignation was not voluntary, said in his resignation letter that there’s “a clear crisis” within the organization.

That seems like a fair assessment. Before his own ouster, North sought LaPierre’s resignation, accusing the group’s longtime leader of financial improprieties, including allegations LaPierre spent more than $200,000 on “wardrobe purchases … that were charged to a vendor.” There are reportedly additional questions surrounding the lack of transparency surrounding the NRA’s contract with Ackerman McQueen.

LaPierre retaliated, told the board North was trying to divide the organization, and North clearly lost the fight. That does not, however, mean the drama is over.

Steve Hart, the NRA’s longtime lawyer, was also suspended over the weekend, and that news coincided with an announcement from New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), whose office is now investigating the NRA’s tax-exempt status.

The NRA’s full board of directors is scheduled to meet today. Evidently, the board’s 76 members will have quite a few decisions to make – including choosing a new president to replace North.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/turmoil-creates-crisis-conditions-the-nra#break

A two-fer ~ first up, Josh Marshall's introduction/recommendation followed by an extremely disturbing expose of how the NRA tried to "fix its finances" ~ ~ "live links" in the originals ~ Sooz

EDBLOG
You’ve Got to Read This
By Josh Marshall / May 9, 2019 3:47 pm

We’re so thick into constitutional crises today. But you’ve got to read this piece by Josh Kovensky. It’s about how the NRA tried to save itself financially or at least open up a critical new revenue stream by hawking what is not unfairly called “murder insurance.” Basically, if you’re a good guy with a gun and you kill someone, who’s going to cover you expenses? It turns out that even on its own morally dubious terms it wasn’t very good insurance and not necessarily legal. But beyond that, the contractors who created the plans were branching out from old fashioned defending your home style ‘self-defense’ to more like free range out and about waiting for bad guys to show themselves sort of ‘self-defense’. Proactive self-defense. Call it George Zimmerman insurance. Anyway, it’s simultaneously hilarious and really horrifying and on top of all that the NRA seems to have lost some serious cash on it. Read the whole story here.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/youve-got-to-read-this


How The NRA’s Controversial Gambit To Fix Its Finances Backfired
By Josh Kovensky / May 9, 2019 6:00 am

The National Rifle Association emerged from its annual convention last week with a veneer of stability.

Its leader Wayne LaPierre managed to quash a takeover attempt by now-ousted President Oliver North, winning reelection as executive vice president in a unanimous vote of top board members.

But beneath the surface, the organization is in turmoil. New York Attorney General Letitia James is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into alleged financial mismanagement at the NRA, while the group is embroiled in a messy lawsuit with its longtime image-maker, Ackerman McQueen. The NRA sued the Oklahoma City-based ad firm last month to get documents as part of an apparent internal investigation into whether the firm has been siphoning money out of the gun lobby, allegations that Ackerman denies.

Then there’s Carry Guard. The program — which offers combat training and liability insurance for shootings carried out in “self-defense” — was founded in 2017 to keep money flowing into the NRA’s dwindling coffers after President Trump’s surprise election left gun owners assured that, for the time being, at least, no “jack-booted” government officials were coming for their firearms.

Instead, Carry Guard has become a financial liability of its own. Multiple states have banned the program and are investigating whether the NRA violated state law regarding the marketing and sale of insurance. In a lawsuit against Lockton, Carry Guard’s administrator, the NRA alleged it lost “tens of millions of dollars” from the program after relying on assurances that Lockton was complying with state law. Numerous NRA members took issue with the program’s “sloppy” rollout.

Gun control advocates even gave Carry Guard a nickname: “murder insurance.”

Rather than help the NRA shore up its finances, Carry Guard has become a symbol of the unprecedented public relations and legal woes plaguing the nation’s largest gun group.

The NRA did not reply to TPM’s repeated requests for comment. In lawsuits against the state of New York and its former insurance broker, the NRA said the accusations that it violated state law in marketing Carry Guard were part of a coordinated, politically motivated assault, and implied that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was using the case to intimidate Lockton and other insurers out of doing business with the NRA.

The Trace, an outlet devoted to gun-related issues, first revealed the scandals around Carry Guard.

From the NRA’s perspective, Carry Guard had real potential to be lucrative. Like many affinity groups, the NRA had long offered various forms of insurance to members, former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman told TPM.

Feldman called insurance sales a tremendous source of revenue for the NRA over the years, but that, under LaPierre’s watch, the drive to earn a profit off them was taken “to the extreme.”

LaPierre had “turned the NRA into a business,” he added.

NRA members — and numerous stories from The Trace — refer to Carry Guard as the “brainchild” of NRA member Josh Powell. Brought on as NRA chief of staff in 2016 from the world of high-end outdoor garments, Powell reportedly “billed” the program “as an integral part of securing the NRA’s finances well into the future,” a source “close to the NRA” told The Trace.

Court filings indicate that Powell began serious preparation on Carry Guard in late 2016. The final version of the product offered four tiers of protection, from a bronze plan providing $250,000 in protection from civil lawsuits and another $50,000 in criminal defense to gold plus, with $1.5 million in civil protection and an extra $250,000 for criminal defense.

The Trace quoted a former Ackerman McQueen employee as saying that “Carry Guard was pushed to the front after the election because they needed money.”

But the project appears to have failed in that task. Between 2016 and December 2018, when Powell was shifted to a new role handling legal strategy for the various lawsuits entangling Carry Guard, the NRA lost some $55 million in income, according to The Trace.

That period saw internal dissent over the program, with some NRA members seeing it as a potential scam, according to interviews with NRA members and publicly available posts.

Carry Guard’s liability insurance component only kicks in for criminal cases after an acquittal. Individual Carry Guard customers would have to cover the hefty costs of criminal defense out of pocket until they were acquitted, leading to accusations within the firearms community that the NRA was luring people into paying for a service unlikely to help them during the most expensive and consequential phase of liability.

NRA allies also raised red flags about Carry Guard’s marketing and training operations.

Beginning with its April 2017 launch, the NRA aggressively marketed Carry Guard as a way for gun-owning civilians to defend themselves at home and on the street, using military tactics.

The marketing campaign itself — an Ackerman McQueen production — used a group of former Navy SEALs and Army Rangers to hawk the program. The same former special forces operatives also worked as instructors for the Carry Guard trainings.

That prompted an outcry within the existing pool of NRA-certified firearms trainers. Most of them are NRA members with day jobs, who earn extra cash by running certification courses for different kinds of firearms, the most popular being a tactical defense course called basic pistol. They worried about the potential loss of income from military-style trainings, and about Carry Guard’s focus on teaching offensive — rather than defensive — tactics.

“How do you take Navy SEALS and Rangers, and apply that kind of training to civilians? The two don’t correlate,” trainer Bob Boilard, who wrote a widely-circulated post about how the program threw instructors “under the bus,” told TPM.

“Their rules of engagement on the battlefield are completely different than your rules of engagement on an American street,” another longtime instructor, who requested anonymity to speak candidly out of fear of retaliation from the NRA, told TPM.

Their concerns dovetail, in part, with the liability insurance element of Carry Guard. The law is relatively black-and-white when it comes to taking up arms to defend one’s home from an intruder, instructors told TPM. People maiming or killing others in the name of self-defense in public settings, however, raises a morass of legal questions.

“You can’t pull a gun and start shooting, there are statutory requirements,” the same longtime instructor said.

Carry Guard’s marketing appears to emphasize these outdoor, public encounters.

Here’s a screencap from a 2017 version of the website:


The website has since been updated to emphasize how the training courses focus on “defensive” tactical skills. But they still highlight apparently public encounters, as in this screenshot from the current version of the site:


A third NRA trainer, who certifies other instructors and also spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation, told TPM that “Carry Guard got more into military-type offensive stuff — it’s not for a civilian to go and learn to kick in a door and clear a room.”

No regulator has gone after Carry Guard for any violation related to its training courses.

Many states, however, have laws forbidding companies from marketing insurance policies without an appropriate license.

By October 2017, New York was investigating the NRA and the firms it hired to operate Carry Guard for breaking state law regarding the marketing and sale of insurance.

Within weeks, Carry Guard’s broker and administrator, Lockton, suspended its participation in the program in New York. Empire State officials banned the sale of Carry Guard insurance to New York consumers, and fined Chubb, the policy’s underwriter, and Lockton, for a total of $8.3 million.

Other states — including New Jersey, California and Washington — soon launched investigations of their own.

But the New York case has progressed the furthest. According to court documents reviewed by TPM, state regulators alleged that Carry Guard violated state law prohibiting insurance that covers holders who inflict bodily harm. An add-on offering a free one-year NRA membership to Carry Guard purchasers was also illegal, they said.

By April 2018, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) issued a notification urging businesses to reconsider their ties to the NRA.

The NRA has sued both Cuomo and Lockton, seeking to recoup revenues lost from the Carry Guard insurance program. The NRA accuses Cuomo of selectively pursuing the group as part of a “political vendetta” that discontinued other, non-Carry Guard insurance policies it had offered to New York State members for years.

But in the Cuomo lawsuit, the NRA admitted to hemorrhaging money since the Carry Guard investigations began, claiming that the state’s warning has seriously hindered its ability to do business.

“The NRA has encountered serious difficulties obtaining corporate insurance coverage, media liability coverage, and basic banking services,” the July 2018 document reads, going on to say that though the NRA has tried to find new business partners, “nearly every carrier has indicated that it fears transacting with the NRA.”

The group adds without the coverage, it would be unable “to continue its existence as a not-for-profit organization and fulfill its advocacy objectives.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/nra-carry-guard-murder-insurance-cost

Ugly ~ and gonna get uglier ~ personally, I can't think of any other group who deserves it all ... and more ~ ~ some "live links" in original ~ Sooz

BIG SPENDERS
Leaked Documents: NRA Racked Up $24 Million in Legal Bills
Docs show former president Oliver North warning that legal fees “pose an existential threat to the financial stability of the NRA.”
Betsy Woodruff / 05.11.19 2:56 PM ET

The NRA has racked up huge legal bills over the last year that threaten to debilitate the organization, according to documents posted anonymously online that appear to be written by the group’s ex-president Oliver North. The bills highlight the organization’s extraordinary legal challenges. A person close to the matter confirmed the authenticity of the documents to The Daily Beast. Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon was the first reporter to flag the documents on Friday.

Senior NRA officials disputed the documents’ claims but not their authenticity.

The documents include a confidential memo that North and NRA official Richard Childress sent to the NRA’s general counsel and audit committee chairman, dated April 18, 2019—the week before North was dramatically deposed as NRA president. (The NRA suspended its board’s longtime lawyer at the same time.) In the memo, North claimed to be “deeply concerned about the extraordinary legal fees the NRA has incurred” from outside attorney Bill Brewer. North and Childress then called for an independent review of Brewer’s invoices. Brewer has defended his fees in the past, telling the Wall Street Journal, “We’re a premium law firm, we make no bones about that.”

Lawyers for North did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reached by phone, Childress declined to comment.

“The Brewer invoices are draining NRA cash at mindboggling speed,” North and Childress wrote, adding that the fees “pose an existential threat to the financial stability of the NRA."

“This is a fiscal emergency,” they continued, “yet we have been unable to get management to engage an outside, independent review to ensure these bills are necessary and reasonable.”

The memo says Brewer charged the NRA $24,324,290 since they engaged him last year, and that some of that had been reimbursed as part of a settlement of litigation against an insurance company—leaving the NRA to pay $18.5 million.

North and Childress estimated that at the current rate, the NRA is racking up nearly $100,000 in legal bills every day—an eye-popping number.

“$97,000+ a day is a stunning amount of money for any organization to pay,” they wrote. “It cries for an outside, independent review.”

They also wrote that they made multiple requests for an outside review of the bills, including two of CEO Wayne LaPierre, who refused to order such an audit.

“If the bills are reasonable and properly documented, why the refusal to conduct an independent review?” they wrote.

They also said the Brewer firms’ engagement letter is “inconsistent with industry standards,” claimed the NRA doesn’t properly manage the firm’s work, questioned why the firm did not give the NRA a nonprofit discount, and claimed Brewer “personally” worked to stop an outside review.

Two top NRA officials pushed back against the memos’ claims in statements to The Daily Beast, arguing they come from an unreliable narrator and hinting they are part of a smear campaign targeted at LaPierre.

“The memo on the Brewer firm’s legal fees is inaccurate—it reflects a misinformed view of the firm, its billings, and its advocacy for the NRA,” says Charles L. Cotton, first vice president and chairman of the NRA’s Audit Committee. “The board supports the work the firm is doing, the results achieved, and the value of its services. Importantly, this relationship has been reviewed, vetted and approved.”

“This is stale news—being recycled by those with personal agendas,” she said in a statement. “In any event, the entire board is fully aware of these issues. We have full confidence in Wayne LaPierre and the work he’s doing in support of the NRA and its members. It is troubling and a bit pathetic that some people would resort to leaking information to advance their agendas. This has no bearing on the board’s support of Wayne—and the work the NRA does to protect America’s constitutional freedoms.”

Neither the NRA nor its outside counsel have disputed the authenticity of the leaked memo. Rather, they dispute its claims.

The fact that the memo leaked is significant; dozens of board members have had access to it for weeks, and it contains confidential allegations that may embarrass people close to the NRA.

The last two years have presented extraordinary challenges to the NRA, both from inside and out. After the election of President Donald Trump, donations to the association took a nosedive; the group brought in $55 million less in 2017 than it did in 2016, as The Daily Beast first reported.

Meanwhile, the conviction of Russian national Maria Butina for conspiring to act as a covert agent by befriending top NRA bigwigs put extraordinary pressure on the group. Working with Alexander Torshin—then an official with Russia’s powerful central bank, and now a target of U.S. sanctions—Butina built deep connections with people close to the group, and helped arrange a visit for some of their top officials to Moscow in December of 2015. On the trip, the NRA visitors hobnobbed with powerful Kremlin officials.

Butina’s activities drew media scrutiny and the Senate Intelligence Committee started investigating. The NRA has turned over reams of documents to the committee, which has not yet released any findings.

At the same time, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo discouraged the state’s financial institutions from doing business with the association. The group is chartered in New York, and its top officials say Cuomo’s move has hindered its ability to operate. The NRA responded to Cuomo’s move by suing him in federal court—litigation Brewer has worked on. They have notched important wins, including getting support from the ACLU and a green-light from a federal judge to move forward with claims that Cuomo violated the First Amendment.

On top of all that, New York Attorney General Letitia James has opened an investigation of the organization. And The New Yorker ran a detailed report suggesting the group could have run afoul of the state’s laws governing nonprofits. Expenditures through the association’s longtime advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen, have also drawn pointed scrutiny. The Wall Street Journal, also citing leaked documents, reported on Saturday that the firm helped pay for luxurious clothing and travel for LaPierre. Last month, the NRA sued the firm for documents about its expenses and bills. That litigation alleged North withheld details about his relationship with the firm from the NRA.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-documents-nra-racked-up-dollar24-million-in-legal-bills-3?ref=home

This alone should require shut down of all operations ~ ~ a few "live links" in original ~ Sooz

NRA under investigation for raiding $206 million from charitable foundation for political use: report
Matthew Chapman / 14 May 2019 at 21:20 ET

On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed a new bombshell allegation against the National Rifle Association: since 2010, the group has reportedly transferred $206 million from its charitable foundation, to stave off increasingly serious financial losses.

The transfers are now under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has sent letters to both the NRA and its foundation ordering them to preserve documents as part of the probe.

Both organizations deny they have done anything improper. But the revelations come on top of a long string of bad news for the powerful gun rights group.

In addition to declining membership and revenue under President Donald Trump, the NRA has faced a host of other accusations of self-enrichment, with several executives reportedly double-dipping and arranging personally beneficial vendor contracts with the organization’s now-estranged advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen.

CEO Wayne LaPierre has also reportedly billed the NRA for $267,000 in personal expenses, including international flights, limousine rides, an Italian lake resort, and an intern’s rent. This was detailed in documents allegedly leaked by former President Oliver North, who was ousted at the NRA’s Indianapolis convention earlier this month.

Meanwhile, the group’s legal woes are costing a fortune as well. The NRA is allegedly charging an outside counsel $97,000 a day as it fights a bevy of other investigations, as well as legal action by New York State against its “Carry Guard” gun owners’ liability insurance plan. Last year, the NRA suggested in a lawsuit against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that this battle posed an existential threat to the organization.

The latest allegations against the NRA’s use of charitable donations could potentially threaten its tax-exempt status in the state of New York.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/nra-under-investigation-for-raiding-206-million-from-charitable-foundation-for-political-use-report/

A den of snakes, one and all ~ ~ Sooz

In Widening Corruption Scandal, NRA Accused Of Funneling Funds To Board Members
By Josh Kovensky / June 10, 2019 10:01 am

NRA board members benefited from lucrative sweetheart details, according to fresh allegations of corruption surfaced in a Sunday Washington Post report.

The newspaper found that the gun rights non-profit directed money to 18 of the group’s 76 board members.

In one case, board member and ammunition manufacturer Pete Brownell sold $3.1 million in ammo and supplies to the NRA Foundation. Brownell resigned from the group’s board last month, and told the Post through a spokesman that the contract was vetted.

In another example, White House strategic communications director Mercedes Schlapp took home $80,000 in consulting fees while serving as a NRA board member.

The NRA board is tasked in part with overseeing the non-profit’s finances, and with approving deals between related parties. The allegations have attracted the attention of New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who is investigating whether the NRA has complied with state charities law.

Registered in New York since its 1871 founding, the NRA is subject to stringent state regulations which mandate that charities be run in the interests of the group’s stated mission, and not for the benefit of insiders.

The self-dealing allegations come as the group undergoes a messy breakup with its longtime ad firm Ackerman McQueen, an Oklahoma City-based company that runs NRATV and has worked with the NRA for decades.

The NRA sued Ackerman in April, alleging in part that its then-President Oliver North had signed a separate contract with the ad firm.

The Daily Beast reported on Monday that the NRA’s audit committee sent North an ultimatum last month. The committee told the former Iran-Contra figure that his contract with Ackerman constituted a “conflict of interest,” suggesting that he needs to decide whether to continue on the NRA’s board or stick with Ackerman.

North’s involvement with Ackerman stems from a web series he hosts for NRATV. The non-profit has raised questions regarding whether North’s contract for the series was improper.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/nra-corruption-allegations-money-board-members

Here's more detail ~ ~ Sooz

NRA faces new allegations about its spending practices
06/10/19 12:51 PM
By Steve Benen

In late April, as former NRA president Oliver North was ousted from his post, North said in his resignation letter that there’s “a clear crisis” within the right-wing organization.

That assessment is increasingly easy to believe. The Washington Post reported this morning on many of the National Rifle Association’s unpaid board members benefiting financially from the group.


While the NRA denied any wrongdoing, the Post spoke to Douglas Varley, an attorney who specializes in tax-exempt organizations. “In 25 years of working in this field, I have never seen a pattern like this,” Varley said. “The volume of transactions with insiders and affiliates of insiders is really astonishing.”

If this were the only sign of trouble for the organization, it might be easier to shrug off. But given the avalanche of questions surrounding the NRA’s use – and alleged misuse – of its resources, it’s hard not to see the latest revelations as part of a bigger picture.

Matt Stieb put together a helpful summary:


I’d just add at the New York Times also reported last month, “As the gun rights group lavished pay and perks on its leaders and partners, fueling infighting, it increasingly relied on its own charity for funds. Tax experts have questions.”

Whether, and to what extent, NRA donors will be alarmed by any of this remains to be seen. But the Washington Post talked to Karl Malone, a retired basketball star and prominent NRA supporter who expressed concern.

“If these allegations are correct and 18 board members received pay, you’re damn right I am,” he said. “If it’s correct, the members who pay their dues should be damn concerned, too.”

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/nra-faces-new-allegations-about-its-spending-practices