NRA EVP and CEO Wayne LaPierre has just published a piece at Americas1stFreedom.org defending himself and the Association against the lawsuit that’s been filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The lawsuit — which LaPierre calls “a transparent attempt to score political points and attack the leading voice in opposition to the leftist agenda” — seeks the repayment of tens of millions of dollars James claims were wrongly paid to LaPierre and other NRA officers as well as the dissolution of the Association.
There’s really nothing new here. According to LaPierre, it’s all just a baseless partisan attack and Governor Andrew Cuomo and AG James can’t be allowed to succeed.
As LaPierre writes:
In 2018, James infamously vowed to “target the NRA” and “investigate the legitimacy of the NRA as a charitable organization” while on the campaign trail, before spending even one day in office and without any evidence of compliance failures. She called us a “criminal enterprise” and a “terrorist organization.”
Therefore, it was no surprise when James undertook an investigation of the NRA immediately after assuming office.
And now, despite an avalanche of evidence regarding the financial stability of our Association, years of clean audits by independent CPAs, and commitment to good governance, James filed a legal action against the NRA. She seeks to dissolve our Association and force us to close its doors.
It’s all so pathetic. And predictable.
In fact, years ago, NRA board member Tom King was privately warned by then NYAG Eric Schneiderman that an attack was being engineered against the NRA. An “investigation” of our Association – from the highest levels of government – was on the horizon. That seems like a political nightmare that could only happen in a place where people live without our constitutional freedoms. But it happened right here – in America.
And yet despite this, NRA brass made no attempt to move the Association’s charter from virulently anti-gun New York to a friendlier state. As for any wrongdoing, LaPierre says he took care of all of that.
If there was any wrongdoing, I took swift, decisive action.
We terminated vendors and removed disgraced former partners and employees who abused the trust that was placed in them by the NRA. Many of these bad actors threatened me with a smear campaign, and then had the nerve to execute it when I would not succumb to their demands. I certainly paid a heavy price in the public arena.
These were hard but principled decisions. And I stand by every decision we’ve made in support of you, our members.
And Wayne pledges to fight on.
I know many of you are following these fights, and you are as troubled as me that we have to have them.
But the NRA is well governed, financially strong, and committed to good governance.
We will not back down during this time: this is our moment of truth. …It doesn’t matter if it is the First Amendment or the Second. These are your constitutional freedoms, and we will defend them with energy and passion. You have a right to free speech and free association with others who share your desire to preserve the right to keep and bear arms. These are the freedoms that define you … and define the spirit of America.
Read the whole thing here.
We are not troubled these fights must continue. WLP is though, and that sucks. Fuck the NRA. Zero tolerance or GTFO.
Going gets tough and all you can do is drop a F-bomb as you flew the coup…pathetic.
“gun control is racist… Democommie… Trump forever… Muh NRA….” -Debbie
Pathetic.
Probably be best that Wayne step down. He’s had a long run and due to members losing their faith in his credibility – it would probably be best he step down.
That said, you sir should pull your head out. You wouldn’t have any guns if it weren’t for the NRA and possibly even Wayne’s efforts in the 90s to transform the NRA into a pro gun control fudd zone into actually fighting for rights through organizing, fighting legislation, and lawsuits in the courts.
This is a quintessential example of a straw man:
She said none of that. You created it out of thin air, claimed it was her position, and then knocked it down. It wasn’t a refutation. It wasn’t a counter argument. It was lame.
So let’s get back to pulling your head out. There is a reason the left is targeting the NRA with lawsuits such as these. Reach up to your head and start winding that spring. When it’s all wound up – let go. Think about this for me minute. Why…Why… would the left be targeting the NRA with a lawsuit such as this now? Think about it for a bit and let me know.
Meanwhile, while you guys complain about the NRA, and likely do nothing to fight for gun rights, and likely donate nothing to fight for gun rights, I’ll still be sending them some money. So you and the rest of the weirdos here can get you some of that. Please complain more. The more you complain, the more money I’ll send them.
^careless now, you don’t want ol’ wayne posting here.
I looked in the dictionary. Saw your picture beside asshole. uugh.
Last time I laughed that hard I fell off my dinosaur.
WLP is a liar and as bad as the Globalist Stooges like the near illiterate Attorney General Letitia James who read the indictment against him and the NRA.
Resign, Wayne, and take Meadows and the rest of your stooges with you.
Wayne is the one destroying the NRA
Which is what he wants I think. If he can’t have the NRA and the millions of dollars it comes with, no one can.
wonder if they’d go away if he did?…just thinkin’ out loud……
I have more reasons to be upset over donation mismanagement than most on this forum. However this lynch mob mentality amongst the forum’s finger pointing cut and run crybabies is despicable. Instead of fighting for better days ahead it’s f the NRA and go join this and that puritan approved organization.
I am not and never was a fair weather friend of the NRA. I did not join because of Wayne et al I joined on the behalf of the 2A and anyone on their way out the door who does not like it can eat sht.
Uh-huh. I was a member, decades ago. Adult life demanded my attention, and I let membership slide. I’ve pretty much always supported the NRA, albeit, not so much financially. But, LaPierre has been in the news, for years now. None of the news has been very good.
I don’t claim to have followed the drama very closely, but I know that when smoke is billowing form a building, there is a fire inside, somewhere. The NRA has been on fire for years, and no one has bothered to call the fire department.
IMO, the NRA is probably a lost cause. Those “tens of millions” that LaPierre was going to spend on 2nd Amendment lobbying this year? I’m not seeing them, anywhere. I’m afraid that LaPierre and company have appropriated all those tens of millions, for their own use – including legal fees. Funny that – legal fees all go to one place? Hmmmmm . . .
I only wish that James had gone after LaPierre and a dozen others, personally, rather than taking aim at the NRA itself. But, if wishes were horses, we’d all be at the rodeo . . .
You support an organization that has supported every federal gun control law that has ever passed. I became interested and started taking action in gun politics in the early 90’s and right off the bat i watched the NRA sell us out on the AWB. Later I learned the NRA had supported the GCA and NFA. I was never a supporter and never will be. In 2008 I began to learn how NRA acted on the state level, opposing or ignoring state organizations efforts and then swooping in to claim credit and get in the photo op if the state organization succeeded anyway. And let’s not forget 2010 when they supported a campaign finance reform bill that would have forced all other pro gun organizations to dox their own members and donors, but specifically exempted NRA. My disdain for the organization has little to do with WLP. He has added corruption to the list of NRA sins but none can compare with their support of gun control since at least 1934. Negotiating Rights Away was using and abusing their supporters long before WLP came along.
Thank you.
I love how he thinks firing vendors is the appropriate action for the internal corruption of which he is part.
That’s called “tampering with evidence”; “hiding the bodies.”
Does he deny the accusations or just have a problem with motivation? Everyone deserves their day in court so to speak and we’d like to see the boks opened so members who paid the dues Can see what has been going on.
Did I miss the part where he said “I don’t know that woman, Ms Lewinsky”?
He was out smoking a cigar that was in a ‘special’ humidor.
There was a rumor the cigar was later given to the Chinese Ambassador. No comments on the flavor.
Did he really brag about canceling and terminating anybody and everybody who complained about him?
Maybe when the Marxists finish taking over, he can be director of the Ministry of Truth.
We terminated vendors and removed disgraced former partners and employees who abused the trust that was placed in them by the NRA.
Yes, yes, he without doubt did. And Wonderland’s Queen of Heart’s just ran through my head.
WLP needs to step down.
Sorry Wayne, you used our donations as a feeding trough of greed for you and your cronies. We’re always told as gun owners that the law is the law, don’t like it get it changed. You broke laws, and will have all your legal bills covered by the NRA donations too. Wayne has to go. And the contract he had for his services after he retires for $17,000,000 needs to be pulled somehow. Most of us are more pissed at the huge waste of money by the top NRA people, than this lawsuit. It’s gonna show more egregious spending Im sure. Politicians pass anti gun laws, and Wayne LaPierre and his cronies beg for donations to fight gun bills, and then spend the money on travel and living the high life. Honestly in a just situation, Wayne LaPierre would be hung right next to the corrupt politicians he ran with. All non tax laws for lobbying and 501 groups need to be reeled in. They are nothing but slush funds for the politicians to get handouts. What’s wrong with the NRA is a microcosm of what’s wrong with our politics and DC.
You know, what you say is true. WLP is guilty of nothing that congress critters, high level Federal bureaucrats, and other swamp dwellers wouldn’t do. He is just part of the DC ecosystem that he emerged from, when hired by NRA. I spent some time traveling to DC supporting various projects I was working on in the late 80s, where I was in the proverbial “fly on the wall” position and then one trip in the mid 90s a little farther up the food chain, observing that things were getting worse. After these experiences nothing I have heard was going on there since shocks me. It’s all about the money and morality, or rather lack of morality.
LaPierre Laval stands in a burning building and says “this is fine”.
I never thought WLP was honest or ethical.
No matter what he says, this all happened under his watch. So he needs to go, whether he decides to accept responsibility or not. And it will be not.
He also will not go.
Wayne, we spoke many years ago when we were both younger. I now would like to speak to you again. I would request strongly that you depart from the NRA and stop using donor monies to fight to clear yourself. You are long past that. Your time is completed and now someone else less power hungry needs to return the NRA back to the members. You spoke the truth to me thirty years ago and now the only truth I wish to hear is that you are leaving.
I don’t think Wayne reads this comment section.
I am Wayne and I did indeed not read his comment.
An open letter is a rhetorical device, so it doesn’t really matter if the addressee actually reads it.
The NRA is not fighting to defend civil rights. The NRA is not fighting to expand civil rights. They play lip service to the 2A when they support the 4H or women’s shooting. That support is good. But its just a drop in the bucket.
WLP needs to go. And replace every board member with new people.
And cut the board to 10-15 members. No reason for more.
….and get the hell out of New York!!!!!!!!!
10 members max.
I’m afraid that absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
74 board members? Are you kidding me? Name one, just one major organization with half that many board members.
You will never get anything done, and the deep state will be forever entrenched until death do they part. After the last upheaval involving Harlan Carter, the incoming made sure that that was fixed to their benefit.
What has Marian Hammer done for us lately? I am not denying that she’s done some very good things for the sportsman in Florida. but it would appear the amount of money that she is taking in is………. Obscene.
I like Ted Nugent, his music and his opinion on things. But tell me, what has he done for the organization lately?
You can rinse and repeat this question for roughly 65 other members of the board. I have no clue what they do, what they did or what their platform is?
I’m one of the few people that I suspect actually reads the ballot and the biographies. I get a headache about my ballot every year.
Heck, if I was in the food service business I would want the contract for the coffee and donuts for the NRA meetings. One could make a pretty good living with that!
The sad part is that all of this comes at the worst possible time for our organization. We need this on needed BS like we need another hole in the head, 90 or so days away from the most important election of our lifetimes.
God help all of us!
“…if I was in the food service business I would want the contract for the coffee and donuts for the NRA meetings. One could make a pretty good living with that!”
Only if the board actually showed up. I’ve seen the attendance record, and it’s dismal.
“Name one, just one major organization with half that many board members.” If a BoD can be said to perform legislative functions, Congress and nearly every Legislature exceeds that number… Wait, they’re all corrupt, too. Good point, then.
The only think of LaPew’s that I will read is his resignation letter.
Come on Wayne, just retire and take your cronies with you. Let others pick up the pieces.
(You can bet that comments are not allowed on the site where WLP posted his note)
This would be funny except for the timing. If the whole org.can be dissolved because of some bad actors then most all gov. fed. state and local needs to go. Talk about bad and it’s not an act.
Didn’t read. Don’t care. FWLaP
God bless you WLP, NRA, and the USA.
Wow! Every comment said Wayne should go. This is what I used to call a clue. It’s been a long time since I saw a positive comment on any blog about WLP. If the accusations are true then I regret to say I have to support the NY AG and he should go to prison. Resign Wayne, for the good of the organization.
Everyone but Debbie
Lol.
And me. The 2nd is indeed fortunate that the entire collection of gun dumb-assery is collected tight here in the comments section of TAG. A tempest in a teapot regarding expense reports and compensation is all these Soros plants need to go straight to where they believe they have found a meeting place for actual 2nd amendment supporters. Instead, it’s just a bitch fest for folks that know better how to do anything that haven’t ever done a damn thing.
If fact, it’s just people pissed off that somebody somewhere makes more than they do.
The NY AG loves you, as well she should, since if she stopped suddenly, your heads would have to be surgically removed from her ass.
And me. And many many other who didn’t bother commenting because they aren’t going to attempt to argue with idiots.
AG James is engaged in a partisan attack on the NRA. WLP and others wasted 10’s of millions of NRA funds, were negligent if their fiscal duties, and probably committed several crimes in the process. Both of these can be true simultaneously.
I note that WLP presented no evidence refuting any of the allegations. The only truth in WLP’s statement is if you consider “abused the trust that was placed in them by the NRA” to mean opposed WLP and tried to make the execs accountable for the damage they caused to the NRA.
^retardation
Yeah, sure, we know these actions are partisan political attacks. That’s as obvious as the sun rising in the east, setting in the west. No news there.
Problem is that Wayne La Pierre is in fact corrupt. He is destroying the NRA, bankrupting the NRA and his cult of personality has so far been protecting him in all his bad deeds.
I hope these legal actions succeed in booting WLP and his fellow travelers to the curb. Or better yet, into a prison cell.
If this shuts down the NRA in legal and financial terms I think we can trust a lot of well heeled POTG to rebuild, and to act quickly to do so. Meanwhile we have other groups that are very active and deserve your donations.
National organizations:
https://gunowners.org/
https://www.saf.org/
https://www.firearmspolicy.org/
And look up your state organizations!
https://azcdl.org/
WLP is the biggest abuser of all. How much money has the NRA spent defending Wayne? This woman made a campaign promise to use the full power and budget of her department to destroy what many in NY see as a political enemy. NRA should have been gone from NY and out of her reach over two decades ago! Why is it that Wayne prevented this from happening? I for one think he owes the NRA restitution for the money he misspent and for the money spent to defend his questionable spending habits.
Earlier today I gently advised an NRA fundraiser that I can no longer give NRA money while Wayne still receives money from NRA and that my donations go to GOA and SAF. It looks like Wayne and his bunch are going to ride that horse full tilt until it dies from exhausting all the money.
The NRA Might Be Weakened. Gun Rights Voters Are Not.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/08/nra-gun-rights-voters-392604
Ironically, Wayne is part of the big political swamp we’re trying to drain. He’s been in his position since 1991 for god’s sake! Typical career politician mindset. A fresh new face and a clean slate are sorely needed.
The left would want to dissolve the NRA regardless of who was in charge.
Wayne is doing more damage to the organization than anyone else.
Gun owners need a strong NRA. Something that is more likely to be a thing of the past.
Wayne needs to go.
WLP”S RESPONSE IS L;IKE WILLIE SUTTON SAYING HE ROBBED BANKS BECAUSE THEY FORECLOSED ON HOMES!!!!
Pay attention to your state’s gun laws, those are the ones that get you into trouble and no groups lobby the different states. They are still allowing ownership or keeping of arms but restricting it more and more to where it will have to remain in your home. “Open carry” being outlawed in many states will require you to have a CCW to take it out to your vehicle and a CCW can be denied. States with democrat governors are the ones with most laws and restrictions and are passed without a vote from the People.
And after all that NRA effort in the recent California victory, FWLP deserves a new suit!
I agree…. an orange one with D. O. C. stenciled across the back
If it is a baseless political attack, then it won’t succeed. The NRA is strong — I trust that they’ll overcome it.
When you refuse to allow the BOD access to ALL of the financial records you are most assuredly NOT committed to good governance. That is, in fact, the opposite of good governance. There are very few motivations for doing that, and none of them are good.
I left the NRA after WLP’s first year at the top. It became obvious his vision for the NRA was motivated by money and not defending the most important Civil Right enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Under WLP, the NRA has become a hindrance to the 2nd Amendment at best and a for at worst.
Dissolve it andbinvestigate the principal’s for criminal offenses.
Then reform it with true supporters in a state that believes in cherishing all Civil Rights.
My 2 cents. You opinion may differ and that’s ok with me.