Government

Wayne LaPierre Admits Living High On NRA's Dime, But Claims Only He Can Keep 'Charity' Solvent

Mistakes were made. Expensive ones.

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The National Rifle Association is not bankrupt. In fact, the NRA boasts on its own website that it’s in its “strongest financial condition in years.” Nonetheless, the organization filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 15 in the Northern District of Texas in a bid to reorganize itself right out of a prosecution by the State of New York for appalling self-dealing and fiscal mismanagement.

Or, as the NRA puts it (again, on its own website), “This action is necessitated primarily by one thing: the unhinged and political attack against the NRA by the New York Attorney General.”

As of today, the NRA is a 501(c)(4) registered in New York. But it hopes to reincorporate in Texas, working on the assumption that Texas AG Ken Paxton is unlikely to concern himself with how the gun group spends donor money.

In August, New York filed a state suit against the charity and its managers, including LaPierre, outlining $64 million in alleged misspending, multiple instances of undisclosed contracts with related business entities (i.e. money flowing from the charity to board members and their families), and lavish gifts from vendors to board members.

Here are just a few of the more egregious examples:

  • $13.5 million for Wayne LaPierre’s private travel consultant between August 2014 and January 2020, much of it disbursed with no written contract;
  • Josh Powell, the chief of staff saw his own salary increased from $250,000 to $800,000 in less than two years, but still managed to pay his wife $30,000 a month in consulting fees and claim tens of thousands more in inappropriate expenses;
  • Millions of dollars in private jets to ferry LaPierre and his family around the country;
  • Almost $300,000 of clothes for LaPierre from the Beverly Hills Zegna;
  • Tens of thousands of dollars in hair and makeup spent on Mrs. LaPierre’s “glam squad”;
  • Annual family forays to the Bahamas on the luxury yacht belonging to a vendor who did $100 million of business with the NRA;
  • $1.4 million for an IT company authorized by the treasurer, who failed to disclose a personal relationship with the owner of said company;
  • Five years of $30,000 per month “consulting fees” for the same treasurer upon his retirement, authorized by LaPierre with no Audit Committee or board oversight.

Not a great look for a charity. Nor was it helpful when LaPierre testified in a deposition that he just had to take those trips on the vendor’s yacht — complete with fuel, food, crew, four staterooms, a hydraulic swim platform, and two wave riders — for his own safety after school children were murdered in their classrooms.

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LAWYER: Okay. What was your last stay on Illusions?

LaPIERRE: I think it was sometime in 2018 after the Parkland shooting in the summer.

LAWYER: When was your first stay on the yacht Illusions?

LaPIERRE: I think it was after the Sandy Hook shooting, the summer after the Sandy Hook shooting.

LAWYER: How many times did you go on the yacht Illusions in the Bahamas?

LaPIERRE: I probably went once — one time a year where we could go and be safe for the — from the Sandy Hook shooting up until 2019.

LaPierre acknowledged that the value of the vacation “probably” exceeded the IRS cap of $300 on gifts from a vendor, but justified it as a necessary workaround for a “totally unique situation that I think hardly anybody else in the US experienced that type of threat, other than maybe the president.”

This week, the bankruptcy hearing got underway in the virtual courtroom of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlan Hale, with New York arguing that the court should reject the bankruptcy petition, or, in the alternative, to appoint a trustee to oversee the charity.

“A trustee is in fact a death sentence,” NRA lawyer Greg Garman said on Tuesday, calling LaPierre an “irreplaceable asset” because only he can raise the $100 million needed every year to keep the organization afloat.

And yet, LaPierre regularly failed to adhere to laws and standards which ensure appropriate use of charitable dollars. Under questioning, he admitted that the NRA’s board or general counsel only found out about the bankruptcy filing after the fact; that he never told them he was going to establish Sea Girt, LLC as a shell company to gain a toehold in Texas; that he routinely failed to review expenses before signing off on them; that he hadn’t filled out mandatory conflict of interest disclosure forms for years; and that he’d been “disciplined,” by which he meant he’d had to return $300,000 improperly expensed to the charity.

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He also continued his testy testimony, earning multiple rebukes from the court for his non-responsive answers.

“This whole thing is a contrived narrative,”  he snapped at one point during questioning.

Boy, that guy’s really going to need to get away for a little R-n-R after this. Good thing he knows a guy with a boat, huh?

NRA Bankruptcy [Docket via Court Listener]
NRA’s Wayne LaPierre Concedes He Was Disciplined for ‘Excess Benefits’ on Second Day of Bankruptcy Testimony [Law & Crime]
NRA leaders defend bankruptcy petition in court hearing, saying the move is necessary to protect the gun lobby’s existence [WaPo]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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