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NRA May Be Shooting Itself In The Foot With Out-Of-Control Legal Bills

Bill Brewer's apparently charging them $97K a day.

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The NRA appears to be in utter disarray. They’ve had a failed palace coup, state regulators are closing in, and the group is openly admitting that they’re running out of money. A key factor in all of these problems may be their lawyer, Bill Brewer.

Brewer is known for his tenacity, but NRA insiders are starting to wonder if Brewer’s zealousness is driving the organization toward bankruptcy. A new ProPublica report dishes on some hefty legal bills over at Gun Central.

The statement [from former senior employee, Emily Cummins] lays out a list of allegations regarding Brewer’s legal work and his treatment of NRA staff as questions surfaced about his law firm’s billings, which totaled $24 million over a 13-month period. In the first quarter of 2019, Brewer’s firm charged over $97,000 per day, according to internal NRA documents posted anonymously online.

Normally, stories about how much attorneys charge are little more than pearl-clutching overreactions. But $97K every single day is actually eye-popping.

“I witnessed what appeared to be unrealistic and duplicative billing from Bill Brewer,” Cummins wrote. “I witnessed that Bill Brewer himself created a 2018 cash flow crunch by interfering with accounts payable to prioritize paying himself immediately versus other NRA vendors that had been providing goods or services for months without payment, also jeopardizing the NRA’s biweekly staff payroll.”

I doubt the bills were “unrealistic and duplicative” but there’s definitely room to be overaggressive that lay observers might perceive as duplicative. Still, Brewer is no stranger to getting sanctioned, so it’s easy for people to jump to the least charitable read of a hefty bill.

This month, four NRA board members publicly called for an “independent review of the millions of dollars in payments to Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors for legal fees.” But other NRA senior officials continue to defend the group. Carolyn Meadows, the NRA’s president, told ProPublica, “I have never worked with an outside law firm that is more on call, attentive and positively in tune to the needs of their client.” Charles Cotton, the NRA’s first vice president and chairman of the audit committee, added that Cummins’ allegations “reflect a misinformed view of the Brewer firm, its billings, and its advocacy for the NRA.”

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Former NRA President Oliver North was one of those seeking an audit of Brewer’s bills. He got wished into the cornfields for his efforts. No matter how much internal pressure bubbles up against Brewer’s billings, the NRA’s core leadership unit is steadfast in its support.

And they sound like they will be all the way to the poor house.

New Documents Raise Ethical and Billing Concerns about the NRA’s Outside Counsel [ProPublica]

Earlier: Federal Judge Wants To Hear Why Bigtime Attorney Said He’d Never Been Sanctioned… When He Was TOTALLY Just Sanctioned

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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