LaPierre Says Appointing Monitor Over NRA Would Be ‘Knife in the Heart’ of Organization

Former NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre was back on the stand in a New York courtroom on Monday as Judge Joel Cohen heard testimony about whether or not he should appoint an independent monitor to oversee the group’s spending. LaPierre, who was ordered to pay back more than $4 million to the NRA by a jury in an earlier trial, told Cohen that if a monitor is appointed, it will essentially be the death knell for the 153-year-old organization.

In brief testimony Monday, LaPierre described the appointment of a monitor as an existential threat to the group because it would send a message to prospective members and donors that the NRA was “being surveilled by this attorney general in New York that they think has crossed a line.”

If the monitor is appointed, he said, “General James will have achieved her objective to fulfill that campaign promise of, in effect, dissolving the NRA for a lack of money and a lack of members.” 

LaPierre also told the judge that a ban on his involvement in the NRA would violate his First Amendment rights by preventing him from “being a voice for this organization in terms of its political advocacy.”

I firmly believe that New York Attorney General Letitia James launched a witch hunt against the NRA. She ran for AG on a platform of shutting down the NRA, well before she launched her official investigation. 

Unfortunately for LaPierre and other top officials, that investigation revealed real problems within the organization’s leadership, which the NRA has at times admitted, and on other occasions downplayed. And it’s a matter of opinion as to whether the appointment of an independent monitor would keep members away from the organization, or would reassure them that there are some outside eyeballs paying attention to the potential for further financial abuse. 

New EVP Doug Hamlin and NRA President Bob Barr have also urged Cohen to reject an independent monitor, but some reformers believe a monitor would help ensure accountability, and ultimately, “help to transform the NRA from being a big gun club (a gigantic board of directors, a president who can punish board members, finances that no one except the president’s or the EVP’s friends get to see, staff who can be fired on a whim or because they complained, etc.) into what it ought to be, a modern, organized, and powerful force for good.”

While LaPierre contends that appointing a monitor would seal NRA’s doom, the truth is that the NRA’s declining membership and dwindling donations didn’t happen simply because James launched an investigation into the group’s finances. I’d say it was what she discovered that gave members a reason to freeze their donations; millions of dollars of money that should have been spent on NRA programs that was instead diverted to expensive suits, private jet charters, and other questionable expenses on the part of LaPierre and other high-level executives. 

Defending those actions in court hasn’t been cheap. As The Reload’s Stephen Gutowski has reported, last year the group spent more money on administrative, legal, audit, and tax expenses than its legislative, public relations, shows, and safety training programs combined. Yet, on the stand in Cohen’s courtroom, Barr recently said that it’s a “question” as to whether or not the NRA will try to collect the $4.4 million dollars that LaPierre owes the NRA. 

That’s a huge red flag, in my opinion. How can the NRA ask members to come home and to once again financially support the organization when it hasn’t even tried to claw back the millions of dollars owed to it by its former executive vice president? How can NRA leadership proclaim that all of its previous problems with accountability and transparency have been resolved when its current president maintains that LaPierre was acting in good faith the entire time he was at the helm? 

Ideally, I too would prefer to see the NRA manage its financial affairs without an outside monitor looking over its shoulder. Unfortunately, despite the steps NRA members and some directors have taken to truly reform the organization, those efforts are still very much a work in progress, and appear to be meeting with resistance from some of the old guard who are still in positions of power and influence. In the end, that might be all that Judge Cohen needs to appoint a special monitor to oversee the NRA’s non-political spending.