NRA3

1/19 end game/days?

see Butina (sent 18 mos)

foreign sauer baretta

no merri

see nraTV nutbags

see wayne lapierre resign 1 day before trial?

see dorr 2a absolutism no compromise

see kid killer #1 cause, see mass school shooing

might have missed some?

---

mma Tags: NRA

1 26 ggl ai

NRA and Foreign Donations: The National Rifle Association (NRA) has confirmed that it accepts foreign contributions, but states these funds are raised and spent within legal bounds and not used for election purposes.

AN 12 24

NRA 'a shell of what it once was' and even Trump has 'lost faith' in the group: report

---

Douglas Hamlin is the National Rifle Association's new leader, appointed this summer to pull it out of its endless corruption scandals. The Guardian reports that Hamlin, with four others, pleaded no contest to the torture and killing of a house cat, BK, in 1980. It apparently took time to figure out his involvement because "the charges were ultimately expunged from the men's records after they completed 200 hours each of animal-related community service."

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. The house cat was captured, its paws were cut off, and was then strung up and set on fire. The killing, which occurred in December 1979, was allegedly prompted by anger that the cat was not using its litterbox.

The case caused such a furore locally that some students and animal rights activists wore buttons and armbands in memory of BK.

Here's Shelagh Abbs Winter, the student who turned him in then and now an animal rights activist: "Once a creep, always a creep."

Some people just don't get that these guys are bona fide sadists and there might soon be very little standing between them and what gets them off.

---

soto dissent said simple, quack duck vs clarence nerdy trivia

BB 6 24

after a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas and hurt hundreds more using a bump stock to automate his rifle fire into the crowd, then-president Donald Trump banned the devices. The U.S. Supreme Court today lifted that ban, with Justice Clarence Thomas (R—Harlan Crow) saying that firearms with bump stocks do not meet the Federal definition of a machine gun irrespective of their rate of fire.

The 6-3 vote fell on ideological lines, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor voicing her dissent: "When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck." In his concurrence with the majority, Justice Samuel Alito conceded that in "practical terms" a weapon equipped with a bump stock is a machine gun but that it was down to Congress to ban them.

The ruling does not lift state bans on bump stocks; eighteen states have done so. The NRA briefly supported the federal ban, sensing public fury at the massacre, but returned to opposing it when no serious political support for gun reform emerged.

===

Trump blasted for suggesting Biden 'would have been given the electric chair' at NRA convention - Alternet.org

NRA BANKRUPT 86'D $270k SILK ITAL SUITS BEVERLY HILLS

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nra-president-wayne-lapierre-resigns-days-before-trial-begins

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https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-senator-prayers-nashville-victims/

sen. Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday she is "heartbroken" over the Nashville school shooting that resulted in the deaths of six people, although the lawmaker's campaign received $1.3 million from the National Rifle Association (NRA).

On Wednesday Blackburn tweeted, "My heart is broken over the unspeakable evil that occurred Monday at The Covenant School in Nashville, and my family and I are grieving along with those who lost loved ones. Now is a time for our community to come together in prayer and lift one another up."

Following the Monday shooting, the senator tweeted, "Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. My office is in contact with federal, state, & local officials, & we stand ready to assist. Thank you to the first responders working on site. Please join us in prayer for those affected."

READ MORE: Tennessee governor slammed after 'praying' for Nashville community without mentioning mass shooting

According to Politico, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Blackburn's tweet, saying, "You received $1,306,130 in donations from the NRA. You voted against the most recent bipartisan gun package in June. If you're so 'ready to assist' -- start by doing your joband passing commonsense gun laws that will help prevent tragedies like the one today."

Politico also reports:

Blackburn voted against the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June, stating that the gun control bill 'would erode Americans' constitutional right to bear arms.' The measure provides grants for states to implement so-called red flag laws, which allow for the temporary confiscation of firearms from individuals who are deemed threats to themselves or others, as well as other crisis intervention programs.

Twitter users found the NRA-funded senator's heartbreak hard to believe.

@majastein1: "This is going to be another wonderful photo op. so heartbroken so mournful so shocked full of patriotism full of Christian spirit sponsored by the @NRA $ 1.3 million Marsha?"

READ MORE: 'Furious' Gen Z lawmaker delivers blistering remarks to GOP following Nashville school shooting

Dana Goldberg: "Did you want to donate all the money you get from the NRA to support mental health reform and safer gun laws in your state? Or just sending thoughts and prayers instead of a check?"

Skinsurrection: "Okay, so sponsor some AR-15 legislation."

grandmabear44: "Not broken enough to refuse NRA blood money."

Timmy Hogan: "No, Marsha now is the time for gun reform. If you are really heartbroken, you’ll do the right thing. It’s so sad that we already know that you will not"

READ MORE: 'How is this still happening?' Mass shooting survivor hijacks news conference to plea for gun control

Grace Lidia Suárez: "Another Republican calling for prayer instead of action. Like that's worked so well in the past."

Denise Keddy: "If your heart is broken then DO something to get the guns off the streets. Why do you love the #nra more than children"

Mic: "BREAKING: Republican attempts to share genuine feelings. Commits to doing absof**kinglutely nothing to ever solve problems."

@zach_fetzer: "The NRA has given Marsha Blackburn $1.3 million. She does not 'stand ready to assist,' she stands ready to make a profit off of this shooting."

K Clark: "Marsha, if you and Chuck are so ready to assist then donate the 1.3 million the NRA has given you to the victims' families."

READ MORE: Here’s how 5 House Republicans are responding to the TN school shooting that left 6 dead

Politico's full report is available at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Weeping parents' and 'small caskets': Columnist condemns 'Christians' who refuse to protect kids ›

Tennessee governor slammed after 'praying' for Nashville community without mentioning mass shooting ›

'Taking guns away is not the answer': Scalise encourages prayer after Nashville school shooting ›

'Lower than low can go': Donald Trump Jr. suggests father’s indictment distracts from Nashville shooting - Alternet.org ›

Campaign Coordination Inquiry: Filings

November 2, 2021

Giffords Lawsuit Against NRA Concerning Campaign Finance Issues

Amended complaint with Giffords suing the NRA and various campaign committees concerning allegations of campaign finance violations.

October 14, 2021

Decision Granting Giffords Motion for Summary Judgment

Giffords brought the lawsuit alleging the Federal Election Commission failed to act upon various administrative complaints - relating to the NRA - filed by Giffords.

July 19, 2019

Congressional Letter to NRA Attorneys Concerning Campaign Spending

Congressional follow-up letter concerning campaign spending probe

April 24, 2019

Lawsuit Seeking to Force FEC to Investigate Campaign Coordination Allegations

Lawsuit seeks to compel FEC to investigate

February 8, 2019

Supplemental Complaint to FEC Alleging Illegal Campaign Spending between NRA and Matt Rosendale for Senate

Supplemental facts submitted to the FEC about potential coordination in the Montana senate race.

February 6, 2019

Congressional Letter to the NRA Concerning Allegations of Improper Campaign Spending

Congressional members seek answers from Wayne LaPierre and the NRA

December 7, 2018

Complaint to FEC Alleging Illegal Campaign Spending between NRA and Trump Campaign in 2016

Allegations that the NRA and Trump campaign improperly coordinated in 2016 election.

October 23, 2018

Complaint to FEC Alleging Illegal Campaign Spending between NRA and Josh Hawley for Senate

Complaint alleging improper coordination between the NRA and Missouri senate candidate

September 14, 2018

Complaint to FEC Alleging Illegal Campaign Spending between NRA and Matt Rosendale for Senate

Second complaint lodged with the FEC

July 16, 2018

Complaint to FEC Alleging Illegal Campaign Spending

Following news reports, the initial complaint to the FEC

This page is maintained by Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.

oct 2019

Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House will finally hold a formal vote dictating the rules for the impeachment inquiry, six weeks after it was launched by a whistleblower’s complaint mysteriously withheld from Congress. And on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman backed up both the initial whistleblower and U.S. diplomat Bill Taylor by testifying that he too was concerned about the Trump administration’s push to use congressionally-allocated military aid to Ukraine to coerce an investigation into Joe Biden.

Congressional Republicans have long since stopped defending Trump on the merits since shortly after the White House released a transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, they’ve sought refuge in increasingly meaningless process arguments. So of course Pelosi agreeing to a formal vote on the rules of impeachment hasn’t stopped Republican complaints about the process. The goalposts will shift once again. No matter what the Democrats agree to, Republicans will complain about procedural unfairness and also refuse to concede the inquiry is legitimate. But how much of Republicans’ unwillingness to hold Trump accountable for his self-dealing is because they're in on it?

On Monday the Washington Post published an interview with a Ukrainian diplomat who claimed to have met with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., this summer to discuss the baseless conspiracy theory promoted by President Trump that Ukrainian officials had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

Johnson reportedly met with Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko for at least 30 minutes on Capitol Hill in July, and Telizhenko then met with Johnson’s Senate staff for five additional hours. According to the report, “the discussions focused in part on ‘the DNC issue’ — a reference to his unsubstantiated claim that the Democratic National Committee worked with the Ukrainian government in 2016 to gather incriminating information about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Telizhenko said he could not recall the date of the meeting, but a review of his Facebook page revealed a photo of him and Johnson posted on July 11.”

Johnson is a vocal Trump defender who has hounded the inspector general of the intelligence community about investigating media leaks regarding the Ukraine call. He has previously admitted that he was told by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, that Ukraine needed to "get to the bottom of what happened in 2016" in order to receive military aid.

As Johnson told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, after Sondland told him that, he was assured "if President Trump has that confidence" that the Ukrainians would do his bidding, "then he'll release the military spending." Now, as the Post points out, Johnson's "knowledge of key events" in the case may "complicate his role as a juror in a trial by the Senate."

Recall that when Johnson was asked about his defense of Trump’s actions, he snapped at the simple question from NBC News’ Chuck Todd and spun out the same deep state conspiracy theory pushed by the likes of Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

Beyond his apparent involvement in Trump’s Ukraine dealings, Johnson is alleged to have benefited from campaign money illegally funneled from Russia via shell corporations owned by the National Rifle Association, which helped him win his tight 2016 race in Wisconsin.

Political action committees for Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham reportedly accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 election. McConnell and Graham are co-sponsors of a new resolution condemning the House impeachment inquiry. At least 50 Senate Republicans, several of whom have refused to publicly comment on the growing Ukraine scandal — citing a need to remain impartial for a likely Senate impeachment trial — have already signed onto that bill. The resolution is currently paused in the Senate Rules Committee until the House votes on impeachment rules later this week.

As House Democrats’ investigation has rapidly unveiled ever more damaging material regarding Trump’s Ukraine scandal, public support for impeachment has shot up. Reportedly nervous about his wall of defense in the Senate crumbling, the president recently hosted several GOP senators at the White House, including top Johnson, Graham, John Thune of South Dakota and John Kennedy of Louisiana, last week. A day earlier, Thune and Kennedy, had blocked a Democratic bill to provide funding for states to shore up election security. The next day, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., quietly blocked three election-security bills for the second time this year.

“You know, it’s not a good sign if you’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result," Blackburn said on the Senate floor late last week. She is among the Republican senators with close ties to a U.S.-sanctioned Russian politician who is accused of illegally channeling Russian funds through the NRA. Under Senate rules, any individual senator can block a vote on a bill.

When Senate Republicans are not prematurely dismissing an impeachment inquiry on which they will probably have to render judgment, they continue to protect Trump’s refusal to clamp down on potential election interference. If Republican charges of a "kangaroo court" are anything, they are a classic case of projection: How can Senate Republicans possibly serve as impartial jurors in a trial of the president, when they are implicated in the same pattern of political malfeasance?

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's Deputy Politics Editor and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nra-at-center-of-new-lawsuit-against-the-federal-election-commission/2019/04/24

ref wapo

Politics

NRA at center of new lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission

By Colby Itkowitz

April 24, 2019

President Trump speaks May 4 at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Dallas. (Susan Walsh/AP)

An anti-gun-violence organization founded by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Federal Election Commission for failing to take action against the National Rifle Association for alleged campaign finance violations.

The lawsuit charges that the federal agency did nothing when confronted with repeated complaints by Giffords and the Campaign Legal Center accusing the NRA of using shell corporations to donate more than the legal amount to seven federal candidates, including President Trump, and to coordinate with their campaigns without disclosing it....

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/gop-lawmakers-face-barrage-of-questions-over-viral-russian-ad/

[vid]

an 322

Republican Party is being labeled as the "Party of Treason” in a new, scathing political ad chronicling all that has transpired since Russia invaded Ukraine.

According to HuffPost, the ad was released by Really American, a progressive political action committee (PAC). The video highlights Independence Day 2018 when several Republican lawmakers' traveled to Moscow to visit the Kremlin.

With the video, the PAC tweeted, "A day after the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed Russia interfered in our elections, 8 Republicans flew to Russia for a photo-op. Now they're blaming Biden for the invasion of Ukraine while repeating Kremlin talking points."

Although the trip was reportedly intended to address Russian interference, the video notes that Sen.Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), "downplayed said established threat just days later."[twt]

the video's narrator posed a number of compelling questions to Republican lawmakers asking: "why Republicans have 'consistently taken' the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin by, among other things, voting to block election security bills and backing Donald Trump for threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden, misconduct that led to the first impeachment of the former president."

The narrator concluded by saying, “Putin has shown his goal is to destabilize Western democracy from Ukraine to the U.S. We can’t allow his puppets to sink their claws deeper into our government.”

In just a short period of time, the video has gone viral. Since its release on Thursday, March 10, it has received more than 850,000 views as it continues to circulate on social media.

[ron j, shelby, moran, daines, thune, kay granger, john kennedy hoeven

#partyoftraitors

ref 2

... GOP is slammed as the “#PartyOfTreason” in a new viral ad from progressive PAC Really American.

The group’s spot recalls the visit to the Kremlin that eight Republican lawmakers controversially made on Independence Day in 2018,

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626664156/gop-senators-spend-july-4-in-moscow no names ] a day after the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.}}}

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ted-cruz-walks-out-of-gun-violence-hearing-when-democratic-senator-refuses-to-let-him-change-the-subject/

axios 2 22

INSTITUTIONAL UPHEAVAL: Several GOP institutional titans in the 2014 cycle have since receded.

The Koch network: The vast operation established by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch was almost a parallel Republican Party. Candidates and their consultants regularly pitched themselves at Koch donor retreats and worried how the Kochs viewed them.

But its high-profile breaks with Trump on issues such as immigration and free trade polarized GOP attitudes towards the network working across the aisle on foreign policy and criminal justice reform, and on traditional advocacy around taxes and regulation.
David Koch died in 2019, at 79; Charles is 86.
The Koch network's political arm says it broke records in 2020, making nearly 60 million voter contacts in 272 races, with a win rate of 78%. Despite that footprint, none of the operatives we interviewed considered Koch support to be important in 2022.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: In 2014, the Chamber was heavily involved in Republican primaries. "Chamber Republicans" competed against "Tea Party Republicans," claiming greater appeal to the business community than insurgent conservatives and better prospects in the general election.

A Chamber endorsement was the gold standard and came with an expectation of meaningful outside financial support. These days, most Republicans in primaries —including establishment figures — want to stay as far away from the Chamber as possible.
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not a wing of a political party," a spokesman for the business group told Axios. "We are an association advancing the business community’s priorities that drive economic growth. On that front we are doing quite well: tax reform is law, infrastructure is law, and Build Back Better is not law.”
The Chamber's direct donations to political candidates have remained fairly steady since then, according to OpenSecrets data, and it's beefed up its digital advocacy operation as well.
But its late-cycle political advertising — broadcast buys in the pivotal weeks before voters go to the polls — declined dramatically, from more than $35 million in the 2014 cycle to under $6 million six years later.
During the past year, the Republican Party has effectively banished the Chamber for its increased support of Democrats.House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said he wants nothing to do with the Chamber if the GOP flips the House. And even establishment GOP primary candidates are steering clear of them.
"If the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calls you and says 'we want to endorse', You're like, 'please don't'," said a GOP consultant who works for some of the country's highest-profile Republicans.

Conservative movement groups: Some of the most sought-after brands on the right pre-Trump are no longer considered as important.

In 2012, primary contenders coveted endorsements from theTea Party Express, FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF). In the 2014 Nebraska Senate primary, Republicans considered it a coup when FreedomWorks un-endorsed Shane Osborn and switched their support to Ben Sasse....

The NRA: In his campaign to become governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin declined to even fill out the NRA's candidate questionnaire. As a result, the NRA didn’t endorse him. Nobody seemed to care, and he won the race.

The storied gun rights organization points to its down-ballot wins in Virginia, where it backed Attorney General Jason Miyares and Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Sears, as well as candidates that helped the GOP flip the state legislature. It's also remained active in policy and judicial fights, including its successful effort to scuttle President Biden's nomination to lead the ATF last year.
The group says candidates continue to line up in the hopes of winning an endorsement — and backing from its millions of members.
GOP operatives acknowledge the NRA's continued influence, but say it's a shadow of its former self due in large measure to its well-documented financial and management struggles.
Operatives said they like their candidates having the NRA stamp of approval — but gone are the days when the gun lobby had the money and organizational power to be a game changer in Republican politics.

Institutions that still matter: The relationships between many candidates and groups are now explicitly transactional. A prominent consultant who's working for candidates in several GOP primaries this cycle advises clients when they meet with conservative groups to ask specifically what their endorsement comes with.

"What do you provide? Do you do door knocking? Do you do ballot access? Do you do voter education? Do you go after my opponents in the primary?" the consultant said. "Because honestly, if it [only] comes with 'I've been endorsed by FreedomWorks'… it ends up beingtoo much work and too much trouble [how so? baggage eg koch $?]for the return on investment."....

elephant hunt? why they need big magazine?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/nras-wayne-lapierre/

an 121

"The NRA says it's moving to Texas. Bankruptcy experts say it may be more of a legal move than a physical one." was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

The National Rifle Association filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy Friday and said it would eventually reincorporate in Texas — a move experts say is a legal maneuver to escape an aggressive lawsuit being pursued by the New York attorney general.

Officials in Texas — which is known as both a gun-friendly and debtor-friendly state — welcomed the NRA's announcement Friday, embracing the NRA's stance that it is fleeing a “toxic political environment" in New York.

In August, New York's attorney general filed a lawsuit against the organization alleging decades of fraudulent use of the NRA's funds by its executives. New York Attorney General Letitia James accused NRA leaders of knowingly signing off on fraudulent statements.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in atweet, celebrated the announcement: “Welcome to Texas — a state that safeguards the 2nd Amendment." Other conservative Texas lawmakers also welcomed the news.

But bankruptcy experts said the NRA's filing is less of a physical relocation and more of a legal play to avoid a potentially disastrous case in New York.

The move to Texas, legal experts said, will likely be on paper.

“They probably figured they'd have a more friendly judge in Texas," said Josh Wolfshohl, a bankruptcy attorney at Porter Hedges LLP in Houston.

“They're trying to do a preemptive strike" against New York, said Sidney Scheinberg, a bankruptcy attorney at Godwin Bowman PC in Dallas. “It's a clever maneuver. Whether it's going to work, I don't know."

Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy pauses pending litigation, and the New York attorney general's case will now be battled in a Dallas bankruptcy court instead of a civil court in New York.

“I suspect the NRA's plan is to consolidate pending litigation in the bankruptcy court," said Kevin Lippman, a bankruptcy attorney at the Texas-based Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr PC law firm. But, he said, New York could challenge the move and try to bring the case back.

Texas also has one of the most generous homestead exemptions in the country. NRA executives who might receive judgments against them stemming from the New York suit could feasibly move to Texas, “buy a very nice home, and no one could ever take it away from them," Scheinberg said.

The NRA said it would seek to reincorporate in Texas, pending court approval. While it was chartered in New York, the organization's headquarters and much of its operations are in Fairfax, Virginia.

“There will be no immediate changes to the NRA's operations or workforce," the NRA said in a statement.

Nevertheless, Texas politicians jumped on the move as proof that Texas is attracting new businesses and organizations due to its business-friendly regulatory environment.

“Welcome to Texas," state Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, wrote in a tweet tagging the NRA. “Unlike New York, we protect and uphold our citizens' right to bear arms."

“This is a wonderful place for [the NRA] both financially and for our community," said Andi Turner, legislative director for the Texas State Rifle Association.

Texas Democrats, meanwhile, criticized the move. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, criticized Abbott for “courting" the NRA “instead of taking meaningful actions to reduce gun violence in Texas."

The NRA emphasized in its statements Friday that it was not in financial trouble and focused on political reasons for leaving New York.

The NRA listed between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities, the same range it reported for its assets, in its filing. The organization claimed in its press statements it is in its “strongest financial condition" in years.

“The NRA is not insolvent," the group said in a statement. “This action is necessitated primarily by one thing: the unhinged and political attack against the NRA by the New York Attorney General."

But while experts said organizations file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for a variety of reasons, typically there is some sort of financial cause — otherwise, the courts may toss out the case.

“Very rarely do [organizations] file when they're not in financial trouble," said Josh Wolfshohl, a bankruptcy attorney at Porter Hedges LLP in Houston. “Partly because of the stigma, and also, it's expensive."

Beyond the costly litigation, filing for bankruptcy can also put funding for nonprofits like the NRA in jeopardy, because donors might become concerned that the organization will use their money to pay claims instead of, for example, using it to protect gun owners' rights.

“I don't think it was their first choice to file bankruptcy, because typically it will impact their fundraising," Lippman said.

Texas bankruptcy attorneys theorized that perhaps the NRA decided it needed to file bankruptcy to move the New York lawsuit and decided Texas would be the friendliest place to do it.

“The government is welcoming them here, while the New York attorney general is doing everything in her power to put them out of business," Scheinberg said. And while the political tide may be shifting in the state, he said, “This is still Texas."

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/15/texas-nra-bankruptcy-fraud/.

dingdong?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/nra/

"Thoughts and prayers."

"The NRA's claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt."

—NY Attorney General Letitia James

That is what many opponents of the National Rifle Association wryly stated in response to news that the pro-gun lobby group had officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday in the United States.

In a statement on its website, the NRA—which promotes the interests of the gun industry and gun owners unbothered by the unparalleled level of gun violence seen in the country—said it was leaving New York state, where it is currently registered, to restructure in Texas as part of a "new strategic plan" it is implementing.

"Thoughts and prayers to the NRA fanatical fiends who bear the blood of tens of thousands on their paws," said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) in response. "The world will be a better place when the NRA is finally destroyed. Looks like that day is closer."

While the NRA claims in the statement that it is "in its strongest financial condition in years," it said the strategic plan "involves utilizing the protection of the bankruptcy court" and "dumping New York" so that it can reincorporate in Texas to continue its activities without such a "corrupt political and regulatory environment."

Brady United, which has called for the NRA's dissolution for decades, said Friday that "news of the NRA filing for bankruptcy is just the latest proof that the NRA has cheated its members and American taxpayers in pursuit of an extremist agenda that has made our country markedly less safe."

They told us the @NRA was too powerful, that the politics were too difficult. They were wrong. Today, the @NRA fi… https://t.co/DirmJAZAay

— Peter Ambler (@Peter Ambler)1610746222.0

David Hogg—one of the survivors of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida who later became a vocal gun control advocate—was among those who welcomed the news late Friday afternoon and thanked all the tireless activism over the years focused on the NRA's deadly brand of influence peddling.

Thoughts and prayers https://t.co/bEkZ29n3WU

— David Hogg (@David Hogg )1610745956.0

"Don't read this as the NRA is going away," Hogg added. "They are not yet," he said, "but this is one step closer."

NRA fleeing New York, filing for bankruptcy, due to NY AG lawsuit (via @KLBKNews) https://t.co/xKtFWMVspi

— Violence Policy Center (@Violence Policy Center)1610749230.0

In August, as Common Dreams reported at the time, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the NRA which sought to dissolve the organization based on widespread evidence of corruption and financial self-dealing that violated the state's requirements for nonprofit status.

In a tweet on Friday responding to the NRA's move to divorce itself from New York, James said: "The NRA's claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt."

"While we review its bankruptcy filing," she added, "we will not allow the NRA to use this or any other tactic to evade accountability and my office's oversight."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

NRA blackburn?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/gop-sens-ron-johnson-and-marsha-blackburn-are-tied-to-russian-money-and-trump-conspiracy-theories-theyre-not-alone/

aha: nra a criminal enterprise/lobby that has amped up hysteria for decades so now we have bizillion assault rifles, some infiltration of cops and military by alt rt

direct mail racist grifters, proto-trump (gave him 30m$? russians?!)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/far-right-militia-groups-are-quite-capable-of-launching-a-rural-insurgency-in-the-us-political-professor

[debate]...Biden on Tuesday night, September 29 — expressed his solidarity with the far-right Proud Boys, many critics accused him of promoting violence against his adversaries. Political violence in major cities is a possibility that Trump's detractors fear, but Vasabjit Banerjee, an assistant political science professor at Mississippi State University, warns of a possible "rural insurgency" in an article published in Just Security this week.

"The intrusions of white supremacist militias into cities to intimidate and attack protestors from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement highlights the possibility of rural insurgency," Banerjee explains. "Rural insurgencies range from week-long armed rebellions against local governments, law enforcement, and the wealthy to decades-long ones against subnational and national-level security forces, which seek to impose new revolutionary regimes."

Banerjee goes on to note that white supremacist and white nationalist groups have been expressing "fears of becoming a minority group due to changing demographics."

"The targets of such fears have shifted from primarily African-Americans to include non-White immigrants," Banerjee observes. "In conjunction with racial fears, other causes include anti-Semitism as well as perceived threats to Christianity from Muslims, who have replaced Catholics as antagonists. Some scholars have observed, however, that the militias do not constitute a cohesive movement, but have many groups with varied beliefs."

Trump's "anti-immigrant nativism" and promotion of "fundamentalist Christian beliefs" have been an inspiration to far-right militia groups, Banerjee warns.

"After he assumed office — in addition to his equivocation about deadly white supremacist attacks against protestors — his administration's policies also appeared to favor militia groups by reducing monitoring by federal law enforcement," Banerjee notes. "Trump may accept pre- and post-electoral violence by such militias during the 2020 elections, as indicated by his statements about the white supremacist Proud Boys during the first presidential debate."

According to Banerjee, insurgent groups in the U.S. could have easier access to weapons than insurgent groups in other countries.

Banerjee points out, "In most countries, insurgent groups must smuggle quantities of small arms, offered by willing foreign sponsors or bought in black markets, across international borders. In the United States, however, per capita gun ownership is the highest in the world, while gun laws are some of the least restrictive. Thus, militias can legally acquire vast quantities of small arms."

Banerjee concludes the article by emphasizing that the United States' "geography" — which includes a lot of wide-open spaces — would be conducive to a rural uprising.

"The preconditions for insurgencies are already present," Banerjee warns. "Consequently, militia groups deserve more scrutiny from security forces and a unified political consensus to deter and suppress them in order to maintain peace and stability."

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/irs-probing-nra-ceo-wayne-lapierre-for-possible-criminal-tax-fraud-report/

igor d

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is investigating National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre for potential criminal tax fraud in the wake of a referral from New York's attorney general, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The reported probe comes after LaPierre, who collected $11.2 million in income from the NRA between 2014 and 2018, was accused of funneling millions in personal expenses through the nonprofit and its vendors in a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which seeks to dissolve the organization.

James, whose lawsuit aims to remove LaPierre from his position as the group's CEO and recoup millions in lost assets, said when she announced the move in August that she would refer her investigation's findings to the IRS. The lawsuit also named several other NRA executives, alleging that had they contributed to the group's $64 million loss over three years by awarding contracts to relatives and close associates and failing to comply with tax laws.

"Altogether, there are 18 causes of action, and these actions violated multiple laws, including the laws governing the NRA's charitable status, false reporting on annual filings with my office and the IRS, improper expense documentation, improper wage reporting, improper income tax withholding, failure to make required excise tax reporting and payments; payments in excess of reasonable compensation to disqualified persons; and waste of NRA assets amongst other offenses," she said at the time.

James said the investigation did not "come to a conclusion on whether or not [LaPierre] violated the Internal Revenue Code," but that she would refer her findings to the IRS.

Kent Correll, an attorney for LaPierre, told The Journal that he was "not aware of any inquiry."

"The NRA is not aware of any IRS inquiry, but of course, will fully cooperate with any appropriate requests for assistance," William Brewer III, an outside attorney for the NRA, told the outlet, adding that the group's tax filings are audited.

The IRS investigation is related to LaPierre's personal taxes, according to the report.

James alleged that LaPierre had received undisclosed compensation through the NRA and its vendors in the form of lavish trips and expensive suits, among other benefits. The lawsuit claimed that the NRA did not include the compensation in LaPierre's W-2 forms, which "permitted him to file false personal tax returns with the IRS."

The report noted that underreported income would likely trigger a civil audit, but a criminal probe would require the IRS to "demonstrate that a taxpayer willfully underreported income, typically over multiple years."

If it is a criminal case, "the IRS would be looking for evidence of concealment," Mark Matthews, the former head of the agency's Criminal Investigation unit, told The Journal.

Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., who also called on the IRS to investigate LaPierre, predicted that the investigation would "likely reveal a pervasive corrupt climate at the NRA, requiring direct action by the IRS and the Justice Department."

The lawsuit alleged that LaPierre and his family flew on private jets to the Bahamas at least eight times over several years, costing the group more than $500,000. LaPierre allegedly stayed at a hotel paid for by a Hollywood producer, who was a major NRA vendor in the Bahamas, or on the producer's 108-foot yacht, which was not disclosed.

LaPierre told James' office that he had not disclosed the trips for security reasons. He argued they were work-related, because they included discussions about the NRA Women's Leadership Forum, with which his wife and niece are involved.

"Any time I get the two of them together anywhere, there is a benefit for the NRA," LaPierre told investigators, according to the lawsuit. "Yeah, they got together in the Bahamas . . . It could have been in Washington."

He also said he relied on private jets for security reasons, and he was not aware there were limits on how much he could spend for private air travel.

The NRA also faces a separate lawsuit from D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, which accused the group of diverting funds from its charitable arm for "wasteful spending" by its executives. The lawsuit alleges that the NRA sought to "exploit" its charitable foundation with "risky multi-million-dollar loans" and charged the foundation "millions of dollars in fees without documentation of the work the NRA was performing."

"Charitable organizations function as public trusts," Racine said, "and District law requires them to use their funds to benefit the public — not to support political campaigns, lobbying or private interests."

Gun control advocacy groups sent LaPierre their "thoughts and prayers" after the latest report, a knock on the NRA's frequent refrain after school shootings.

"Wayne LaPierre's decades of alleged self-dealing are finally catching up with him," said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, "but the true cost of his reckless leadership of the NRA should be measured in lives lost, not dollars stolen."

https://www.mediamatters.org/national-rifle-association/after-ny-state-ag-files-anti-fraud-lawsuit-against-nra-conservatives

After New York Attorney General Letitia James initiated a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association that asks a court to dissolve the group, some right-wing media figures called her “partisan” and dismissed the move as “trying to score political points” in an election year. Others called for GOP attorneys general to retaliate against liberal groups in kind.

New York attorney general alleges the National Rifle Association engaged in years of financial mismanagement and fraud

New York attorney general filed suit to “dissolve” the NRA following an 18-month investigation into “fraud and abuse.”New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit on August 6 that looks to “dissolve the NRA in its entirety” and calls on organization leaders, including Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, to “pay back unlawful profits.” According to the 169-page lawsuit, LaPierre “spent millions of dollars of the NRA’s charitable assets for private plane trips for himself and his family.”

He also “repeatedly directed private aircraft to make additional stops” to pick up or drop off family members, “expensed over a hundred thousand dollars” on golf club membership fees, and attempted to purchase a $6.5 million mansion in Dallas, all allegedly funded by NRA donations. The lawsuit describes how the mismanagement went beyond LaPierre, alleging, “Directors or members in control of the NRA have looted or wasted the corporate assets, have perpetuated the corporation solely for their personal benefit, or have otherwise acted in an illegal, oppressive or fraudulent manner.” NPR, [8/6/20; People of the State of New York v. The National Rifle Association of America, 8/6/20]

NBC’s Tom Winter: LaPierre and other NRA officials “have used this as a personal piggy bank, according to the attorney general.”During the August 6 edition of MSNBC’s MSNBC Live, NBC national security and justice correspondent Tom Winter explained that the complaint has “nothing to do with the NRA’s lobbying efforts.” Winter went on to describe how nonprofit organizations have to file expenses and operate in accordance with certain laws, and that the lawsuit alleges the NRA “failed their fiduciary responsibilities here, according to the attorney general, … and as a result, this organization cannot be run as a nonprofit organization anymore and it has to be dissolved.” MSNBC, *MSNBC Live*, [8/6/20]

Some in right-wing media rushed to dismiss the lawsuit as a political move in an election year

Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer calls James “one of the most partisan figures” who made “one of the dumbest, biggest mistakes” she can make in an election year.During the August 6 edition of Fox News’ Outnumbered, guest Ari Fleischer called James “one of the most partisan figures” who ran for attorney general “on an anti-Trump platform, an anti-Republican/conservative platform,” before calling the lawsuit “one of the dumbest, biggest mistakes” she could have made in an election year. Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [8/6/20]

Fox News host Laura Ingraham: James is “a complete and utter goofball socialist” who will “still have her security detail, I assume. The rest of you, you’re on your own.”

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “This sounds…somewhat political.”

The Daily Caller: James is “trying to score political points.”

Newsbusters’ Tim Graham: “NY AG James sounds exactly like the NY Daily News with that NRA-is-a-terrorist-organization slime.”

Fox News host Sean Hannity: “It’s obvious this is political, we’re 89 days out of a presidential election. The timing to me, my read, is intentional.”During the August 6 edition of Fox News’ Outnumbered Overtime, Hannity called the timing of the charge “political” and “intentional.” Hannity went on to say he doesn’t “know anything about [the NRA’s] finances, but the timing of this stinks to high heaven to me and reeks of a political agenda.” Fox News, *Outnumbered Overtime*, [8/6/20]

Rush Limbaugh: “Gun sales are a record high right now ... here comes Letitia James.” During the August 6 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh Show, host Rush Limbaugh played a clip of James announcing the lawsuit before saying “gun sales are a record high right now, and it makes perfectly understandable sense with all of the rioting and the lawlessness and the Democrats talking about defunding the police, here comes Letitia James and now a lawsuit against the NRA in New York state.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/6/20]

Fox News correspondent: “Not a coincidence that the lawsuit was filed today, just a few months before the election.” During the August 6 edition of Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum, correspondent David Spunt reported on the lawsuit, and said it was “a major political fight after this was announced today, especially just under three months away from a presidential election.” Spunt went on to say that it is “not a coincidence that this lawsuit was filed today, just a few months before the election. Incredibly political.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [8/6/20]

Fox News host Tucker Carlson: “If you wanted to short circuit Republicans in November’s election, you’d go after the NRA.” During the August 6 edition of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson said it’s “hard to overstate how third world this lawsuit is” and compared James to Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. He went on to say the NRA will now have to spend its money pegged for “helping Republicans” in the 2020 election cycle on legal fees and called the lawsuit a way to “short circuit Republicans” this November. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [8/6/20]

Sean Hannity: This is a “bizarre, 170 paged, oddly timed” lawsuit. Fox News host Sean Hannity introduced the lawsuit as “bizarre” and “oddly timed” during the August 6 edition of Fox News’ Hannity. He questioned why James would file a lawsuit now when the city is also dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and rising crime and called it a “political attack.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [8/6/20]

Fox’s Laura Ingraham: The lawsuit is “political hit job and a warning shot to others who dare question the leftist authority.”During an interview with Rudy Giuliani, Ingraham called the lawsuit a “political hit job” and an attempt to “crush an influential conservative organization in an election year.” Giuliani agreed, calling James “a poor excuse for a lawyer” and the lawsuit “silly.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/6/20]

Several conservative media figures suggested Republican attorneys general go after liberal groups in retaliation

Stephen Miller: “Planned Parenthood, you’re on the clock.”

One America News Networks’ Liz Wheeler: “Imagine going after the NRA but refusing to touch the Clinton Foundation.”

Conservative podcast host Derek Hunter suggested New York could nowdissolve the Clinton Foundation.

TheBlaze’s Leon Wolf suggested Republican attorneys general can now dissolve Planned Parenthood.

trms on implosion 12/31/19

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/court-filings-show-the-nra-is-in-shambles-and-wayne-lapierre-hopes-his-lawyer-can-keep-him-out-of-jail/

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a year after being re-elected as the executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre has seen his group go from an electoral kingmaker to the edge of financial ruin. He and other NRA executives have urged laid-off employees to seek public assistance benefits. The nation’s most prominent pro-gun lobby has lost tens of millions of dollars amid numerous legal woes and investigations that have exposed its questionable financial dealings. Now, the longtime NRA leader hopes his lawyers can “keep him out of jail,” according to previously unreported allegations in court documents in the group’s legal battle against its longtime public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen.

The documents, which were published in full on NRA Watch, a new database launched by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, allege that LaPierre has grown “preoccupied with going to jail.” Ackerman’s allegations paint a picture of an executive who “didn’t trust his own accounting department” and instructed associates not to disclose important information to the group’s auditors.

The documents also include allegations about the NRA’s search for a personal mansion for LaPierre, whose alleged obsession with “purchasing a lavish home for himself” led Ackerman to pull out of the deal. They also allege that LaPierre may have violated his own group’s bylaws by improperly using Ackerman to pay off the group’s former president, Lt. Col. Oliver North, who left the organization after what it described as a “failed coup attempt.”

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, the grassroots arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, told Salon that NRA Watch aimed to show that LaPierre “used member dues for what looks like personal reasons” while “only 10% of NRA funds in 2018 were even spent on gun safety.”

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“NRA is losing at the ballot box, in courts, on the balance sheet,” Watts said. “We always talk about shining a light under the refrigerators and forcing the cockroaches to run out, and that’s really what this website does.

“It’s important to point out why the NRA is underwater reputationally and financially,” Watts continued. The NRA’s policy priorities are killing us, so stopping the NRA is our top priority. But when it comes to legal issues, the secret to our success is that we let the NRA beat itself.”

The NRA worked with Ackerman McQueen, creators of the now-defunct online video channel NRATV, since the 1980s, paying them as much as $42 million a year. But the NRA sued the firm in Virginia in 2019, accusing Ackerman of overbilling for its services. More recently, the NRA filed a lawsuit in Texas alleging that Ackerman continues to improperly use the NRA’s brand and properties. The NRA later filed an amended complaint in October alleging that Ackerman had breached its fiduciary duties, engaged in fraudulent billing and failed to maintain adequate records. The NRA has also accused Ackerman of a pattern of corruption, including its “failed” NRATV venture, for the purpose of collecting millions in fees.

Some of the new allegations were made in Ackerman’s bid to have the law firm of Bill Brewer, a longtime friend of LaPierre, disqualified as the NRA’s legal team.

Brewer’s firm responded to Salon’s questions with a statement from Linda S. Eads, professor emerita at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.

“After my review, it is my initial opinion that this request for disqualification provides no legal basis for the relief sought,” Eads said. “Factually, it appears to be supported only by assumptions and innuendo. Also, it is based on allegations that have not been factually established. It is too early in the litigation process to use such unsupported claims as a basis for disqualification, which is one of the most serious actions a court can take against a litigation party — to cause the party to lose its lawyer.”

Brewer’s firm is expected to issue a formal response to the new allegations next week. The response comes after Ackerman successfully asked the court in Virginia to stay the litigation pending a resolution of the Texas case, against the objections of the NRA, according to a previously unreported court order.

LaPierre was elected to a second term as the NRA’s CEO at the group’s annual convention in 2019, one year ago this week. It was not the party that the longtime gun activist had expected. What was supposed to be a coronation quickly devolved into a civil war that has since led to the ouster of multiple top NRA officials.

Before that meeting, North — then the NRA president — began to raise concerns about the large legal fees the NRA was paying to Brewer. By the first day of the meeting, LaPierre wrote a letter to the NRA board claiming that North had attempted to force him to resign by threatening that Ackerman would release a “devastating account” of the NRA’s financial dealings.

Hours after LaPierre, North and President Trump appeared on stage together at the meeting, news of North’s attempted coup had leaked. On the third day of the meeting, North issued a statement announcing that he would not seek another term. The statement was read by another board member as LaPierre, who had reportedly orchestrated North’s ouster, looked on next to an empty chair reserved for the group’s president.

Though LaPierre was successful in beating back the alleged coup attempt, the NRA’s legal entanglements in the year since have laid bare its devolving financial situation and threatened its tax-exempt status. Along with multiple lawsuits involving Ackerman, the attorneys general in New York state and Washington, D.C., have launched investigations questioning the group’s tax status. New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating whether the group violated the state’s charities law, which some legal experts and NRA insiders believe could result in a criminal referral related to LaPierre’s “use of nonprofit funds for personal expenses,” according to the New York Times.

A previously unreported court filing by Ackerman alleged that “[s]ometime in early 2018, LaPierre became preoccupied with going to jail.”

LaPierre later allegedly told Angus McQueen, Ackerman’s longtime chief executive, that he believed “Brewer was going to keep him out of jail,” according to another previously unreported court filing in March.

The NRA roundly rejected Ackerman’s claims.

“This is the same stale, desperate and contrived narrative Ackerman has been peddling for a year,” Andrew Arulanandam, managing director of public affairs at the NRA, told Salon. “In any event, it does nothing to diminish the confidence the NRA has in Bill or his law firm — or our commitment to hold this former vendor accountable.”

“The simple truth is, Ackerman is desperate to distract from the agency’s woes and alleged improper actions,” Arulanandam added. “It seems the agency has resorted to unhinged rants, based on non-existent communications and allegations from terminated employees.”

The group’s finances have taken a huge hit as a result of its legal woes.

According to a secret recording obtained by NPR, LaPierre recently told members that the NRA took a “$100 million hit” over the past two years and had to cut “about $80 million” from the budget and “took it down to the studs.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he warned in the recording. “We still gotta wrestle with this financial situation.”

Internal documents obtained by The Trace show that the group’s finances soured as it spent millions in member donations on salaries for executives, legal bills and lavish travel, while spending less than 10% of its funds on its supposed core mission: gun safety, education and training.

The NRA’s members have begun to raise questions about the group’s spending after it was reported that LaPierre spent hundreds of thousands on Italian suits and luxury vacations. Brewer has argued that the “vast majority of travel involved donor outreach, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.”

NRA board member Allen West, a former Republican congressman from Florida, slammed LaPierre after NRA officials defended their CO. West argued the defense was filled with “outright lies” and said he was removed from key committees for daring to “challenge the cabal of cronyism.”

More than 10% of the organization’s board has resigned in the past year.

“If you’re surprised by this you don’t know Wayne LaPierre,” Watts said, “because he has a long history of overseeing sweetheart deals and self-dealing to himself, friends and family and others.”

Many of the more lurid allegations of impropriety came from Ackerman in response to the NRA’s lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed weeks ahead of the 2019 annual meeting, in what appeared to be an attempt to get ahead of the allegations raised by North.

North warned officials that the legal fees paid to Brewer were “draining NRA cash at mind-boggling speed” and “pose[d] an existential threat to the financial stability of the NRA.” North claimed that LaPierre had rejected multiple attempts to request a full audit of the legal fees.

After North’s ouster, several NRA members spoke out against LaPierre and NRA leaders and initiated motions for a no-confidence vote in LaPierre, though that effort was defeated.

Since then, mounting allegations of wrongdoing have consumed the group. But executive compensation has continued to rise. In 2018, LaPierre’s salary increased by 57% to $2.15 million per year. Other “senior staff cashed in, too,” the New York Times reported,” while oversight “has been complicated by paydays to the 76-member board.”

Court filings suggest that shortly after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the NRA considered buying LaPierre and his wife a $6.5 million mansion through Ackerman. The NRA sent a $70,000 check to a newly formed LLC to facilitate the transaction.

In a previously unreported declaration, Ackerman’s chief financial officer, William Winkler, said that he refused to move ahead with the acquisition when “it became apparent … that Mr. LaPierre was more interested in purchasing a lavish home for himself” than in addressing “alleged safety concerns.”

The NRA has dismissed the allegations.

“The agency introduced Mr. LaPierre to its preferred local real estate agent, directed a tour of multiple homes, and established a company to manage the investment,” Arulanandam said in a statement to the Washington Post last year. “No matter, Mr. LaPierre ultimately rejected the opportunity and not one dime of the NRA’s money was spent on this venture.”

In a separate transaction that even the NRA’s own accountants described as “vague and deceptive,” the NRA paid $1.8 million to rent a house in Southern California from a production company that worked on a show featuring LaPierre, according to The New Yorker.

The NRA also “used unorthodox means to arrange [LaPierre’s] travel, including his use of private jets for almost every trip,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The group’s accountants were “instructed to pay” for certain trips “without the usual detailed supporting documentation, which was held in a private file in the NRA treasurer’s office,” including private flights that “totaled about $2 million in one recent year.”

The big spending extended to other officials as well. A previously unreported February court filing by Ackerman alleged that LaPierre convinced North to “leave his paid position at Fox and become the next President and an employee of [Ackerman] by hosting a television show on NRATV.”

“The NRA agreed to compensate [Ackerman] for Col. North reimbursing [Ackerman] for his work,” the filing claimed.

The contract may have violated the group’s bylaws, Everytown for Gun Safety said.

“The pass-through nature of the contract raises serious questions about whether the NRA was attempting to conceal its payments to its board president, especially since the NRA’s organizational bylaws do not provide for compensation of the board president,” according to a report from NRA Watch. “One concerned NRA employee wrote a memo shortly afterward, warning that ‘using a vendor to provide compensation to’ North ‘does not work to hide disclosure of the compensation.’ Months later, the NRA audit committee retroactively approved North’s contract.”

The NRA’s relationship with vendors like Ackerman sparked concern within the group’s audit committee, which held an emergency meeting in 2018 to discuss the spending. Documents obtained by The New Yorker show that the group’s accountants were concerned that the “NRA pays overbilled, deceptive, vague invoices to ‘preferred’ vendors and contractors” and “decisions are made in the best interests of vendors,” not the organization.

A previously unreported filing by Ackerman alleged that “[t]hroughout his tenure with the NRA, LaPierre has routinely used third-party vendors like [Ackerman] to conceal his penchant for personal spending, seemingly with the NRA’s blessing.”

The filing goes on to allege that LaPierre “on many occasions, told [Ackerman] that he didn’t trust his own accounting department within the NRA” and that “on several occasions, LaPierre would specifically instruct [Ackerman] not to disclose certain information to certain auditors” in the NRA’s accounting department.

The relationship with Brewer also drew scrutiny after the NRA paid the firm more than $24 million in legal fees, according to North. Ackerman has alleged that Brewer’s firm is a “PR firm masquerading as a law firm to try cases in the ‘court of public opinion,’ not the courtroom.” The filings also raise questions about the firm’s methods. Revan McQueen, the son of former Ackerman CEO Angus McQueen (who died in July of 2019), alleged in a previously unreported declaration that attorney Bill Brewer “had detailed knowledge about Angus’s cancer treatment and used that information to time his litigation and media attacks.”

Another filing by Ackerman alleged that Brewer “engaged in deeply personal and calculated attacks on the McQueen family … at times strategically coordinated with Angus [McQueen’s] medical treatment, his final family events, his declining health, and ultimately the period of grief following his death.”

The past year has also seen several congressional investigations aimed at the NRA. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., called for the IRS to investigate the organization’s nonprofit status after a yearlong probe into allegations of self-dealing and corruption. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., separately urged the IRS to investigate financial fraud by the NRA. Reps. Don Beyer, D-Va., Dwight Evans, D-Pa., and Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., followed with their own call for an IRS probe.

In the Senate, Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, led an investigation that found that “NRA leaders may have violated tax laws that prohibit use of organization resources for personal benefit.” Wyden and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer have called on the IRS to investigate the group’s tax-exempt status.

Raskin and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., have separately called for an investigation into whether the NRA violated campaign finance laws by coordinating communications with the Trump campaign and other Republicans.

As the investigations mounted, LaPierre issued statements warning gun owners that their rights were under attack by lawmakers who want to make “Americans less safe and less able to defend themselves.”

“The NRA is mired in crisis and they’re strapped for cash and their leaders keep going back to the old playbook to bail them out: fear-mongering about the collapse of society to raise money [and] to sell guns,” Watts told Salon. “And it’s so dangerous right now given that there are increased risks of domestic violence, unintentional gun violence [and] gun suicides because of the coronavirus crisis.”

The past year also saw NRATV shutter after three years after the NRA spent upwards of $20 million annually to sustain the network. The NRA later said in court filings that some NRA leaders found the network’s content to be “distasteful and racist” and described the overall effort as an “abject failure.”

The past year has also seen a purge of NRA board members who had spoken out about the alleged financial misconduct. Eight of the group’s board members have resigned and multiple high-ranking officials have left the group, including former top lobbyist Chris Cox, who was executive director of the NRA Institute of Legislative Action.

The NRA suspended Cox in June of 2019 after accusing him of participating in North’s attempted coup. Cox, once considered the “heir apparent” to LaPierre, resigned days later as NRA-ILA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker insisted that “any notion that Chris participated in a coup is absurd.” Baker was subsequently fired as well.

But the purge has not stopped the leaks about questionable spending at the group. Internal documents obtained by the Washington Post show that the organization spent $9.3 million on office supplies in 2018, roughly $12,000 per employee. To make up for the big spending, the NRA cut funding for gun training, a key component of its purported core mission.

According to the NRA’s financial report, the group ended 2018 with a $10.8 million deficit, marking the third straight year it spent more than it brought in, even as it continued to increase executive pay.

This year, the NRA announced across-the-board 20% pay cuts and layoffs, urging affected employees in a leaked memo to “contact any germane state or federal agency to determine eligibility for any additional aid.”

LaPierre in the memo blamed “extraordinary challenges resulting from COVID-19” for the cuts despite years of deficits and increased legal spending.

But the revelations in the court documents and news reports make it clear, Watts said, “that the pandemic is not what’s bankrupting the NRA. “That’s its own corrupt leadership. It’s really showing that even though Wayne LaPierre is scapegoating, he and the rest of the NRA leaders have used the organization as their personal piggybank for years.”

The NRA has also seen its political influence wane as its election spending has dropped precipitously. In the group’s home state of Virginia, voters elected a Democratic legislative majority in 2019 that quickly passed a package opposed by the NRA that implemented expanded background checks, a “red flag” law and other gun-control measures. The previous Republican majority had refused to take up the issue even after the mass shooting that killed 12 people at a municipal building in Virginia Beach.

“We outspent the NRA eight-to-one in Virginia, we outworked them on the ground, making hundreds of thousands of calls and knocking on tens of thousands of doors,” Watts told Salon. “And as a result we flipped both chambers” of the state legislature.

Watts said the Virginia elections were only one example of the NRA’s waning influence: “The NRA is weaker than it’s ever been and we are stronger than we’ve ever been. We outspent and outworked them in 2018. We were able to flip the U.S. House of Representatives and change the makeup of seven state legislatures and elect over 1,000 ‘gun sense’ candidates across the country.”

Going into the 2020 elections, Watts said, her group has “already committed to spending $60 million, which is twice what the NRA spent in 2016. And the NRA is so deep underwater that even the president they worked so hard to elect no longer wants to work with them.”

President Trump received more than $30 million in backing from the NRA during his 2016 run, but has recently complained to aides that the group is “going bankrupt,” according to the New York Times, and tweeted that the NRA “must get its act together quickly, stop the internal fighting, & get back to GREATNESS – FAST!”

“Donald Trump talks about the Second Amendment, but he doesn’t so much talk about the NRA anymore,” Watts said. “Some of the NRA’s own board members have distanced themselves from the NRA and major donors have begun to distance themselves from the NRA, so it’s really not surprising that Donald Trump would as well if he sees them as possibly an albatross around his neck.

“If you look at the way this country has been going since the 2016 election, background checks continue to pass, red-flag laws, laws that disarm domestic abusers. We have a 90% track record in the last five years of stopping the NRA’s agenda in state houses. So politically, they have not been as successful.”

In Texas, authorities have identified the gunman who opened fire in the middle of a Sunday church service in White Settlement, Texas, outside Fort Worth. Authorities say Keith Thomas Kinnunen had a long criminal history that included arrests for assault, battery and theft.He was killed by armed parishioners, after fatally shooting two worshipers: 64-year-old Anton Wallace and 67-year-old Richard White. We’ll have more on the attacks at the West Freeway Church of Christ and at the rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, after headlines.

wa ex bs

11/19

National Rifle Association dropped a lawsuit Thursday against the city of San Francisco for passing a measure that labeled the group a “domestic terror organization.”

“We’re pleased the NRA backed down on its frivolous lawsuit. This was a baseless attempt to silence San Francisco’s valid criticisms of the NRA and distract from the gun violence epidemic facing our country,” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a written statement to KTVU.

The NRA sued the city after lawmakers passed a measure classifying the Second Amendment advocacy group as a “terrorist organization....

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/12/nra-discloses-spending-on-foreign-fundraising

many lnx grafix

Cash-strapped NRA discloses spending on foreign fundraising for first time

By Anna Massoglia

December 16, 2019

The National Rifle Association disclosed spending on foreign fundraising for the first time in the gun rights group’s history as it faced a multimillion-dollar shortfall for a third consecutive year, new tax returns reveal.

Despite that foreign fundraising, federal government grants and millions of dollars siphoned from its charities, the NRA spent more than it brought in last year. The tax filing unearths details of the NRA’s finances amid mounting scandals during the first election cycle in recent history where gun control groups outspent their pro-gun counterpart.

While the NRA’s disclosed spending on foreign fundraising makes up only a small slice of the operation’s total 2018 outlay, the actual amount of money brought in by that fundraising is unknown. The NRA is not allowed to use foreign funds to influence elections. But as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, it can continue to spend millions of dollars on political activity without revealing its funders, how much foreign money it takes in or what that money was spent on.

Some funding information can be extracted from the NRA’s sponsorship program memberships and other public records. Many of the NRA’s biggest disclosed allies and corporate funders stem from outside the U.S.

Austria’s Glock, Italy’s Beretta and Germany’s SIG Sauerhave all received membership in the NRA’s Golden Ring of Freedom, which is composed of individuals or corporations that donate $1 million or more to the NRA and its affiliates.

The NRA’s top disclosed ally in the gun industry is a foreign firearms manufacturer, Taurus, which is based in Brazil and has a beachhead in Miami targeting U.S. markets. The exact amount the NRA receives from Taurus is not public, but the Brazilian gun manufacturer advertises that it buys an NRA membership for every gun sale to a U.S. customer.

Last year may have been the first time the NRA disclosed spending on foreign fundraising but the group has been building ties with foreign gun manufacturers for years. It has a long history of quietly pushing against gun regulation outside the U.S. in places like Brazil, where Taurus’ headquarters is based.

Prior to reporting $92,000 on foreign program expenses and $24,000 spending on foreign fundraising in 2018, the NRA’s previously disclosed overseas activities were limited to offshore investments in Central America and the Carribean along with occasional trainings or events in that region and Europe.

A September 2019 report by Senate Finance Committee Democrats found that the NRA acted as a “foreign asset” for Russia in the leadup to Trump’s 2016 election. In the heat of congressional inquiries probing the NRA’s ties to Russian actors, the NRA also admitted to taking Russian money. The organization said the cash wasn’t used for political purposes.

Gun lobby goes global

The NRA’s tax records show its involvement abroad, expanding to a longer list of regions from the Middle East and Asia to Europe and sub-saharan Africa.

The NRA has been public about some of its activities in sub-saharan Africa, where it has found an ally in the safari hunting expedition industry.

NRA-supported foreign hunts have recently attracted controversy, such as an elephant-hunting expedition in Zimbabwe that coincided with the Trump administration overturning an Obama-era ban on importing hunted elephant carcasses.

Donald Trump Jr. also came under fire after ProPublica reported he killed an endangered argali sheep during a hunting trip to Mongolia purchased at an NRA charity auction. The Mongolian government retroactively granted the younger Trump permits after the killing took place. His spokesperson said the trip was a purely personal expedition, though it was supported by U.S. government and Mongolian government resources, including security details.

The NRA’s website and publications feature multiple posts describing the lures of argali hunting. One post from the same month as Trump Jr.’s Mongolian hunting trip touts “the primary reasons sportsmen and women travel to the Gobi are to hunt Gobi ibex and argali.”

The NRA’s 2018 auction catalog includes a Mongolian safari through the same company. An auction catalog from Dallas Safari Club, a nonprofit that promotes hunting and works closely with the NRA, explicitly mentioned that the Mongolian expeditions may be upgraded to include hunting the endangered sheep. Shortly after Donald Trump Jr. reportedly bought the Mongolian hunting trip in 2015, he was a guest speaker at a Dallas Safari Club fundraiser.

NRA drains charities, pays for PAC

For the NRA, charity begins at home. The NRA, which is set up as 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit, rakes in money from its charitable affiliates while footing bills for its PAC with no sign of reimbursement. Although affiliated charities reimburse the NRA millions of dollars for various expenses, federal campaign finance records for the NRA’s Political Victory Committee show no sign of reimbursements to the NRA.

The NRA has disclosed reimbursements and other money from its charitable affiliates, draining more than $320 million from its charities over the past decade.

The NRA Foundation, the NRA Special Contribution Fund, the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund and the NRA Freedom Action Foundation directed more than $31 million to the NRA in 2018 alone. The NRA raked in more money from its charitable affiliates in 2018 than any year other than 2016 in at least a decade.

NRA Foundation payments to the NRA’s main lobbying arm labeled as reimbursements jumped to more than $17.4 million in 2018, the largest in at least a decade and nearly three times the $6 million reported in reimbursements the prior year.

The NRA paid off one $5 million loan from the NRA Foundation in early 2018 but secured another $5 million loan from the foundation shortly thereafter, on top of a $13.5 million grant and more than $17.4 million in reimbursements from the foundation.

The NRA’s audited financial statements, first flagged by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, show the NRA’s reliance on and control over its foundation. They include admissions that “the NRA is able to influence the Foundation’s operating and financial decisions as well as the NRA having ongoing economic interest in the net assets of the Foundation.”

The NRA, its foundation and other charitable arms take money from funders whose identities are kept hidden from the public under IRS rules. That makes it difficult to parse who is bankrolling the NRA’s activities, how much they are giving and even the true nature of the group’s financial state going into the 2020 election cycle.

Unlike the NRA’s main 501(c)(4) arm, however, its affiliated charities allow donors to get a tax break in exchange for contributions. Thus they are subject to more restrictions on political activity.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

The NRA Foundation fills its own coffers with fundraisers such as auctioning guns in schools and Friends of the NRA sponsorship programs. The top reported corporate sponsor is tactical rifle manufacturer Daniel Defense. Other big corporate sponsors include firearms manufacturers Henry Repeating Arms, Mossberg, Inter Ordnance and Ruger, as well as international hunting safari service providers Bayete, Rivers South Safaris, Ibamba Safari and Otis Safari Specialty Importers.

The NRA reported covering more than $5.1 million in administrative and fundraising expenses for its PAC arm, the NRA Political Victory Committee, last year alone — shelling out roughly $90 million over the last decade, according to an OpenSecrets’ analysis of audited financial statements.

Federal campaign finance records for the NRA’s Political Victory Committee show no sign of reimbursements to the NRA, and an NRA spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

NRA under scrutiny

The NRA has incentives to preserve its reputation as a political juggernaut.

If spending on activities such as politics or lobbying exceeds a certain percentage of the organization’s overall budget, the organization may be subject to additional disclosure requirements or even be at risk of losing tax-exempt status.

Nonprofits like the NRA may spend millions of dollars in elections without ever disclosing donors but are not allowed to have politics as their “primary purpose.” The generally accepted rule is that less than half of a 501(c)(4) nonprofit’s operations can be devoted to influencing elections.

This percentage threshold still allows large organizations like the NRA to spend tens of millions of dollars on elections without disclosing donors –– so long as their budget is big enough to counter that spending with a little dark money alchemy. This means the NRA can spend millions of dollars on elections simply because it also reported spending a similar amount on activities is says are apolitical.

But that doesn’t mean the NRA is avoiding scrutiny. New York’s state attorney general recently issued a new subpoena to the NRA covering a range of campaign finance and tax issues, according to the New York Times. The request reportedly included records related to transfers among the NRA’s affiliates and charitable arms.

Since the NRA is chartered in New York, it is subject to oversight of the state’s attorney general as well as federal authorities. The same attorney general’s office brought a case that led to the dissolution of the Trump Foundation and a hefty $2 million fine.

The NRA’s little-known federal funding

Despite its limited-government rhetoric, the NRA experienced a resurgence of funding from another unlikely source in 2018: the U.S. government.

In April 2018, the Department of Defense awarded the NRA $11,900 for firearms instructor development. That August, the Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Agency spent more than $10,000 buying NRA tactical waterproof blankets for students attending a prep course for “overseas assignments.” The U.S. Border Patrol awarded the NRA another $10,000 for a government contract classified as “public relations” services in the form of a “recruiting sponsorship” the following month.

In July 2019, the Department of Energy offered the NRA a potential award up to $24,653 for use of a “specialized training venue” with access to “other facilities that support training such as classrooms and restrooms.”

Days later, on Aug. 1, the Interior Department awarded the NRA a $50,000 grant. The grant was intended to help the Fish and Wildlife Service “identify, protect, conserve, manage, enhance or restore habitat or species on both public and private lands” under the Recovery Act, which provided for funding awarded as part of the federal stimulus package to promote economic growth.

While the new government contracts are hardly the first instance in which the NRA got U.S. federal government support, they follow a lull since 2015 and mark the NRA’s first government contracts under the Trump Administration.

Secretive LLCs tied to NRA

The NRA’s tax return identifies related entities tied to recent scandals and mysterious LLCs with all the trappings of shell companies that were not previously listed in tax returns filed by the gun rights group.

Previously unreported entities tied to the NRA include Wingate Church Insurance Services and Lexington Concord Holdings LLC. Both entities share the NRA’s address and are described as being in the “development phase,” according to its tax return. Delaware incorporation records and tax documents obtained by OpenSecrets show both entities are directed by J. Steven Hart, the NRA board’s former outside counsel who may be best known as the lobbyist whose wife rented EPA administrator Scott Pruitt a Capitol Hill condo for $50 per night. An NRA spokesperson confirmed that Hart “no longer represents the NRA.”

The NRA reported paying $88,410 to Lexington Concord Holdings LLC, which was incorporated in August 2018, over the course of that year.

The NRA’s tax returns list it as the direct controlling entity and 99 percent owner of WBB Investments LLC, a limited-liability company tied to facilitating a failed deal for the purchase of a 10,000-square-foot Texas mansion for LaPierre. The LLC was first identified by ProPublica as the recipient of a $70,000 payment flagged by NRA accountants in a “List of Top Concerns for the Audit Committee.”

NRA accountants said the payment was not properly documented, and asked the audit committee to examine it due to suspicions such as the “vague description,” noting the “company didn’t exist” and the business address matched the home of an officer of the NRA’s longtime public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen.

Ackerman McQueen was the NRA’s highest-paid vendor in 2018. Raking in at least $38.3 million from the NRA last year alone, Ackerman McQueen’s ongoing legal battle with the NRA has fueled scrutiny of the gun rights group’s finances and activities.

mma 1219

Fox's Dan Bongino appears in Trump campaign video despite purported network policy

12/10/19 3:16 PM EST

Loesch on School Shield: "This program works"

NRATV promoted a school “safety” program that the National Rifle Association allegedly used as “fundraising front”

12/10/19 3:28 PM EST

Republican bigotry and obedience to the NRA endanger renewal of the Violence Against Women Act

Joan McCarter / Daily KosDecember 6, 2019

The Violence Against Women Act expired in February. While the Democratic House has responded, passing an expanded reauthorization of it in April, Moscow Mitch McConnell has refused to take it up in…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-extraordinary-way-red-states-are-steamrolling-blue-cities

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The extraordinary way red states are steamrolling blue cities

Written by Maresa Strano, Lydia Bean / Washington Monthly December 4, 2019

The Florida Legislature is strongly opposed to gun control. Even in the aftermath of the shooting in Parkland, state legislators opposed strict restrictions on the sale and use of firearms. But there’s another kind of control that they do believe in: the control of gun control.

In 1987, Florida passed a bill that prohibits localities from enacting their own gun ordinances. This was an act of “preemption”—the name for when a higher level of government, like a state, withdraws or limits the authority of a lower level government, like a city or town.

For a while, the bill was not fully enforced. Cities like Miami and Tallahassee created and maintained additional gun regulations, designed to minimize violence in their more urban communities. But that, like so much about America’s political landscape, changed in 2011. That year, the legislature passed an updated version of the law, backed by the National Rifle Association, that imposed harshpenalties on local officials who enacted or enforced gun ordinances, including a $5,000 fine and up to $100,000in damages.

Three years later, two gun-rights organizations sued the city of Tallahassee, its mayor, and several city commissioners for not purging a pair of inherited ordinances that outlawed firing guns in public parks, one of which had been on the books since 1957. Because the law also forbids the use of public funds in gun ordinance cases, the defendants (including eventual Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum) had to secure pro-bono legal representation. This summer, a circuit court judge struck down the fine, and Governor Ron DeSantis, who narrowly bested Gillum for the office in 2018, appealed the decision.

The escalation of state preemption laws is happening everywhere. For the last decade, preemption has spread to all states and across virtually every salient policy area—from environmental and labor protections to immigration and housing rights. The vast majority of preemption bills stem from special interests and industry groups with anti-regulatory agendas.

These laws are extraordinarily damaging to our society. They result in increased racial and gender inequality. They correlate with lower life expectancy. They inhibit citizens from meaningfully engaging in politics. Like gerrymandering and dark money, we should consider preemption to be a serious threat to democracy.

The seeds of modern preemption were planted in the 1980s, when the tobacco industry began to push for state laws barring tobacco taxes and smoke-free ordinances. Over the next two decades, other industry groups and special interests adopted big tobacco’s strategy. During the crime wave of the 1990s, for example, the National Rifle Association aggressively lobbied states to stop American cities from enacting local firearms regulations.

The tobacco industry and the NRA are members of the modern conservative coalition, comprised of industry groups and trade associations, small-government libertarians, and social conservatives. These groups were the first to recognize state preemption as a powerful mechanism to rein in progressive cities and spread conservative policies. To wield it effectively, however, they had to gain control of state governments. In 2010, as the Republican Party swept into power in statehouses across the country, conservatives gained newfound ability to preempt localities.

As a result, the last decade has seen an unprecedented swell in the number of preemption bills introduced and passed by state legislatures. As of 2019, twenty-five states have passed laws preempting local minimum wage ordinances (up from ten states in 2010). Twenty-three states have banned ordinances requiring paid sick days (up from one state in 2010). Between 2014 and 2019, an astounding forty-four states removed or prevented employment and labor protections for Uber and Lyft drivers.

Some of these laws are notorious. North Carolina’s House Bill 2, or “the Bathroom Bill,” famously mandated that individuals use the bathroom corresponding to the gender assigned to them at birth. A direct attack on the transgender community, HB 2 was passed to stop the City of Charlotte from increasing its anti-discrimination protections. The same bill also explicitly preempted local regulation of employment standards, such as increasing the minimum wage and mandatory paid sick days.

But other preemption bills have targeted issues that, to the average American, appear to have no political salience. These include regulations of wireless alarm systems, Styrofoam products, milk and frozen desserts, and even beekeeping. Sixteen states have preempted local regulation of residential fire sprinklers in the last decade.

Why sprinklers? By 2009, a national, nonpartisan grassroots movement led by members of the fire service had successfully fought to get nearly 400 localities to require that new residential buildings have fire sprinklers. In response, the National Association of Home Builders, the group that represents large developers, turned to preemption. The developers saw such ordinances as pricey nuisances and, determined to avoid any additional profit loss (however negligible), successfully pressured many state legislatures to thwart the firefighter’s movement.

The increase in volume, sweep, and frequency of preemption laws is hardly driven by grassroots concerns. Instead, it reflects a pattern in which industries have used preemption to promote their putatively pro-business, anti-regulation agendas with no regard for public health and safety, nor the public will. They have found happy advocates in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization bankrolled by industry lobbyists that drafts conservative state legislation and shares it across the nation.ALEC provides the templates for many of the preemption bills circulating today. A recent report from the Local Solutions Support Center and State Innovation Exchange noted thataboutone in five of the over 1,000 ALEC bills introduced each year are signed into law.

Still, this is not an exclusively red state problem. In Democratic strongholds like California, special interests use preemption just as aggressively to hamper local policy innovations. Last year, the California Legislature passed a bill prohibiting local governments from imposing taxes on sugary drinks. The decision undercut local lawmakers, who had passed soda taxes in a variety of jurisdictions to curb type 2 diabetes and obesity and to raise funds for schools and other public services.

Why would California’s democratic-controlled legislature pass such a regressive law? In short, they were blackmailed. To gain leverage over an unsympathetic legislature, the beverage industry mounted a lavishly funded ballot initiative campaign that would have changed the vote threshold for localities to approve tax increases from fifty-one percent to two-thirds. If passed, the resulting logjams would have hindered funding for vital public services, including fire, transit, and law enforcement. When beverage companies offered to scrap the initiative in exchange for the preemption bill, legislators accepted.

Old preemption gave deference to judicial determination. It respected citizen initiative and the role of local governance. It allowed municipalities to work with states in pursuit of the right regional policies. That has all vanished. Now, preemption “is being used as a blunt instrument to destroy local democracy,” said Mark Pertschuk, director of Grassroots Change and Preemption Watch.

In many states, aggressive preemption is dismantling any illusion of cooperation between state and local government. In 2016, Arizona passed Senate Bill 1487, known as “the mother of all local preemption bills,” which allows the state to strip funding from localities that pass any regulations that deviate from state law. Texas’ 2017 law banning sanctuary cities, like Florida’s law banning gun control, threatened officials who “adopt, enforce, or endorse” a sanctuary city policy with fines of up to $25,500 per day and removal from office (the law has since been struck down).

Punishing local officials and governments for flouting preemption may seem harsh, but fair. In most cases, localities are still treated as creatures of the state. They cannot violate its laws. But preemption laws have produced a“chilling effect” on local policymaking and innovation, particularly in large, diverse cities in red states, where local action and creative problem solving is needed most. As Andrew Gillum told the New York Times: “It is intended to put everyone across this state and across this country where these efforts are taking place on notice: Don’t come near it…And if you do, we’ll come after you personally, we’ll come after your government, we’ll come after the very survivability of your community by cutting off resources to you.”

Such an aggressive approach to preemption might still be justified if preemption were advancing the public’s interest. Defenders argue that is indeed the case: preemption is necessary to prevent regulatory patchworks, which hinder economic prosperity.“A statewide company has to follow so many different ordinances that they end up choosing to leave those communities due to lack of uniformity,” said one Georgia lawmaker.

But what preemption is being used for shows such arguments are, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, patently untrue. The Arizona legislature’s decision to preempt Tempe’s ordinance regulating dark money in local politics has no real relationship to economic growth. It does not cut red tape. And today’s preemption is making life economically worse for the vulnerable. Nationwide, preemption presents one of the greatest barriers to raising wages and living standards for low-wage workers. More than 60 percent of U.S. workers now live in states where minimum wage ordinances are preempted, and more than 40 percent of workers live in states where paid sick time ordinances are preempted. In 2000, those percentages were less than 2 percent and 0 percent, respectively.

Dick’s crossed the NRA — and they hit back hard. Now Dick’s has to deal with… the best sales ever Daily Kos

https://www.mediamatters.org/national-rifle-association/nra-offers-revisionist-history-santa-clarita-school-shooting-credit

NRA’s big loss in Virginia, explained

Gun control groups outspent the nation’s most powerful gun rights organization in its home state.

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https://www.salon.com/2019/10/30/how-can-gop-senators-serve-as-impeachment-jurors-when-theyre-implicated-in-trumps-misdeeds/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/gop-sens-ron-johnson-and-marsha-blackburn-are-tied-to-russian-money-and-trump-conspiracy-theories-theyre-not-alone/

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GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn are tied to Russian money and Trump conspiracy theories. They’re not alone

Written by Sophia Tesfaye / Salon October 30, 2019

Johnson reportedly met with Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenkofor at least 30 minutes on Capitol Hill in July, and Telizhenko then met with Johnson’s Senate staff for five additional hours. According to the report, “the discussions focused in part on ‘the DNC issue’ — a reference to his unsubstantiated claim that the Democratic National Committee worked with the Ukrainian government in 2016 to gather incriminating information about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Telizhenko said he could not recall the date of the meeting, but a review of his Facebook page revealed a photo of him and Johnson posted on July 11.”

Johnson is a vocal Trump defender who has hounded the inspector general of the intelligence community about investigating media leaks regarding the Ukraine call. He has previously admitted that he was told by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, that Ukraine needed to “get to the bottom of what happened in 2016” in order to receive military aid.

As Johnson told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, after Sondland told him that, he was assured “if President Trump has that confidence” that the Ukrainians would do his bidding, “then he’ll release the military spending.” Now, as the Post points out, Johnson’s “knowledge of key events” in the case may “complicate his role as a juror in a trial by the Senate.”

Beyond his apparent involvement in Trump’s Ukraine dealings, Johnson is alleged to have benefited from campaign money illegally funneled from Russia via shell corporations owned by the National Rifle Association, which helped him win his tight 2016 race in Wisconsin.

Political action committees for Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham reportedly accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 election. McConnell and Graham are co-sponsors of a new resolution condemning the House impeachment inquiry. At least 50 Senate Republicans, several of whom have refused to publicly comment on the growing Ukraine scandal — citing a need to remain impartial for a likely Senate impeachment trial — have already signed onto that bill. The resolution is currently paused in the Senate Rules Committee until the House votes on impeachment rules later this week.

As House Democrats’ investigation has rapidly unveiled ever more damaging material regarding Trump’s Ukraine scandal, public support for impeachment has shot up. Reportedly nervous about his wall of defense in the Senate crumbling, the president recently hosted several GOP senators at the White House, including top Johnson, Graham, John Thune of South Dakota and John Kennedy of Louisiana, last week. A day earlier, Thune and Kennedy, had blocked a Democratic bill to provide funding for states to shore up election security. The next day, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., quietly blocked three election-security bills for the second time this year.

“You know, it’s not a good sign if you’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” Blackburn said on the Senate floor late last week. She is among the Republican senators with close ties to a U.S.-sanctioned Russian politician who is accused of illegally channeling Russian funds through the NRA. Under Senate rules, any individual senator can block a vote on a bill.

When Senate Republicans are not prematurely dismissing an impeachment inquiry on which they will probably have to render judgment, they continue to protect Trump’s refusal to clamp down on potential election interference. If Republican charges of a “kangaroo court” are anything, they are a classic case of projection: How can Senate Republicans possibly serve as impartial jurors in a trial of the president, when they are implicated in the same pattern of political malfeasance?

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon’s Deputy Politics Editor and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/russian-backed-nra-makes-largest-contribution-ever-to-stop-upcoming-democratic-trifecta/

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Russian-backed NRA makes ‘largest contribution ever’ to stop impending Democratic trifecta

Written by Daily Kos October 9, 2019

In less than a month, citizens will decide the fate of gubernatorial and legislative elections in five states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Virginia. These states have off-year elections, and the deadline to register to vote ranges from immediate to next week. All are critical elections, but in none of these states are the stakes higher than in Virginia.

Virginia has a Democratic governor who will serve until 2021, but the GOP holds the slimmest majority in the both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. When I say slim, I mean the Dems are just one person shy of winning the majority for each chamber. The candidates REALLY need your support, not just because the focus has largely been put on just the top tier races, but because the GOP is once again looking to Russia for help.

A Senate report released last week, based on private interviews new emails, showed that the NRA acted as a “foreign asset” for Russia. The 18-month probe by the Senate Finance Committee revealed that the NRA underwrote political access for Russian nationals Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin, despite their ties to the Kremlin. The Republicans on the FEC blocked all investigations on the NRA’s financial ties to Russia.

Coincidentally, the NRA “just made their largest contribution ever” to a political fund, which happens to be the Virginia House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert’s ‘Majority Leader PAC’. The GOP happily took the money to distribute amongst VA GOP candidates because they are terrified of Virginia having fair districts drawn next cycle.

I’ve focused before on several House of Delegate races, like this one. Virginia has a bi-partisan resource called the Virginia Public Access Project that gives you a the rundown of all races. The House of Delegate races for VPAP is here. So as not to have an extremely long piece, I’ve decided to focus on the VA State Senate. There are eight competitive races in that chamber, and I’ll focus on each in order of likelihood to flip.

You can click on their name to go to their page. Please volunteer or donate. We can so win this:

John Bell, Senate District 13: Open Seat/Leans Blue. This retired United States Air Force officer has raised a lot of money, and this Northern Virginia district is likeliest to flip. His challenger, Geary Higgins, is a raging racist. John has endorsements from every major Democrat in Virginia.

The only thing that bothers me about this race is what is emblematic of the Democratic machine. People love to throw money and endorsements at a sure winner. The people who need the attention are the ones lower on this list.

Ghazali Hashmi, Senate District 10: Challenger/Competitive. Dr. Ghazali Hashmi is an unapologetic progressive in a district that has trended Democratic in recent years. Her big issues are healthcare, education, and stopping gun violence. The governor and Clinton won this district by 10 points. Her Republican incumbent opponent, Glen Sturtevant, barely beat out the Democratic challenger four years ago. The Republican incumbent’s big issue is—I’m not kidding–to keep Richmond’s whitest schools white, and fiercely campaigns to “save our schools” from integration.

Cheryl Turpin, Senate District 7: Open Seat/Competitive. Turpin was a high school science teacher for three decades before flipping a GOP seat in the House of Delegates. Her opponent, Jen Kiggans, was a frothing-at-the-mouth Trumpite—odd for a district trending blue. Her “Issues” website page equated abortion to “infanticide”, and she screamed about “socialism” on Fox News. She immediately changed her website and her tone once she won the primary. She ranted against the ERA and affordable healthcare, but now says she’s always been about “affordable and quality women’s healthcare.”

Debra Rodman, Senate District 12: Challenger/Competitive. Debra Rodman is another educator turned legislator. This is a district the GOP desperately wants to hold onto. Unfortunately, her opponent, Siobhan Dunnavant, was already under hot water for voting against the Medicaid expansion, before then she made things even worse. Dunnavant is currently under investigation by federal authorities for using her patient’s confidential information to solicit contributions and volunteers for her campaign.

Missy Smasal, Senate District 8: Challenger/Leans Red. Speaking of underhanded tricks, how’s this for shady: The incumbent, Bill DeSteph, is an investment realtor who used to be on the Virginia Beach City Council. Virginia Beach is infamous for its corrupt politicians, who thought nothing of signing a $3 million lease to rent a building owned by the senator. City officials wanted to move the voter registrar’s office, and set up an absentee voting location, into his space. There is no public transportation option for this site. People protested when they found out. DeSteph’s challenger is Missy Smasal, who is a business owner, Naval veteran, and community activist. Smasal is hitting DeSteph hard for announcing he was attending an NRA event right after the VA Beach shooting.

Amanda Pohl, Senate District 11: Challenger/Leans Red. You’ve read about the incumbent, Amanda Chase. She’s so bad she got kicked out of her county’s party. She flipped out on a black cop at the Capitol for not letting her illegally park, and then accused the police of being infiltrated by “Democratic operatives”. She threatened to “shoot down” gun groups. She wears a gun during legislative sessions. It’s not exaggerating to say she is mentally unfit to hold office.

Yig

@yigsstarhouse

Im all for open carry, but while in session?

Virginia State Sen. Amanda Chase, arrives at the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019, openly carrying a .38-caliber revolver strapped to her hip. https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/17/amanda-chase-virginia-open-carry-era/ …

Her challenger, Amanda Pohl, has raised a significant amount of money and her support has rapidly risen in the polls due to constituents growing tired of Chase’s behavior. I’m quite irritated with the VA Democratic leadership for not stepping up more to support this winnable race. It will fall on us.

Amy Laufer, Senate District 17: Challenger/Leans Red. Amy is a dream candidate. She has a great backstory: grew up a rural dairy farmer who was the first in her family to go to college. She was a middle school teacher who later served on the School Board, founded a successful organization to support women candidates, and even worked in the Peace Corps.

Her opponent, Bryce Reeves, has championed bills that allow insurance companies to price gouge. He is quite the jerk, too. He made national news for saying this about a Democratic state senator who he claimed was trying to “radically change Virginia”:

[Senator] Ebbin is “from Northern Virginia. He’s really liberal left; he’s . . . the [only] openly gay senator in our Senate.”

Yup, he said that. He is running scared, and is lately going on hate radio to deliver unhinged rants against Laufer. Although this a GOP-leaning district, Democrat Tim Kaine crushed his competition by over 7 points. We can win this.

Qasim Rashid, Senate District 28: Challenger/Leans Red. Although this is a GOP-leaning district, if you look at the trajectory over time, it’s becoming more blue. Tim Kaine only lost this district by 1%. If anyone can take it, Qasim Rashid can. Yes, that Qasim Rashid. His passionate writing has led to him being well known outside of Virginia. He currently has amassed 285K Twitter followers. His opponent is a racist ass, as you can see by this video:

Qasim Rashid, Esq.

@QasimRashid

My latest from @nowthisnews is a response to the attacks on my faith as I run for VA State Senate District 28

On Nov 5 let’s send a message to condemn hate & uplift compassion and justice

Are you in?#RashidForVA

Embedded video

Herb Jones, Senate District 3: Challenger/Strong Red. If the GOP was sane, Republican Tommy Norment wouldn’t stand a chance. Some of his friends and clients were convicted pedophiles, so Norment introduced a bill to curb punishment for pedophiles. He refuses to consider bills on the environment, healthcare, or stopping gun violence, but found time to make things easier for pedophiles. The article goes into his nonstop corruption as well. Compare that with his challenger, Herb Jones. Jones served three terms as County Treasurer for New Kent while still serving in the US Army Reserves. He served in the federal government as a operations officer in Afghanistan and currently runs a successful cloud-computing company.

Herb Jones got most of his money from small donations. Tommy Norment gets most of his money from two of the most evil companies in Virginia: Dominion Power and Altria (formerly Phillip-Morris). They donate almost exclusively to Republicans, and you will see their names on the top donor list for all the GOP candidates listed here.

Again, these candidates really need your help. Flipping Virginia to the trifecta would be huge, and the GOP and NRA are well aware of this fact. The deadline to register to vote is next Tuesday, October 15th. We are also rapidly approaching the deadline for donations. Please, pick one of these folks and throw a few dollars their way. Nothing will send Trump over the edge more than losing Virginia, and nothing will make the GOP freak out more than realizing they threw everything away for this unstable tyrant.

Speaking of which, the Virginia State Seal is Sic Semper Tyrannis. Virginia really has an opportunity to practice it’s motto in less than four weeks.

Virginia State Seal

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/nra-acted-as-foreign-asset-for-russia-ahead-of-2016-election-senate-report

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NRA acted as “foreign asset” for Russia ahead of 2016 election: Senate report

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 28, 2019

The National Rifle Association acted as a “foreign asset” for Russia leading up to the 2016 election, according to a report by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee.

An 18-month investigation into the NRA’s Russia ties by the committee’s minority staff, which reviewed more than 4,000 pages of NRA records, found that NRA leaders promised Russians access to U.S. officials in exchange for Russian business.

The probe found that NRA officials used the organization’s financial resources, which largely come from member dues, to curry favor with Aleksander Torshin, who was then an official at Russia’s Central Bank, and his deputy, convicted Russian spy Maria Butina.

The investigation found that former NRA president David Keene organized a trip to Russia — despite NRA denials that the trip was officially endorsed by the group — during which Butina and Torshin brought a delegation of NRA officials to Moscow. Keene set up the trip on the promise of business opportunities in Russia, including possible deals with a Russian gun manufacturer that was under U.S. sanctions, according to the report.

Getting the trip launched and approved took some convincing from Keene and his wife, Donna. Writing to then-NRA president Allan Cors about his decision to skip the trip, Donna Keene wrote, “we’ve worked for 7 years to build trust with the Russians.”

Along with the trip, the probe found that the NRA gave Torshin and Butina “broad access to events” over three years, where both Russians met with top Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates. Pete Brownell, an NRA official who went on the Moscow trip, told investigators that he personally introduced Butina to Donald Trump Jr. at a 2016 event. The report also showed that the NRA in August 2015 hosted then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, who became a central figure in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the Finance Committee’s ranking member, said that the probe revealed that Torshin and Butina had “effectively used the promise of lucrative personal business opportunities to capture the NRA and gain access to the American political system.”

“This report lays out in significant detail that the NRA lied about the 2015 delegation trip to Moscow. This was an official trip undertaken so NRA insiders could get rich — a clear violation of the principle that tax-exempt resources should not be used for personal benefit,” Wyden said in a statement.

The report could have significant legal implications for the tax-exempt group, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

“The NRA has abused its tax-exempt status and essentially become a business enterprise that its board members and leadership use for lucrative personal business opportunities, including in Moscow,” he said. “As the disturbing truth continues to surface, the NRA’s status as a tax exempt entity needs to be thoroughly investigated.”

Republicans disagreed with the Democratic conclusions and issued their own report, arguing that the $6,000 raised for the trip to Russia was “relatively insubstantial” and argued that the rest of the evidence in the report “does not raise concerns that the NRA abused its tax-exempt status.”

“The Minority report reads more like a political document directed at an organization well known in U.S. politics to be despised by Democrats for its advocacy for Second Amendment rights,” the Republican report said.

But the $6,000 figure refers only to money the NRA reimbursed to Butina. The report also showed that Brownell had been reimbursed more than $21,000 by the NRA for expenses related to the trip. Only after questions were raised about the trip in 2018 did Brownell pay back $17,000 of those funds.

The investigation concluded that top NRA officials went to Russia “primarily or solely for the purpose of advancing personal business interests, rather than advancing the NRA’s tax-exempt purpose.”

Wyden did not explicitly call for the NRA to lose its tax-exempt status but said the IRS needed to conduct a “broader review of the NRA’s activities in recent years” to determine whether its activities in Russia were part of a “persistent pattern of impermissible conduct.”

“The totality of evidence uncovered during my investigation, as well as the mounting evidence of rampant self-dealing, indicate the NRA may have violated tax laws,” he said.

Attorneys general in New York and Washington, D.C., are conducting their own investigations of alleged wrongdoing by the NRA,which has been locked in a fierce legal battle with its longtime PR firm and a bizarre internal rift that has led to numerous resignations.

Butina pleaded guilty to acting as a Russian agent and was sentenced to 18 months in prison earlier this year.

During the NRA’s 2016 outreach to the Russians, an arm of the group that is not required to disclose its donors spent a record $30 million helping to elect President Trump, more than three times as much as it spent supporting Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/there-is-no-good-guy-with-a-gun-inside-the-gun-lobbys-most-pernicious-myth/

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There is no ‘good guy with a gun’: Inside the gun lobby’s most pernicious myth

Written by Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon September 8, 2019

We don’t have more automobiles than people in the United States of America. We don’t have more televisions than people. We don’t have more radios than people. We don’t have more cell phones than people.

What we do have is more guns than people.

A recent report published by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, found that there are more than 393 million firearms owned by civilians in this country. We have a population of 326 million. That means there are 120.5 firearms for every 100 American citizens, according to the Washington Post. It’s a fact. If every single person in the United States possessed a gun, including babies, elderly people and the infirm — even including those hospitalized and on their deathbeds — there would still be 67 million guns left over. Sixty-seven million.

The number of guns owned by civilians is an outrage, a profanity, a sign that this country has lost its collective mind. But not to the National Rifle Association it isn’t. Not to the Gun Owners of America, another major gun lobby organization with over two million members, which is frequently critical of the NRA for being too soft on gun rights. These well-funded lobbies for gun manufacturers and gun owners have long taken the position that what we need is more guns, not less. They say that more guns equal less crime, despite FBI statistics that show conclusively that violent crime, and especially crimes involving firearms, is higher per capita in areas of the country with more guns.

You need guns to defend yourself and your property, these groups tell us. If more people had more guns, criminals would be less likely to commit crimes because they wouldn’t know who was armed and ready to defend themselves.

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,” said NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre after the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut that killed 20 children and six school staff. He said the same thing again after the Parkland, Florida, school massacre, which left 17 students and faculty dead. It has become the NRA’s favorite myth.

The “good guy with a gun” theory is their rationale behind arming teachers. It’s the argument they have for all the so-called “open carry” laws that have been passed. At this point, 31 states allow people to openly carry firearms in public without a license. Another 15 allow open carry with some form of state-issued license. All 50 states allow people to carry concealed firearms with varying forms of restrictions and licensing. The idea is the more “good guys with a gun,” the better.

According to ABC News, “There have been at least 19 deadly mass shootings in the U.S. so far in 2019.” There were two mass shootings last month on a single day, Aug. 3. The first, in El Paso, Texas, was at a Walmart. Twenty-two people were killed and 24 were wounded. That night in Dayton, Ohio, 10 people were killed and another 17 were wounded in a shooting that happened in less than 30 seconds. On Aug. 31, a shooter in Odessa, Texas, killed seven people and wounded 25, including three police officers.

Not one of the 19 mass shootings this year was stopped by a “good guy with a gun,” an armed civilian. Police shot the “bad guys with a gun” in Dayton and Odessa. In Dayton, it took them 66 shots to bring down the killer. They fired 40 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition, 16 rounds of .233 millimeter ammunition, and one shotgun round. The killer took only 40 rounds to kill seven and wound 17 with his AR-15 style weapon. The alleged shooter in El Paso somehow evaded dozens of responding police officers before surrendering.

Both Texas and Ohio allow open carry of firearms without a license, and yet in neither place was there a civilian “good guy with a gun” to stop the carnage in the midst of panic and chaos. An armed U.S. soldier with a concealed carry license in El Paso drew his weapon before deciding to shuttle fleeing children safely out of the shopping mall.

You have probably heard most of the arguments against these open carry laws. How will cops responding to an active-shooter incident know who the shooter is, and who is just a passer-by carrying a gun? What’s going to happen in a crowded store like Walmart when there finally is a shootout between a killer and “good guys with guns?” Won’t a lot of innocent by-standers be killed? If well-trained, heavily armed police can’t kill an active shooter with less than 66 bullets, how can we expect an armed teacher in a grade school to do it?

It’s madness. Every mass shooting proves how mad it is. Can you imagine what it must have been like in the El Paso Walmart, or outside the bar in Dayton, or on the street in Odessa? Guns were going off. People all around you were hit, wounded, dying, bleeding. Even if you were carrying a handgun, what would you have done?

Hide. Get behind something. Run. That’s what I would do. That’s what people did in El Paso, Dayton, and Odessa.

These mass shootings are acts of terror. People are terrorized, scared to death. They’re trying to stay alive.

In a country with more guns than people, the “good guy with a gun” myth is an obscenity. It’s a lie. Guns don’t save us. They kill us.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/08/23/convention-states-fires-up-base-for-push-to-rewrite-u-s-constitution

david a cmd

Convention of States Action (COS) kicked off its first “Leadership Summit” in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia today. COS, a project of Mark Meckler and Eric O’Keefe’s Citizens for Self-Governance, claims that “hundreds” of activists, state directors, and coordinators from all 50 states will attend to get inspired and learn strategies for passing COS resolutions in the states calling for a constitutional convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.

Fifteen states have passed the group’s applications so far, with 17 more states considering the resolution this year, according to COS. Wisconsin recently introduced a COS resolution, which would bump the number up to 18.

A constitutional convention has never been held since the Constitution was adopted, and COS will need 34 states to file applications in order for it to occur. If that happens, COS plans to move an array of sweeping amendments to redefine key parts of the Constitution and radically weaken the federal government.

COS has ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the National Rifle Association, the right-wing militia group Three Percenters, and the Christian nationalist group WallBuilders.

More than 200 civil rights and public interest groups, including the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), signed a letter last year denouncing such constitutional convention calls as “a threat to every American’s constitutional rights and civil liberties.”

Right-Wing Extremists to Speak

Fox News anchorPete Hegseth, from Trump’s beloved Fox & Friends,addressed the crowd this morning, telling them that the Left hates the Constitution, the founding fathers understood that the word of “Jesus Christ our savior” is the guiding force for our country, and that there “is no other freedom-loving bastion in the world that values the individual with God-endowed rights.”

And, referencing the Three Percenters likely in attendance, Hegseth said, “it has always been the one percent or two percent or three percent of people that get it, that are willing to buck the comfiness of their moment and the established norms that everyone is comfortable with, willing to be defiant, willing to stand — be accused of being radical about things that are not radical at all.”

Recently, Hegseth has made some radical comments himself, saying that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI-D) has a “Hamas agenda,” implying that she works with a U.S. designated terrorist organization.

Hegseth has also publicly defended Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince’s Blackwater contractors, who were convicted of murdering Iraqi citizens, and has called climate change a “religion” that Democrats use to “control” people.

David Barton warmed up the crowd with a history lecture on the Constitution’s basis in fixed moral standards based on natural law and scripture, and drew applause with his claim that the federal government has “emasculated the states.”

A Christian nationalist with strong anti-LGBT views. Barton once said,

“There’s a passage that I love in Romans 1. … [I]t talks about homosexuality and it says that they will receive in their bodies the penalties of their behavior. … The Bible [is] right every time … and that’s why AIDS has been something they haven’t discovered a cure for or a vaccine for. … And that goes to what God says, ‘Hey you’re going to bear in your body the consequences of this homosexual behavior.'”

Barton founded the group WallBuilders, which has worked with Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance to influence judicial elections and selection rules in states across the country, the Center for Media and Democracy detailed.

WallBuilders also works with the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation to push out Christian-Right model legislation in the mold of ALEC to state lawmakers under the name Project Blitz.

Also in line to speak at the Summit is one of the NRA’s top attorneys, Charles Cooper. Cooper will speak on, “The Real Threat to Gun Rights.” In an email to COS activists, Cooper is quoted as saying:

“The real threat to our constitutional rights today is posed not by an Article V Convention of States, but by an out-of-control federal government, exercising powers that it does not have and abusing powers that it does.”

COS materials in recent years have argued that a constitutional convention could be used to rewrite the Second Amendment in order to make it Supreme-Court-proof.

Others on the agenda to speak include founding board member Eric O’Keefe, former professor Rob Natelson, former U.S. Senator and COS Senior Advisor Tom Coburn, and the right-wing author of Liberty Amendments Mark Levin.

But the stars of the summit are likely to be the actors COS will have play the founding fathers Patrick Henry, James Madison, and George Washington.

Stay tuned to ExposedbyCMD.org for more on the right-wing’s effort to rewrite the Constitution.

amazing news about corruption of lapierre had no effect; must be that guns are fundamental to base? tho big %even of NRA rank and file ok w/ bkgd checks?

CNN’s Anderson Cooper rips Trump for cowering in fear of the NRA — after he slammed Republicans for doing exactly that

Cody Fenwick

President Donald Trump is backing down from his support of bulked-up firearm background check legislation, clearly fearful of backlash from the National Rifle Association. And according to The Atlantic, Trump…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/nra-implodes-as-a-fifth-board-member-resigns/

Monday, saying he did so with “a heavy heart,” and “effective immediately,” NRA board member Richard Childress resigned from the Second Amendment organization. Childress becomes the fifth high-profile member of the NRA’s board to resign in the last couple of weeks. Childress becomes another in a steady stream of defections that began with chief lobbyist Chris Cox stepping down at the end of July due to “improprieties,” followed by three board members alleging an unwillingness on the part of NRA brass to investigate internal improprieties, and followed by the early exit of professional sport shooter and board member Julie Golob.

Childress’ resignation is not at all surprising as he was the co-author along with former NRA President Oliver North of a letter that questioned some of the financial extravagances going on inside of the organization. It was Childress and North’s letter that subsequently leaked along with Wayne LaPierre’s own leaks to the media alleging extortion tactics on the part of North and others in an increasingly ugly internal power struggle.

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819 anec or trend? calls to come back for emerg session fade

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Republican senator heckled and booed during town hall for blaming recent mass shootings on mental illness: ‘Do something!’

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Written by Alex Henderson August 20, 2019

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection in 2020 and is among the Republican senators who is considered vulnerable, discussed the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio during a town hall event in her home state this week —and she was booed and heckled when she echoed President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and blamed “mental illness” for the killings.

Resisting calls for stricter gun control, Ernst told Iowa residents attending the town hall, “A lot of the incidents we’ve seen do come back to mental illness.” And the crowd immediately started booing.

Attendees clearly wanted stricter gun control, and Ernst was bombarded with shouts of “What about the guns?” and “Do something.”

In response, Ernst said that the U.S. has been through many hardships — and someone responded, “It’s not the same.” When Ernst commented that the U.S. was “short on” mental health resources, an Iowan shouted, “We’re short congresspeople that take action.”

Someone else shouted, “We need you to protect us.”

Ernst echoed the assertions of other Republicans when she said she was in favor of enforcing gun control laws already in existence. But she wouldn’t commit to passing stricter gun control laws.

Ernst received a 93% favorability rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) during the 2014 election, when she was first elected to the U.S. Senate.

wapo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dc-attorney-general-issues-subpoenas-to-nra-its-charitable-foundation/**2019**/07/12/835bb30e-a4bb-11e9-bd56-eac6bb02d01d_story.html?noredirect=on

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Sections

Democracy Dies in Darkness

National

D.C. attorney general issues subpoenas to NRA, its charitable foundation

By Katie Zezima ,

Carol D. Leonnig and

Keith L. Alexander July 12 2019

The District’s attorney general issued subpoenas Friday to the National Rifle Association and its charitable foundation, putting additional pressure on the embattled gun rights organization from nonprofit regulators.

The office of Attorney General Karl A. Racine is seeking financial documents from the NRA and its foundation. The NRA Foundation is chartered in the District, and the NRA is registered as a nonprofit and does business there.

“The Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia has issued subpoenas to the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the NRA Foundation, Inc., as part of an investigation into whether these entities violated the District’s Nonprofit Act,” Racine said in a statement.

He continued: “We are seeking documents from these two nonprofits detailing, among other things, their financial records, payments to vendors, and payments to officers and directors.”

William A. Brewer III, the NRA’s outside counsel, said in a statement that the organization will cooperate with “any appropriate inquiry” into its finances.

“The NRA has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance,” Brewer said, noting the organization’s financial statements are audited and that it is “committed to utilizing best practices” in accounting and governance.

Racine’s office has jurisdiction over nonprofits. It can seek court action to dissolve or place into receivership a nonprofit that misuses funds or does not act in accordance with its stated mission.

Racine’s subpoenas come as the organization is under mounting internal and external pressure. They are the second state legal action taken against the NRA in recent months.

In April, New York Attorney General Letitia James also issued subpoenas to the NRA and its foundation seeking financial records about its tax-exempt status. The NRA was chartered in New York in 1871.

Racine’s inquiry into payments to officers and directors comes after The Washington Post reported last month that 18 of the NRA’s 76 board members collected money from the NRA during the past three years, according to tax filings, state charitable reports and NRA correspondence. They include a former National Football League player who received $400,000 for public outreach and firearms training, and a writer who was paid more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications.

NRA board members are tasked with overseeing the organization’s finances.

[NRA money flowed to board members amid allegedly lavish spending by top officials and vendors]

The NRA is also enmeshed in a lawsuit with New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who issued a directive last year urging insurance and financial services companies to review their relationships with the organization. It came after a state investigation found the NRA’s “Carry Guard” insurance [murder insurance] product to be illegal under New York law.

Scrutiny of the organization has also increased on Capitol Hill. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been investigating the organization, looking for answers about financial and other ties between the organization and Russia. Two Democratic House members have written to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, stating they were concerned about a “complex web of relationships” between the organization and Russia.

The NRA also has been grappling with growing internal strife in recent months. In the past several weeks, it has seen its top lobbyist resign and its television arm shut down, and has severed all business with its longtime public relations firm, which helped brand the NRA as a hard-edged organization that would defend gun rights at all costs.

The NRA’s top lobbyist, Christopher W. Cox, resigned last month after being accused of being part of an extortion scheme to oust LaPierre. Cox had led the organization’s political and lobbying arm since 2002 and was considered one of its most effective and high-profile leaders. The political arm spent more than $30 million to help elect President Trump.

In April, LaPierre accused former NRA president Oliver North of extortion, claiming North threatened to reveal damaging financial information if LaPierre did not step down and withdraw the NRA from a lawsuit against its longtime and now estranged public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen.

[Newtown massacre divided NRA leaders, foreshadowing split to come]

The organization has been rocked by revelations of exorbitant spending by top executives, including that LaPierre racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel, according to invoices.

North, who stepped down from his post after the allegations, also claimed the NRA spent $24 million in legal bills last year. The allegations come as the organization’s 2018 financial report show that the nonprofit, its four affiliated charities and its political committee ended the year $10.8 million in the red.

The report shows that the NRA increased spending on overhead including legal fees, travel, entertainment and office supplies, while cutting money to its core missions, including gun training and political spending.

Katie Zezima

Katie Zezima is a national correspondent covering drugs, guns, gambling and vice in America. She covered the 2016 election and the Obama White House for The Washington Post. Follow

Carol D. Leonnig

Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. Follow

Keith L. Alexander

Keith L. Alexander covers crime and courts, specifically D.C. Superior Court cases, for The Washington Post. Alexander was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that investigated fatal police shootings across the nation in 2015. He joined The Post in 2001. He previously worked as a reporter for USA Today, BusinessWeek and The Dayton Daily News

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newtown-massacre-divided-nra-leaders-foreshadowing-split-to-come/2019/07/03/40c45d82-9757-11e9-916d-9c61607d8190_story.html

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Politics

Newtown massacre divided NRA leaders, foreshadowing split to come

A demonstrator interrupts a speech by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre in Washington on Dec. 21, 2012, a week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

By Carol D. Leonnig ,

Beth Reinhard and

Tom HamburgerJuly 4

Twenty young children had just been gunned down by a semiautomatic rifle in their classrooms in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, and inside the hardened bunker of the National Rifle Association, rattled officials were wrestling with rare feelings of self-doubt.

In the past, the gun rights organization had responded to mass shootings with unapologetic, high-profile attacks on any attempt to restrict firearms. But several senior NRA officials — laid low by images of sobbing parents planning their children’s funerals rather than tucking presents under Christmas trees — thought the organization should take a less confrontational approach this time, according to multiple people familiar with the internal debate.

Archival video: NRA calls for protecting schools with armed guards

National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre called for schools to be protected with armed guards on Dec. 21, 2012. (Photo: Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Over the objections of some top officials, however, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre struck a defiant posture. In fiery public appearances crafted by Ackerman McQueen, the organization’s longtime advertising firm , LaPierre announced that the group would create a model program to train armed security guards who could protect schools from shooters, saying that was the only measure that would keep children safe.

Then LaPierre and his wife left for the Bahamas, a trip they billed through Ackerman McQueen — and was ultimately paid for by the nonprofit organization. Their post-Christmas flights to and from Eleuthera, known for its pink beaches, cost the NRA nearly $70,000, according to internal documents and people familiar with the trip.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the couple was on official business, doing outreach to donors and supporters, whom he declined to identify.

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, “Wayne’s main concern was being respectful of the victims and their families,” he said. LaPierre, as leader of the NRA, sought “to figure out a way to harden our schools” while also defending the Second Amendment, Arulanandam said.

New details about how the NRA handled the tumultuous moment show how Sandy Hook —one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — divided the leadership of the powerful gun rights organization. The episode also showcased the symbiotic relationship between LaPierre and Ackerman McQueen, an alliance that defined the NRA for more than three decades, several former officials said.

During that period, the bills for LaPierre’s wardrobe and his private jet travel flowed through the Oklahoma-based ad firm, recently revealed internal documents show, a practice that critics say shrouded the nature of the costs from some NRA leaders and members. At the same time, Ackerman McQueen collected tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees and kept a tight grip on the NRA’s aggressive messaging, according to documents and people familiar with the dynamics.

In recent months, a bitter legal dispute over control of the NRA has fractured their longtime alliance, spilling the revelations about the organization’s finances into public view. Ackerman and the NRA are now estranged, locking in warring lawsuits. The tumult led to the resignation last week of longtime NRA lobbyist Christopher W. Cox, whom the NRA has accused of participating in a scheme to oust LaPierre. Cox has denied the allegations.

[‘All those people are completely estranged and at odds.’ Beth Reinhard on rifts within the NRA. Listen on Post Reports.]

The factors that would later fuel this remarkably public civil war were already at play in on Dec. 14, 2012, when the NRA confronted perhaps its worst political crisis in history. On one side was Cox, who was pushing for the group to take a lower-key approach amid a wave of national outrage. On the other was LaPierre, who decided to go on the offensive.

Four months after the massacre, a raft of gun control measures failed in Congress. But outrage about lawmakers’ inaction after the loss of so many young lives in Newtown also spurred a resurgence among groups fighting to restrict firearms.

'Kids are getting shot'

A man and child leave the funeral for 6-year-old Jack Pinto on Dec. 17, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

The mass shooting at Sandy Hook, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were killed, scalded the country.

President Barack Obama wiped away tears as he spoke that day about the children who had died. When he visited Newtown two days after the shooting to talk privately with families who had lost their loved ones, he later said, he saw something he’d never witnessed before: the stalwart Secret Service agents on his detail quietly weeping.

The tragedy immediately led to a clamoring for new limits on firearms. Obama vowed that gun control would be a “central issue” of his second term.

Some NRA leaders girded for what they considered inevitable: congressional action to revive the federal ban on assault weapons that had expired in 2004. Several senior officials and longtime leaders thought the killing of children required the group to alter its normally defiant response to mass shootings and keep a low profile — at least in the immediate aftermath, said people familiar with internal discussions.

“Everyone was saying, ‘Are we doing the right thing here?’ ” one former NRA employee said, describing internal discussions about whether the group should consider a modest gun control compromise or alter its aggressive posture. “Kids are getting shot. Is there something else we should be doing?”

Cox, a seasoned political strategist, wanted to head off efforts to restrict firearms and thought that a combative approach at that time was unwise and could invite a public backlash, said multiple people familiar with the debate.

But LaPierre ultimately agreed with Ackerman McQueen that the NRA had to forcefully counter growing public calls to rein in weapons.

Cox, who did not respond to requests for comment, did not attend a news conference that LaPierre held a week after the Sandy Hook shooting.

As soon as LaPierre stepped before hundreds of reporters at the Willard hotel in Washington on Dec. 21, he made it clear that the NRA would remain fiercely opposed to any gun control measures.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said after the Sandy Hook massacre. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

The NRA chief announced that a task force would create a program, later called NRA School Shield, to help train armed security guards to protect schools from shooters — and preemptively defended the group from those he predicted would criticize the idea.

[Put armed police in every school, NRA urges]

“Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word ‘gun’ automatically become a bad word?” LaPierre said.

He then delivered the line that would become a mantra of NRA hard-liners: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

LaPierre ridiculed gun-free school zones as welcome signs to insane murderers and warned of “monsters .?.?. who walk among us every day.”

“The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them,” he said.

Two days later, LaPierre went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to promote the NRA’s new shield program. “If it’s crazy to call for putting police and armed security [guards] in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” he said.

When Obama later voiced skepticism that putting more guns in schools would keep children safer, Ackerman McQueen produced a video that alluded to his daughters’ Secret Service protection, calling him an “elitist hypocrite.”

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the narrator intoned.

[Ackerman McQueen PR firm has been behind NRA’s provocative ads for decades]

There were signs that some inside the NRA were uncomfortable with the focus on Obama’s daughters. Jim Baker, one of the organization’s top lobbyists, said at the time that he considered the ad “ill-advised,” adding, “I don’t think it was particularly helpful.”

In a statement, Ackerman McQueen officials said that the firm’s job was to help the NRA respond to news and public events, as it did after the Sandy Hook massacre, and that LaPierre was the final decision-maker on the strategy to propose armed defenders in schools.

“Throughout the entire relationship with the NRA, Wayne LaPierre controlled every aspect of NRA public communications,” the firm said.

Po Murray, chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, whose four children graduated from Sandy Hook Elementary before the shooting, called the approach taken by the NRA and Ackerman McQueen “corrupt and irresponsible.”

“We felt the NRA’s position after Sandy Hook was completely insensitive and so out of touch when we were going through such a significant amount of trauma,” she said.

Arulanandam said that LaPierre “had great compassion for those impacted by this horrific event” and was seeking to find a way to “protect our most treasured resource — our children.”

“These events, sadly, all too often become politicized by people on all sides of the conversation,” he said, adding: “At the same time, during these events the media demands that we defend our position on the Second Amendment.”

Gun control falters

After his combative public performance, LaPierre left town.

Three days after the mass shooting in Newtown, he charged $39,947 for a private jet to Eleuthera, according to internal travel records detailed in letters this spring from Ackerman McQueen’s chief financial officer to LaPierre, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Washington Post.

On Dec. 27, the LaPierres flew to the island, NRA officials confirmed. The organization has previously said that LaPierre, as the public face of the organization, must travel by private plane for security reasons.

Arulanandam, the NRA spokesman, said the couple’s week-plus visit to the Caribbean resort area during the winter holidays was a business trip related to donor outreach. The organization declined to provide details, saying it was against NRA policy to discuss individual donors.

“There was a business trip after Christmas 2012 involving donor outreach and the recruitment of influential NRA supporters and members,” Arulanandam said. “Wayne is responsible for a campaign to raise almost $400 million annually, so he travels extensively on behalf of the Association — even over the holidays.”

Susan LaPierre, co-founder of theNRA Women’s Leadership Forum, a coalition of female philanthropists who support the Second Amendment, traveled with her husband to “assist with NRA business and development efforts as she frequently does,” Arulanandam said.

After ringing in the New Year in the Caribbean, Wayne LaPierre charged another private air charter on his Ackerman McQueen credit card: $29,100 on Jan. 3 to fly from Nassau, Bahamas, to Dallas, according to internal documents and people familiar with his trips.

NRA officials said LaPierre flew to Dallas to attend donor and member events there as part of a hunters’ sporting exposition.

NRA chief lobbyist Christopher W. Cox and LaPierre stand near an empty seat reserved for then-NRA President Oliver North at the group’s annual meeting in Indianapolis on April 26. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)

William A. Brewer III, a lawyer for the NRA, has said that the vast majority of LaPierre’s travel involved “donor outreach, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.” He said that the NRA chief routed some travel expenses through Ackerman McQueen for “confidentiality and security purposes,” but that this method of billing has since been modified.

Ackerman McQueen said the firm footed the initial bill for LaPierre’s travel at the NRA’s instructions.

“Ackerman McQueen did not have any knowledge of the plans or details of the expenditures in question, all of which the NRA client claimed had a sound business or security rationale,” the firm said in a statement.

For several months, the deaths of the Connecticut schoolchildren continued to spur public cries for action. Polls showed that 90 percent of Americans supported new legislation to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

In a letter dated Jan. 3, 2013, that was sent to congressional lawmakers, Cox said the NRA wanted to be a “constructive voice” in the debate about how to prevent the next school massacre. He stressed his opposition to a ban on assault weapons, but said the organization supported efforts to keep all weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.

The tragedy spurred a rare bipartisan effort on gun control in the Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a pro-gun Democrat, and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) joined forces to expand background checks to cover a major source of gun sales: unlicensed dealers at gun shows and online vendors.

Parents of the Sandy Hook victims visited Washington to pressure lawmakers to act, carrying pictures of their children: a freckle-faced boy smiling with a missing front tooth, a 6-year-old boy in his favorite Superman shirt.

But by the time of the final vote on April 17, their chance of victory was slim. Some Republicans said the bill was unfair to gun owners because it would require them to pay for a background check to exercise their right to buy a gun. The NRA had vowed to “score” senators based on their vote on the legislation, stressing that they would face consequences for supporting it. The organization asked its members to flood senators with letters, emails and phone calls.

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said that Sandy Hook was a turning point for the NRA and that “its leaders chose the course of extremism and refused to even consider common-sense laws supported by most Americans.”

As a cluster of Sandy Hook parents gathered in the gallery to watch the key vote, a Republican-led filibuster blocked the measure, with four Democrats joining to oppose it. The Senate also blocked other measures Obama sought to ban certain military-style rifles and limit the size of ammunition magazines.

The visibly angry president declared that it was a temporary loss.

“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he said, vowing to try again. “Sooner or later, we’re going to get this right.”

Julie Tate, Alice Crites and Katie Zezima contributed to this report.

Carol D. Leonnig

Beth Reinhard

Beth Reinhard is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. She was a member of the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award and Toner Prize in 2018. She previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, National Journal, the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post. Follow

Tom Hamburger

Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post. He has covered the White House, Congress and regulatory agencies, with a focus on money and politics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/nra-board-subpoena-letitia-james.html

Aug. 6, 2019

With the gun debate intensifying in the wake of last weekend’s mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, the National Rifle Association’s problems deepened Monday evening as the New York attorney general’s office issued a subpoena seeking documents from more than 90 current and former members of the organization’s board.

The subpoena is an escalation of a continuing investigation into the tax-exempt status of the N.R.A., which is chartered in New York, and engulfs the organization’s board of directors in the inquiry. The subpoena seeks financial records and other documents that would shed light on spending decisions made by the board.

The latest moves come in a year when the N.R.A. and its board have been in turmoil. Its finances and political machine are being strained amid a host of legal battles, as well as a rebellion from some donors and members and infighting that has led to the departures of the board’s president, Oliver North, and the N.R.A.’s top lobbyist and second-in-command, Christopher W. Cox.

A spokeswoman for Letitia James, the New York attorney general, who opened the inquiry in April, declined to comment. Ms. James’s office has broad authority to investigate nonprofits, and has been scrutinizing whether the N.R.A. was using funds designated for charitable purposes appropriately, and if payments made to board members, officers and affiliated parties complied with relevant tax laws and fiduciary requirements.

Her office can pursue potential remedies in court; a previous inquiry by Ms. James’s predecessors led to the shuttering of President Trump’s charitable foundation, a far smaller enterprise.

William A. Brewer III, the N.R.A.’s outside counsel, said in a statement: “As we understand it, counsel to the N.R.A. board accepted service of a subpoena to the board that relates to the production of documents and information.”

He added: “Such a request was expected and, as we have said many times, the N.R.A. will cooperate with any reasonable, good faith request for information given the organization’s commitment to good governance.”

The group is also facing a separate inquiry by the attorney general for the District of Columbia, Karl A. Racine, who is focusing on the N.R.A. Foundation, a large affiliated charity chartered in Washington. Its ties to Russia have also been the focus of Congressional inquiries.

The latest development will apply new pressure to the board, which has largely but not uniformly supported Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s longtime chief executive, amid the recent power struggle that led to the departures of Mr. North and Mr. Cox. Last week, three board members who had opposed Mr. LaPierre’s management — Sean Maloney, Esther Schneider and Timothy Knight — resigned from the board. On Monday, the N.R.A. disputed a report on a gun blog that its board had been dropped by the insurer who provides insurance against litigation, calling it untrue.

This year, a number of news accounts have raised questions about the N.R.A.’s spending decisions, many approved by its board. In March, The New York Times reported that Mr. North, then the board’s president, had a lucrative financial contract with the N.R.A.’s most important contractor, the advertising firm Ackerman McQueen. (Ackerman and the N.R.A. subsequently embarked on a bitter legal battle.) The Times also reported that the N.R.A. had directed $18 million to a production company in which an N.R.A. official, Tyler Schropp, had a stake.

The organization’s payment practices were further examined in an April story in The New Yorker. And in May, leaks revealed that Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s longtime chief executive, billed $275,000 through Ackerman McQueen for purchases at the Zegna luxury men’s wear boutique in Beverly Hills and $267,000 in personal expenses, including flights and limousine service for trips to the Bahamas, Florida, Nevada, Budapest and an Italian lake resort. Payments made by the N.R.A. to its board members have also been an area of continuing scrutiny.

Ms. James’s inquiry has aroused the ire of President Trump, a key N.R.A. ally. He tweeted in April, after the investigation was opened, that Ms. James and New York Governor Andrew M.Cuomo, whose administration is locked in its own legal battle with the N.R.A., were “using the State’s legal apparatus to take down and destroy this very important organization.”

Ms. James’s office, in its own tweet later that day, wrote: “Attorney General Letitia James is focused on enforcing the rule of law. In any case we pursue, we will follow the facts wherever they may lead. We wish the President would share our respect for the law.”

Danny Hakim can be reached at hakim@nytimes.com.

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The National Rifle Association released a video responding to recent mass public shootings in which NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre grouped together mass shooters with politicians and other prominent figures who seek to address gun violence as supposed threats to the Second Amendment. The video is one of the first high-profile communication efforts that the NRA has undertaken since the group pulled the plug on its messaging operation NRATV in June amid massive infighting.

The three-minute NRA video responds to mass public shootings that occurred earlier this month in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, that left 31 people dead and dozens more injured. In both cases, the shootings were carried out with military-style assault weaponsequipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines.

In the video, LaPierre pushed typical NRA disarmament conspiracy theories, claimed that efforts to regulate firearms would “defame” NRA members and concluded, “Let’s fight to make sure no madman, or billionaire, or elitist politician ever takes away our God-given right to protect our lives, our homes, and the people we love.” In essence, LaPierre grouped together the people who carry out mass shootings with some of the people who seek to address gun violence by regulating firearms.

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Document Shows NRA Money Helped Its Chief Search for a Personal Mansion

The gun group’s lawyer said “not a cent” of the nonprofit’s money was spent on helping executive Wayne LaPierre’s mansion search. A document we obtained shows that payments were flagged by internal accountants for doing just that.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/here-are-the-top-politicians-getting-cash-from-the-nra-and-blocking-gun-law-reforms

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Here are the top politicians getting cash from the NRA and blocking gun law reforms

Written by Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos August 7, 2019

A couple of years ago I wrote a quick piece on the top Republicans receiving the most career NRA and gun lobby money. That list showed you how over their careers people like Sen. John McCain—who has since shuffled off this mortal coil and Reps. like Barbara Comstock—who lost her reelection bid in 2016 under a blue wave of change—pulled in hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars from the gun lobby. Some of the Republicans on the list have moved into private life to make some more money, with hopes they can reemerge down the road hiding dried blood stains and the faded smell of corruption, like Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan.

And while hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars seem tame over a career, keep in mind that these are the numbers not hidden deep inside of PACs that are untraceable. The price of sitting on one’s hands while children are murdered and families destroyed continues to be relatively cheap. And while some of these names no longer count as elected officials, MarketWatch points out that 98% of gun groups and the NRA’s targeted candidate money continues to go to Republicans.

So here is a top 20 list of congressional representatives taking the most money in recent years from the gun lobby, according to OpenSecrets.Org. These are numbers from the 2017-2018 election cycle and while some of these folks are no longer in office (in italics), the damage they’ve done in the name of blood money endures.

Ted Cruz (R-TX) received $309,021, but if you want to go shooting with him you better have a background check. No, seriously.

Martha McSally (R-AZ) and her $227,928, have gotten her through losing elections but we will see where that goes as she will actually have to defend the seat she was not elected to this coming year.

Steve Scalise (R-LA) took his $132,831 and a few bulletsbut he’s ready to oppose all gun safety proposals.

Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) $95,093 couldn’t stop him from being one of the worst people in the history of people.

Marsha Blackburn’s (R-TN) $85,168 is now a quiet little secret as the blue wave freaked her out, and so during this election cycle she’s pretending that she hasn’t spent a good part of her career extolling the virtues of guns.

Dean Heller’s (R-NV) $76,713 from the gun lobby got him to vote against everything from background checks to magazine sizes.

Paul Ryan (R-WI) liked collecting $65,347from the gun lobby and loved blocking the CDC from collecting gun violence data.

Handel, Karen (R-GA) had to show up at the NRA convention in 2018 for some more of that $58,813, but she was afraid of being seen with Donald Trump. Not sure why.

Mia Love ‘s (R-UT) $50,233didn’t win her reelection but her early retirement has led to her new bright idea that Republicans should have a policy plan for gun violence.

John Culberson (R-TX) and his $43,575 in gun money proves the rule that if you are conservative with a “TX” next to your name, you are cashing blood money checks on the regular.

Greg Gianforte (R-MT), $43,525, the man who assaulted a reporter over tough questions spent a lot of campaign money attacking the idea of an assault weapon registry.

Lou Barletta (R-PA) $41,747, has one big solution to mass shootings: “curtail” elected officials town hall meetings with their constituents.

Kevin Cramer (R-ND) received $39,796 from the gun lobby. Maybe they were impressed with his ability to compare immigrant children’s detainment cages with “playgrounds?”

Will Hurd (R-TX) took that $38,350, becoming the only African American Republican in the House of Representatives. Hurd announced his plans to not run for reelection at the beginning of August.

Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) didn’t have to give back the $34,986 she received from the gun lobby after she made a lynching joke and photos of her rocking Confederate gear hit the internets. Maybe wearing racist stuff doesn’t matter to the NRA and other gun enthusiasts when you have a racist organization’s gun in your hands as well?

Barbara Comstock (R-VA) and the $34,453 she got from the NRA was not able to overcome the blue wave 2018 elections.

Pete Sessions (R-TX) lost his reelection bid, but not after blaming gun violence on “diversity” in American culture, and also receiving $34,200 from other like-minded gun folks.

Jim Renacci (R-OH) took his $33,284 in gun money, and a strip club owner’s private jet all around Ohio in hopes of taking Sen. Sherrod Brown’s seat.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) $30,297, has been voting red for so long, come hell or high water, that gun money just always trickles in.

Mike Coffman (R-CO) and his $28,085 in gun money were the focus of successful Republican attack ads.

Here are some additional highlights from the 2016 top gun money makers:

Ron Johnson (R-WI) took $165,538 and has proven that his special talent as a lawmaker is not understanding how or what laws are—especially in regards to guns … and bombs.

Rand Paul (R-KY) likes $110,500 of gun money, loves guns, and also likes inciting violence against U.S. representatives that are not white. But that’s mostly because Rand Paul, like his father, is a racist shithead.

Pat Toomey (R-PA) spent his $79,908 in gun money pretending to work “behind the scenes,” on magical gun legislation that no one has ever seen.

Ryan Zinke (R-MT) took his $79,068, a pittance considering the fact that he took private meetings as secretary of the Interior with gun manufacturers, in companies he has financial stake in—that he forgot to disclose when he was nominated for the position.

Rob Portman (R-OH) only received $52,686 during the 2016 cycle, but he’s one of the top ten all-time moneymakers from the gun lobby. But watch out, gun lobby, Portman once said he thought maybe terrorists shouldn’t be allowed to have guns. Is Portman a commie secret deep state Muslim snowflake? Only time will tell.

Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) $42,000gets him to say stupid shit like “video games” are the real reason why people with guns kill people.

Josh Hawley (R-MO) got a healthy dose of NRA money for his Senate run in 2018. Dark money poured into his senate race against Claire McCaskill and his campaign was accused of illegally coordinating large ad buys in the state of Missouri with the NRA. The people involved were accused of the same scheme during the 2016 election, where they coordinated with the Trump campaign.

This past cycle saw the NRA’s campaign contributions dwindle as their own finances have been called into question, and the return on their investment in war didn’t yield the same election results as previous years. But that money is still powerful enough that CNN reported 49 out of 50 Republican officials asked avoided speaking on air about the last couple of days’ mass shootings.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/these-new-documents-are-raising-ethical-and-billing-concerns-about-the-nras-outside-counsel/

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These new documents are raising ethical and billing concerns about the NRA’s outside counsel

Written by Mike Spies / ProPublica July 31, 2019

In 2018, accountants for the National Rifle Association began cataloging for its board of directors questionable financial arrangements that had led to millions of dollars in payments to a group of top executives and consultants. The NRA was experiencing cash flow problems, and the accountants were trying to address what they believed to be serious financial mismanagement.

For a year and a half, the NRA has employed an outside counsel, William A. Brewer III, who represents the organization in high-profile legal disputes and is also deeply involved in internal decision-making.The accountants believed the financial dealings they had found could jeopardize the organization’s nonprofit standing with regulators. Yet, according to a former senior official in the NRA’s treasurer’s office, Brewer tried to thwart their efforts to draw attention to the problematic payments.

The former senior employee, Emily Cummins, who worked for 12 years in the NRA’s treasurer’s office, quietly resigned in November as the group’s internal strife escalated. Cummins, in a written statement that began circulating this month among NRA leaders, including at least one board member, alleges that Brewer obstructed the work of NRA accountants and vastly exacerbated the organization’s financial woes as he charged it hefty legal fees. Cummins confirmed that she had produced the statement, which was obtained by ProPublica, but declined to provide any additional comments. Brewer’s firm said its work was justified and of the highest quality.

The statement 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.

Cummins accuses Brewer of trying to intimidate, deceive and silence NRA staff who were processing his bills while some accountants were growing increasingly troubled by the organization’s mismanagement, exorbitant spending and questionable deals involving conflicts of interest. Former Brewer colleagues as well as written correspondence obtained by ProPublica broadly supported her claims.

Cummins wrote in her statement that Brewer “intimidated NRA staff and threatened our professional livelihoods.” She alleged that he used pressure tactics with staffers “to keep them acquiescent,” compiling what she called “burn books” filled with personal information that he could use against individuals.

“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.”

In a lengthy response to Cummins’ account, the Brewer law firm and the NRA defended Brewer’s work and called his legal fees standard. The Brewer firm pointed to an NRA email it said Cummins wrote in August 2018 praising the firm. “They are good lawyers and seem to be good people as well,” it said.

Svetlana M. Eisenberg, a Brewer partner, told ProPublica that “the notion that our research team compiles opposition research, or ‘burn books,’ regarding clients or their employees is simply not true.”

Craig Spray, the NRA’s chief financial officer, said the NRA is “current on all its vendor payments.”

Brewer has been a central behind-the-scenes force in the internal struggle that broke out between the NRA’s top executive Wayne LaPierre and ousted president Oliver North. LaPierre has entrusted the future of his organization to Brewer, and in a statement this week said the organization has “full confidence in Bill Brewer and his law firm.”

As the gun group has fractured, Brewer’s firm has been a key player in a series of expensive lawsuits against former business partners, government officials and North, in certain cases seeking damages worth tens of millions of dollars.

For the last three decades, the NRA has been one of the most influential special interest groups in the country. Without an infusion of cash, and a return to relative stability, it could find itself on the sidelines of the 2020 election, a dramatic difference from 2016. That year, campaign finance records show the organization spent over $30 million to help elect Donald Trump, more than any other special interest group.

Internal NRA documents previously obtained by The Trace and The New Yorker described expenses and questionable transactions and business arrangements involving top executives, favored vendors and consultants. Through Brewer, the NRA said it had “serious concerns about the accuracy” of the reporting but would not comment on “privileged communications or personnel matters.” Attorneys general in New York and Washington, D.C., have opened inquiries into whether the NRA violated its charitable status by providing excessive financial benefits to its executives and supporters. The D.C. attorney general’s office declined to comment on its inquiry beyond an initial statement, and the New York office did not respond to requests for comment.

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.”

Brewer’s NRA legal strategy suffered a setback in May, in a First Amendment case against a New York state financial regulator. A judge ruled that the NRA could collect no damages from defendants in their official capacities, even if it prevailed.

Brewer’s firm has offices in Dallas and New York, and has represented celebrities like 50 Cent and major corporations such as 3M, which ultimately settled an environmental suit for $850 million in 2018. Starting in the mid-’80s, he gained a reputation for pioneering unusually aggressive legal tactics, which could yield successful outcomes for corporate clients.

But the tactics caused others to question the firm’s conduct. In 1998, the Dallas Observer ran a lengthy story on Brewer, describing his firm, then called Bickel & Brewer, as “a pariah within the local legal community, accused of pushing the ethical envelope, running up the costs of litigation, and destroying the gentility of the Dallas Bar.” Brewer, a native New Yorker, characterized his firm’s approach to litigation at the time as “zealous advocacy,” marketing his practice to potential clients as “New York-quality.”

“Bill’s representation of the NRA is a classic example of ‘servicing the client to death,’” Hal Marshall, a former Bickel & Brewer partner, told ProPublica. “We tried to leave no stone unturned in our cases, and it often yielded great results. On the other hand the bills were hefty.”

In 2016, Brewer was fined over $133,000 for attempting to influence potential jurors and witnesses in a Texas case. He denied any impropriety and has appealed the ruling, raising the total to $177,000, which the Texas Supreme Court will hear arguments on soon. In 2018, a judge found that Brewer had failed to disclose the Texas fine in an NRA suit against an insurance broker in Virginia. After the omission was reported by The Trace, a judge threw Brewer off the case.

In addition to Cummins’ statement, ProPublica obtained text messages and email composed by former Brewer employees in March 2018 that alleged unethical behavior by the firm. Four former Brewer colleagues — three of whom were abruptly fired over the last two years — described a pattern of disregard for ethical billing and conduct. The texts and email were sent just before the NRA began to heavily invest its dwindling resources in litigation by the firm.

Early in March, an attorney who had worked as a Brewer associate sent an email to another New York City-based law firm. The firm worked for a hedge fund that was locked in a legal fight against Eco-Bat, a lead production company represented by Brewer’s firm. “A number of attorneys have recently left Brewer, concerned about the firm’s ethics violations,” it said.

It went on to say that a Brewer attorney believed he had been fired “for refusal to violate ethical rules.” The attorney thought he had identified a disqualifiable conflict of interest involving an attorney on his team, the email said. When the Brewer lawyer “confirmed his initial analysis,” the email said, “he was told to drop the matter and terminated the following Monday.”

Sarah Rogers, a partner at the Brewer firm, dismissed the emails and told ProPublica, “We cannot discuss this matter, except to note that the former associate’s claims are false and have already been rejected by an arbitrator.” Eco-Bat’s chairman and CEO, Howard M. Meyers, praised Brewer’s work and said that the litigation was “a stunning, multibillion-dollar achievement.” He added: “I’ve been Bill’s friend and client for decades. I have never witnessed, nor would I expect, anything less than the highest ethical standards from Bill and his firm.”

Travis Carter, a spokesman for the Brewer firm, told ProPublica, “All time charged to client matters is scrutinized internally for accuracy, transparency and value.”

Later that spring, Brewer brought a lawsuit on behalf of the NRA against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the New York Department of Financial Services and the regulator’s then top official, Maria Vullo. The New York officials had released statements advising those doing business with the NRA in New York to assess the potential reputational risks of maintaining ties to the gun group. The suit accused the New York officials of engaging in a thinly veiled conspiracy to destroy the organization, costing it “tens of millions of dollars in damages.”

LaPierre touted the lawsuit in a speech at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference. “In real time right before your very eyes, we, the National Rifle Association, on behalf of all Americans, are fighting perhaps the most important piece of First Amendment constitutional advocacy in the history of our country,” he said.

The lawsuit, which was seeking to recover the money the NRA had supposedly lost as a result of the New York officials’ actions, became the centerpiece of an urgent fundraising campaign. On an NRA webpage soliciting donations, the text said, “Please give as generously as you can — and help win this life-or-death legal battle for the survival of the NRA and freedom.”

Over the last four months, the Brewer firm has also been involved in legal actions against once-sacred NRA allies. The NRA recently sued Ackerman McQueen, its public relations firm for more than three decades. Ackerman shaped the NRA’s image, and, through productions like NRATV, placed it at the vanguard of the culture wars. Ackerman has historically been the NRA’s most costly vendor — in 2017, the firm was paid more than $40 million. In a lawsuit in Virginia state court, the gun group accused Ackerman of engaging in deceptive billing practices, and leaking damaging documents that show LaPierre using the firm’s funds for lavish travel and custom suits.

Another Brewer suit, filed in New York, is against Oliver North, who spent a tumultuous year serving as the NRA’s president until he was pushed out in April, at the organization’s annual convention. During the meeting, a leadership struggle unfolded between North and LaPierre, who alleged that North threatened to release damaging information in order to extort him into resigning. In its suit, the NRA claims that the former president engaged in a “failed coup attempt,” absolving it of having to cover North’s legal fees in connection with NRA-related litigation. The suit also, in an unrelated aside, accuses Chris Cox, the NRA’s longtime top lobbyist, of taking part in the alleged scheme to overthrow LaPierre. Cox, who was beloved by many NRA staff and viewed as the natural successor to LaPierre, resigned in June. Before North stepped down, he was seeking to audit Brewer’s billings.

Ackerman, North and Cox have steadfastly denied the NRA’s allegations. In May, Ackerman filed a defamation suit against the organization, asking for $50 million in damages. That same month, the judge in the New York case, Thomas J. McAvoy, dismissed the organization’s recovery claims; it would get no damages from Cuomo or Vullo in their official capacities or the DFS. The NRA is still pursuing its First Amendment claims.

During the summer of 2018, Cummins and her fellow accountants took care to document their work. A variety of NRA vendors, including Ackerman McQueen, were receiving what some accountants considered unjustified payments, and an array of NRA officials and contractors had been involved in what the accountants saw as expense abuses and questionable deals not initially approved by the board’s audit committee.

According to Cummins’ statement, Brewer misled the NRA’s board and “used information gathered by NRA staff to fit different purposes and to frame a different story to the board of directors.” It also says that Brewer “effectively silenced NRA staff who uncovered issues needing board of directors attention,” and “influenced members of the board” by “selectively withholding information relevant to their decision making.”

Rogers, the Brewer partner, dismissed Cummins’ statement and said it “may reflect a radical misunderstanding of certain work my firm performed.” Cotton, the NRA’s first vice president, said, “I am not aware of any concerns that would preclude the firm from representing the NRA, period.”

Cummins concluded her statement by saying that, while still an NRA employee, she tried to sound an alarm regarding the NRA’s legal representation, writing, “I raised concerns about Bill Brewer internally and with the board audit committee.” According to Cummins, she was ignored.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-nra-is-in-total-meltdown-and-making-folks-nervous-about-trumps-2020-campaign-report/

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henderson

NRA ‘is in total meltdown’ — and making ‘folks nervous’ about Trump’s 2020 campaign: report

Michael Vadon

written by Alex Henderson July 3, 2019

It isn’t hard to figure out why President Donald Trump has been claiming that Democrats are hell-bent on destroying the 2nd Amendment: he realizes that the National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the top supporters of the Republican Party. But the NRA’s recent problems have been well-documented, and a Politico report published on July 3 stresses that turmoil and instability within the NRA are a major worry for Trump’s 2020 campaign.

In Politico, journalist Alex Isenstadt explains that the NRA “is in total meltdown” thanks to “everything from a failed coup attempt to the departure of its longtime political architect to embarrassing tales of self-dealing by top leaders.” And GOP leaders, according to Isenstadt, fear that if the NRA is “profoundly diminished heading into the election,” the GOP will be facing “a gaping hole in its political machinery.”

Gregg Keller, former executive director of the American Conservative Union, explained to Politico why the NRA’s problems “have folks nervous” in the Republican Party — asserting, “No organization has been more important to conservative voter education and engagement than the NRA.We all hope they’re able to mount the kind of effort in the 2020 cycle they have in the past. But in case they can’t, given their current situation, I hope they’re being forthright about that within the movement so others can pick up the slack.”

Republican strategist Chris LaCivita told Politico that the “infighting and accusations” troubling the NRA will “have an impact in the NRA’s ability to raise money, which would be used in elections to turn out its membership.”

Isenstadt notes that following the recent resignation of Chris Cox (who had been in charge of NRA lobbying since 2002), it remains to be seen “who will oversee the NRA’s 2020 strategy.” Steven Law, who heads the Senate Leadership Fund (a right-wing political action committee with close ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), described Cox as “the guy everybody dealt with” in the GOP.

@realDonaldTrump

People are fleeing New York like never before. If they own a business, they are twice as likely to flee. And if they are a victim of harassment by the A.G. of the state, like what they are doing to our great NRA, which I think will move quickly to Texas, where they are loved.....

If the NRA’s problems harm Republican fundraising in 2020, the burning question is: who would fill the void? And Isenstadt points out that other possible worries for the Trump campaign include less spending by the Chamber of Commerce and a recent announcement by the Koch Brothers-affiliated Americans for Prosperity that it is open to the possibility of supporting centrist Democratic candidates in some cases.

Former Republican Rep. David McIntosh, now president of the right-wing Club for Growth, expressed concerns over Americans for Prosperity’s announcement of possible support for some Democrats.

Interviewed by Politico, McIntosh said of the GOP, “Right now, the party is functioning. But if you see another collapse or if we lose the White House, I think you’re going to see Republicans frankly in a world of hurt without a major funding group like that.”

https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2019/6/26/18760446/nra-chris-cox-wayne-lapierre-ackerman-mcqueen-dana-loesch

619 implosion?

chic sun times

Infighting at the National Rifle Association exploded Wednesday, when the powerful association severed ties with its longtime public relations firm, suspended operations of its fiery online TV station and lost its top lobbyist.

The latest turmoil emerged just a year before the critical 2020 presidential elections when the NRA’s ability to influence the outcome could decide the fate of gun rights.

Lobbyist Chris Cox, long viewed as the likely successor to longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre, was placed on administrative leave about a week ago by the NRA, which claimed he was part of a failed attempt to extort LaPierre and push him out.

It also came within hours of the association officially severing ties with Ackerman McQueen, the Oklahoma-based public relations firm that has shaped some of the NRA’s most memorable messages in the past decades. That includes severing its relationship with spokesperson Dana Loesch, who works for Ackerman McQueen.

Cox had been the executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, since 2002. He was credited with leading efforts to allow a decadelong ban on “assault weapons” to expire in 2004, an achievement that allowed the gun industry to resume selling what the industry calls “modern sporting rifles” and critics claim are used too often to exact mass carnage.

His resignation was confirmed by NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. No other comment was immediately made about his departure.

Cox did not immediately return a message seeking comment. However, when he was suspended, Cox said in a statement obtained by The New York Times that allegations he had been part of a group seeking LaPierre’s ouster were “offensive and patently false.”

“For 24 years I have been a loyal and effective leader in this organization,” he said.

Cox played his usual prominent role at the NRA’s annual meeting in Indianapolis in April, and there was little public evidence that he and LaPierre or the NRA’s board of directors were at odds. Infighting spilled out during what is normally a pep rally of sorts among gun-rights enthusiasts when Oliver North, then the NRA president, threatened to expose questionable personal and travel expenses unless LaPierre stepped down. Instead, LaPierre turned the tables on North and accused him of trying to extort him into submission.

NRA president ousted following leadership dispute

Joel Friedman, a longtime NRA board member, told The Associated Press his first reaction when he heard that Cox was stepping down was surprise. He said he saw no indications during the annual meeting that Cox was in a dispute with LaPierre.

LaPierre announced Cox’s resignation in an email sent Wednesday to staff and NRA board members that was obtained by the AP. The letter also said an investigation will continue into allegations that North sought to extort LaPierre and that the storied Marine veteran was aided by Cox, a claim first laid out in a lawsuit filed June 19.

In the past few months, the NRA has filed several lawsuits against Ackerman McQueen, accusing it of refusing to document its billings and of seeking to undermine the association. Ackerman McQueen has countersued, claiming the NRA is trying to renege on its financial obligations and smear the public relations firm.

Last year, NRA began asking all of its vendors for detailed documentation about its billings after New York authorities began threatening to investigate the NRA’s nonprofit status. The NRA was founded shortly after the Civil War and is chartered in New York, giving that state broad authority to investigate its operations.

During its two decades by the NRA’s side, Ackerman McQueen was responsible for crafting the association’s aggressive messaging, including the now-famous “From my cold dead hands” line uttered by actor Charlton Heston in 2000 as he vowed to resist any effort to take away his guns. The line became a rallying cry for gun owners around the country.

Ackerman McQueen also created and operated NRATV.In a statement posted Wednesday on the NRA website, LaPierre said it would no longer be airing live programming and would be evaluating the station’s future. It wasn’t clear what would happen to its prominent hosts but there appeared to be no signs those on-air personalities, who are employees of Ackerman McQueen, would find spots at the NRA.

In a lawsuit, the NRA said some of its members had questioned NRATV’s weighing in on “topics far afield of the Second Amendment.”

In a statement Wednesday, Ackerman McQueen accused the NRA of trying to avoid its financial obligations by shuttering NRATV and implied its financial woes are partly the result of now paying for high-priced lawyers.

“When given the opportunity to do the right thing, the NRA once again has taken action that we believe is intended to harm our company even at the expense of the NRA itself,” the company said.

“For Ackerman McQueen, it is time to move on to a new chapter without the chaos that has enveloped the NRA,” the statement continued. “Ackerman McQueen will continue to fight against the NRA’s repeated violations of its agreement with our company with every legal remedy available to us, but we will always be proud of the work that we completed during our 38-year relationship on behalf of the individual citizens that are the NRA.”

tpm

Jun 6

[:{ ### NRA Subpoenas Ex-President Oliver North In Escalation Of NRA Infighting

}:](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/nra-subpoena-oliver-north-legal-fight)

Cristina Cabrera

an 519

NRA’s internal civil war getting hotter with new lawsuits and accusations

If you have not heard already, the National Rifle Association…

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/02/new-nra-president-carolyn-meadows-helped-block-construction-bell-tower-honoring-martin-luther-king/223615

Newly elected National Rifle Association President Carolyn Meadows led an organization that blocked a proposal to construct a bell tower honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Stone Mountain, GA. The organization viewed the proposed tower as antithetical to a monument honoring the Confederacy located at the same site.

Meadows, who sits on the NRA board of directors and was serving as the group’s second vice president, was elected president of the NRA during an April 29 meeting of NRA board members following weeks of public infighting that led to the ouster of President Oliver North. According to a report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, following her election, Meadows declined to discuss NRA infighting but said the NRA was gearing up for the 2020 elections and focused in particular on defeating Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA), who represents the district where Meadows lives. McBath ran for Congress in 2018 on a gun law reform platform following the murder of her son Jordan Davis by a man who later attempted to use the NRA-authored “Stand Your Ground” law at his criminal trial.

In addition to her work with the NRA, Meadows is the chairman of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA), an organization that maintains the largest memorial to the Confederacy in the United States. Stone Mountain, GA, features an enormous relief carving that depicts Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis on horseback. A 2017 article in Smithsonian magazine noted that “the monument in question is carved 42 feet deep and 400 feet above ground into a granite mountain” and “is a testament to the enduring legacy of white supremacy.”

In 2015, the CEO of SMMA proposed constructing a tower with a replica of the Liberty Bell on top of Stone Mountain to honor King. In his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, King said, "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia."

Press reports from 2015 indicated that the proposal would go forward, but the bell tower has not been built. As The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported in January, “the park’s all-white governing board decided” that “such a monument would clash with the legislated purpose of the state-owned park as a memorial to the Confederacy.” Meadows is a member of that governing board, having served continuously since at least 2011via appointments by former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. According to SMMA meeting minutes, Meadows has served as the group’s chairman dating back to at least 2013.

In addition to being the location of the largest Confederate memorial in the United States, Stone Mountain is closely associated with the Klu Klux Klan. KKK leader William Simmons “ushered in the modern era of the Ku Klux Klan, founding the Second KKK at the top of Stone Mountain on November 25, 1915,” in an event that included a cross burning and that signaled “a new era of white nationalist terrorism,” according to *Smithsonian*magazine. Plans for the Confederate memorial were already being made at the time of the Klan ceremony, but the project ended up being shuttered for several decades and was revived only following right-wing anger over the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ending school segregation. The monument was eventually completed in 1972.

The NRA -- which falsely calls itself the U.S.’s “oldest civil rights organization” -- and its media arm often usethe Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday to distort King’s comments and actions relating to gun ownership to portray King, a committed nonviolent activist who was felled by an assassin's bullet, as a pro-gun advocate.

Attempts to build the King monument have recently been revived. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the idea to erect a Liberty Bell on Stone Mountain to honor King was discussed at an April 2018 event Meadows attended. After the event, Meadows was asked by a reporter about the proposal and claimed she hadn't previously heard of the idea, even though the idea of a bell tower memorial to King on the mountain made national news in 2015. And according to SMMA meeting minutes from June 16, 2015, Meadows recognizedGeorgia resident Mark Pozner to speak at the meeting in favor of placing a plaque honoring King at Stone Mountain because of his “I Have a Dream” speech. The minutes say, “Ms. Meadows thanked Mr. Pozner for his comments and stated the board would look at his request.” The CEO of SMMA had in fact been considering a memorial as well, and he spearheaded the 2015 effort to get a bell tower built.

[https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/should-the-nra-fear-losing-its-nonprofit-status/](y%20Philip%20Hackney,%20The%20Conversation%20May%203,%202019%20More%20likely%20dangers%20include%20administrative%20hassles%20and%20fines.%20%20Oliver%20North%20sought%20a%20second%20term%20as%20president%20of%20the%20National%20Rifle%20Association.%20%20It%20was%20not%20to%20be.%20%20NRA%20first%20Vice%20President%20Richard%20Childress%20read%20a%20note%20from%20North%20aloud%20to%20thousands%20of%20the%20gun%20groupâs%20members%20at%20their%20annual%20convention%20in%20Indianapolis.%20It%20relayed%20news%20of%20the%20retired%20lieutenant%20colonelâs%20departure%20and%20raised%20the%20specter%20of%20an%20existential%20threat%20to%20the%20organization.%20%20As%20North%20had%20put%20it%20in%20a%20letter%20to%20the%20NRA%20board:%20âI%20am%20deeply%20concerned%20that%20these%20allegations%20of%20financial%20improprieties%20could%20threaten%20our%20nonprofit%20status.â%20%20Could%20they?%20And%20what%20did%20North%20mean%20when%20he%20expressed%20concern%20about%20the%20NRAâs%20ânonprofit%20statusâ?%20%20Iâm%20an%20attorney%20who%20has%20worked%20for%20the%20Internal%20Revenue%20Service%20on%20legal%20matters%20associated%20with%20tax-exempt%20organizations%20and%20a%20professor%20who%20studies%20nonprofit%20law.%20It%20strikes%20me%20as%20unlikely%20that%20the%20IRS%20would%20strip%20the%20NRA%20of%20its%20tax-exempt%20status.%20%20At%20the%20same%20time,%20I%20think%20itâs%20possible%20that%20the%20New%20York%20authorities%20investigating%20the%20group%20might%20remove%20officers%20and%20members%20of%20its%2076-member%20board%20of%20directors.%20There%20is%20even%20a%20slight%20possibility,%20as%20NRA%20CEO%20Wayne%20LaPierre%20warned%20in%20a%20fundraising%20letter,%20that%20New%20York%20authorities%20could%20cause%20the%20NRA%20âto%20shut%20down%20forever.â%20But%20I%20doubt%20it.%20%20The%20NRA%20and%20the%20IRS%20%20The%20NRA%20consists%20of%20multiple%20kinds%20of%20entities,%20including%20a%20political%20action%20committee%20and%20four%20affiliated%20charities.%20%20But%20its%20mainstay,%20which%20North%20led%20until%20this%20leadership%20showdown,%20is%20whatâs%20known%20as%20a%20social%20welfare%20organization%20under%20section%20501%28c%29%284%29%20of%20the%20tax%20code.%20%20There%20is%20no%20charitable%20contribution%20deduction%20for%20paying%20NRA%20membership%20dues%20or%20donating%20to%20the%20social%20welfare%20organization.%20%20What%20does%20tax-exemption%20do%20for%20the%20NRA%20then?%20Just%20like%20a%20charity,%20it%20generally%20doesnât%20pay%20taxes%20on%20the%20money%20it%20raises%20or%20earns.%20%20In%20exchange%20for%20that%20special%20status,%20the%20NRA%20must%20benefit%20the%20public%20according%20to%20a%20very%20broad%20definition.%20Advocacy%20and%20education,%20including%20about%20gun%20safety%20and%20gun%20ownership%20qualifies.%20The%20NRA%20must%20also%20submit%20mandatory%20paperwork%20to%20the%20IRS%20every%20year.%20%20There%20are%20a%20few%20things%20the%20NRA%20canât%20do%20as%20a%20nonprofit,%20too.%20It%20canât%20primarily%20benefit%20private%20individuals%20through%20excessive%20compensation%20or%20companies%20rather%20than%20the%20public.%20It%20canât%20make%20engaging%20in%20politics%20its%20main%20purpose.%20And%20it%20canât%20break%20laws,%20including%20campaign%20finance%20laws.%20%20Retaining%20tax-exempt%20status%20%20Northâs%20vague%20allegations%20could%20point%20to%20two%20primary%20matters%20that%20could%20run%20afoul%20of%20federal%20tax%20law.%20%20First,%20instead%20of%20being%20run%20to%20advance%20NRA%20missions%20like%20to%20âdefend%20and%20foster%20the%20Second%20Amendment%20rights%20of%20all%20law-abiding%20Americans,â%20he%20asserts%20that%20the%20group%20mainly%20enriches%20NRA%20executives%20and%20boosts%20the%20bottom%20line%20of%20Ackerman%20McQueen,%20an%20advertising%20company%20that%20runs%20the%20NRA%20TV%20video%20channel.%20The%20second%20is%20admittedly%20odd%20given%20that%20North%20was%20paid%20by%20Ackerman%20McQueen%20through%20a%20contractual%20relationship.%20%20Second,%20perhaps%20North%20is%20raising%20concerns%20related%20to%20media%20reports%20of%20allegations%20that%20the%20NRA%20illegally%20funneled%20millions%20of%20dollars%20in%20Russian%20money%20to%20Donald%20Trumpâs%202016%20presidential%20campaign.%20%20In%20the%20first%20instance,%20the%20IRS%20or%20the%20Tax%20Court%20â%20a%20forum%20that%20decides%20disputes%20between%20taxpayers%20and%20the%20IRS%20â%20could%20theoretically%20determine%20that%20the%20NRA%20overcompensated%20Ackerman%20McQueen%20or%20any%20of%20the%20groupâs%20top%20officials.%20In%20that%20case,%20the%20group%20or%20its%20officials%20might%20have%20to%20pay%20fines%20known%20as%20excise%20taxes%20for%20having%20received%20improper%20benefits%20or%20knowingly%20wasted%20or%20misdirected%20money.%20%20In%20the%20second,%20the%20IRS%20could%20theoretically%20determine%20the%20NRA%20was%20operated%20for%20an%20illegal%20purpose%20and%20revoke%20its%20tax%20exempt%20status.%20But,%20more%20likely,%20the%20IRS%20would%20seek%20assurances%20from%20the%20NRA%20to%20take%20appropriate%20corrective%20actions%20to%20ensure%20it%20doesnât%20serve%20as%20a%20conduit%20for%20foreign%20campaign%20cash%20again.%20%20%20%20%20%20The%20NY%20Attorney%20Generalâs%20office%20has%20launched%20an%20investigation%20into%20the%20National%20Rifle%20Association.%20Earlier%20this%20month,%20we%20filed%20an%20IRS%20complaint%20against%20the%20NRA%20about%20whether%20the%20organization%20was%20violating%20tax%20laws%20surrounding%20charitable%20organizations.%20https://t.co/lYdEJWzuko%20%20%20%20%20%20â%20Everytown%20%28@Everytown%29%20April%2029,%202019%20%20New%20York%20probe%20%20The%20NRA%20is%20headquartered%20in%20Northern%20Virginia%20but%20it%20has%20been%20incorporated%20as%20a%20charitable%20nonprofit%20in%20New%20York%20state%20since%201871.%20That%20empowers%20the%20stateâs%20authorities%20to%20oversee%20its%20operations.%20%20Its%20attorney%20general%20can%20remove%20nonprofit%20officers%20and%20directors%20found%20to%20have%20failed%20to%20ensure%20that%20their%20organizations%20follow%20the%20rules%20and%20behave%20in%20a%20financially%20sound%20manner.%20The%20stateâs%20attorney%20general%20can%20even%20shut%20down%20nonprofits%20that%20operate%20for%20improper%20or%20illegal%20purposes.%20%20The%20IRS%20hasnât%20indicated%20that%20itâs%20investigating%20the%20NRA.%20But%20New%20York%20Attorney%20General%20Letitia%20James%20has%20said%20her%20office%20is%20â%20without%20disclosing%20any%20details.%20While%20campaigning%20for%20her%20office%20in%202018,%20James%20vowed%20to%20scrutinize%20the%20gun%20group,%20saying%20âI%20will%20use%20the%20constitutional%20power%20as%20an%20attorney%20general%20to%20regulate%20charities,%20that%20includes%20the%20NRA,%20to%20investigate%20their%20legitimacy.â%20%20The%20NRA%20subsequently%20audited%20its%20contractors.%20When%20Ackerman%20McQueen%20failed%20to%20hand%20over%20all%20records%20requested,%20the%20NRA%20sued.%20The%20most%20prominent%20similar%20nonprofit%20probe%20to%20date%20scrutinized%20the%20Trump%20Foundation.%20Itâs%20being%20dissolved%20following%20a%20settlement%20with%20Jamesâs%20predecessor.%20%20You%20might%20be%20wondering%20why%20the%20NRA%20hasnât%20reincorporated%20in%20another%20state.%20While%20it%20could,%20that%20would%20be%20costly%20and%20complicated.%20Similarly,%20should%20the%20IRS%20ever%20question%20the%20NRAâs%20tax-exempt%20status,%20the%20NRA%20might%20choose%20to%20let%20it%20go,%20like%20the%20National%20Football%20League%20did%20in%202015.%20%20Even%20when%20nonprofit%20regulatory%20authorities%20detect%20improprieties,%20they%20try%20to%20avoid%20shuttering%20tax-exempt%20organizations.%20They%20recognize%20that%20most%20people%20who%20belong%20to%20and%20support%20those%20groups%20had%20nothing%20to%20do%20with%20the%20wrongdoing.%20Where%20possible,%20they%20punish%20wrongdoers%20without%20jeopardizing%20a%20nonprofitâs%20viability.)

no lnx

by Philip Hackney, The Conversation May 3, 2019

More likely dangers include administrative hassles and fines.

Oliver North sought a second term as president of the National Rifle Association.

It was not to be.

NRA first Vice President Richard Childress read a note from North aloud to thousands of the gun group’s members at their annual convention in Indianapolis. It relayed news of the retired lieutenant colonel’s departure and raised the specter of an existential threat to the organization.

As North had put it in a letter to the NRA board: “I am deeply concerned that these allegations of financial improprieties could threaten our nonprofit status.”

Could they? And what did North mean when he expressed concern about the NRA’s “nonprofit status”?

I’m an attorney who has worked for the Internal Revenue Service on legal matters associated with tax-exempt organizations and a professor who studies nonprofit law. It strikes me as unlikely that the IRS would strip the NRA of its tax-exempt status.

At the same time, I think it’s possible that the New York authorities investigating the group might remove officers and members of its 76-member board of directors. There is even a slight possibility, as NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre warned in a fundraising letter, that New York authorities could cause the NRA “to shut down forever.” But I doubt it.

The NRA and the IRS

The NRA consists of multiple kinds of entities, including a political action committee and four affiliated charities.

But its mainstay, which North led until this leadership showdown, is what’s known as a social welfare organization under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

There is no charitable contribution deduction for paying NRA membership dues or donating to the social welfare organization.

What does tax-exemption do for the NRA then? Just like a charity, it generally doesn’t pay taxes on the money it raises or earns.

In exchange for that special status, the NRA must benefit the public according to a very broad definition. Advocacy and education, including about gun safety and gun ownership qualifies. The NRA must also submit mandatory paperwork to the IRS every year.

There are a few things the NRA can’t do as a nonprofit, too. It can’t primarily benefit private individuals through excessive compensation or companies rather than the public. It can’t make engaging in politics its main purpose. And it can’t break laws, including campaign finance laws.

Retaining tax-exempt status

North’s vague allegations could point to two primary matters that could run afoul of federal tax law.

First, instead of being run to advance NRA missions like to “defend and foster the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans,” he asserts that the group mainly enriches NRA executives and boosts the bottom line of Ackerman McQueen, an advertising company that runs the NRA TV video channel. The second is admittedly odd given that North was paid by Ackerman McQueen through a contractual relationship.

Second, perhaps North is raising concerns related to media reports of allegations that the NRA illegally funneled millions of dollars in Russian money to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In the first instance, the IRS or the Tax Court – a forum that decides disputes between taxpayers and the IRS – could theoretically determine that the NRA overcompensated Ackerman McQueen or any of the group’s top officials. In that case, the group or its officials might have to pay fines known as excise taxes for having received improper benefits or knowingly wasted or misdirected money.

In the second, the IRS could theoretically determine the NRA was operated for an illegal purpose and revoke its tax exempt status. But, more likely, the IRS would seek assurances from the NRA to take appropriate corrective actions to ensure it doesn’t serve as a conduit for foreign campaign cash again.

The NY Attorney General’s office has launched an investigation into the National Rifle Association. Earlier this month, we filed an IRS complaint against the NRA about whether the organization was violating tax laws surrounding charitable organizations. https://t.co/lYdEJWzuko

— Everytown (@Everytown) April 29, 2019

New York probe

The NRA is headquartered in Northern Virginia but it has been incorporated as a charitable nonprofit in New York state since 1871. That empowers the state’s authorities to oversee its operations.

Its attorney general can remove nonprofit officers and directors found to have failed to ensure that their organizations follow the rules and behave in a financially sound manner. The state’s attorney general can even shut down nonprofits that operate for improper or illegal purposes.

The IRS hasn’t indicated that it’s investigating the NRA. But New York Attorney General Letitia James has said her office is – without disclosing any details. While campaigning for her office in 2018, James vowed to scrutinize the gun group, saying “I will use the constitutional power as an attorney general to regulate charities, that includes the NRA, to investigate their legitimacy.”

The NRA subsequently audited its contractors. When Ackerman McQueen failed to hand over all records requested, the NRA sued. The most prominent similar nonprofit probe to date scrutinized the Trump Foundation. It’s being dissolved following a settlement with James’s predecessor.

You might be wondering why the NRA hasn’t reincorporated in another state. While it could, that would be costly and complicated. Similarly, should the IRS ever question the NRA’s tax-exempt status, the NRA might choose to let it go, like the National Football League did in 2015.

Even when nonprofit regulatory authorities detect improprieties, they try to avoid shuttering tax-exempt organizations. They recognize that most people who belong to and support those groups had nothing to do with the wrongdoing. Where possible, they punish wrongdoers without jeopardizing a nonprofit’s viability.

NRA annual meeting, NRA top lobbyist Chris Cox says “the real America” is going to vote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of office

mma

Week In Dumb

How corrupt is the NRA? It's too corrupt even for Oliver North. In fact, the NRA is in a full scale meltdown. Its president Oliver North was forced out on Saturday, a day after CEO Wayne LaPierre accused North of trying to extort him. North, for his part, accused LaPierre of charging more than $200,000 on wardrobe purchases to a vendor, and warned in his resignation letter that the NRA had engaged in financial improprieties. The NRA has also suspended its longtime top lawyer. All this is happening while the NRA is suing Ackerman McQueen, the producer of NRATV. The NRA itself is reportedly in a "desperate" financial situation. Meanwhile, the New York attorney general has launched an investigation of the group's tax-exempt status.
When an NRA member at its annual meeting called out the group's "obfuscation" in discussing these problems, he was quickly shot down by an NRA official.
The NRA tried to pretend it was business-as-usual at its annual meeting, with its top lobbyist declaring that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) does not represent "real America."
An NRATV host attacked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over a fake Sanders Twitter account.

pattern, minority ppl w/o power thrown under the bus for ideological purity (usually women eg domestic viol bill b/c of gun control)

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/29/headlines/at_nra_convention_trump_ends_ratification_process_for_arms_treaty

Indianapolis, President Trump told the annual convention of the National Rifle Association on Friday he’s seeking to cancel U.S. support for the Arms Trade Treaty, an international agreement that limits weapons sales that fuel destructive conflicts. During his annual address to the NRA, Trump signed a document asking the Senate to reject ratification of the treaty.

President Donald Trump: “This treaty threatened your subjugate—and you know exactly what’s going on here—your rights and your constitutional and international rules and restrictions and regulations. Under my administration, we willnever surrender American sovereignty to anyone.”

Oliver North, Who Illegally Funneled Weapons to Contras, Resigns as NRA President

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/theyre-fcked-nra-members-at-organizations-annual-convention-condemn-leaderships-ties-to-trump/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/rump-is-facing-impeachment-the-nra-is-facing-bankruptcy-its-a-good-day-in-america/

Here’s a good one for you. Wayne LaPierre, the executive director of the National Rifle Association (NRA) sent out a fundraising appeal in March pleading with its members for donations. “We’re facing an attack that’s unprecedented not just in the history of the N.R.A. but in the entire history of our country,” LaPierre whined. “ cannot survive without the N.R.A., and the N.R.A. cannot survive without your help right now.”

Then what did LaPierre do? Why he stepped-up NRA lobbying against The Violence Against Women Act, which the House of Representatives reauthorized a few weeks later. Because of course the NRA doesn’t need the donations of women who might benefit from the provision in the Violence Against Women Act which prohibits sales of firearms to anyone who has been convicted of stalking, assaulting, or otherwise harming a domestic partner.

The NRA can’t afford to lose too many lobbying battles like that one anymore. As The New Yorker reported this month, “the N.R.A. is troubled; in recent years, it has run annual deficits of as much as forty million dollars.” LaPierre has presided over a reduction in the main mission of the NRA – gun safety, training, and representing hunters – to less than 10 percent of its budget. What do they spend the other 90 percent on, you might ask? Messaging, according to The New Yorker. “The N.R.A. is now mainly a media company, promoting a life style built around loving guns and hating anyone who might take them away.”

The only thing the NRA loves more than guns is Donald Trump. The gun organization spent more than $30 million on Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016, more than three times what they spent in 2012 in support of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, according to McClatchy. Total NRA election spending in 2016 was close to $70 million, according to an NRA committee member McClatchy spoke to.

It’s no wonder the NRA has been running in the red financially. Total NRA spending during 2016 “exploded to more than $419 million, up from $312 million the previous year,” according to OpenSecrets.org, a website that keeps track of campaign spending and is owned by the liberal-leaning Center for Responsive Politics. The NRA recently sued an Oklahoma-based public relations firm it has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to over the last several decades, and there is speculation that the group might be facing bankruptcy in the near future.

When Trump stepped before the NRA’s microphone yesterday in Indianapolis, he was riding to the rescue. Or is it the other way around? On his way out of the White House on Friday morning, Trump was asked about Vice President Biden’s citation of his speech after the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville in 2017, when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. “I’ve answered that question and I was talking about people who went because they felt very strongly about the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn. “Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals.”

Facing a chorus of calls for his impeachment by the House of Representatives and continuing questions after the release of the Mueller report about whether he obstructed justice, Trump decided that his best course of action was to double-down on his support of the slave-owning general who presided over the defeat of the Confederacy and signed the surrender at Appomattox. That one ought to get him big cheers from the surrender-monkeys of the NRA, because there is nothing like surrendering your army and your weapons to get your juices flowing in the morning.

Aaaahhh, for the days when it was good enough to trundle out a tired old has-been like Charlton Heston in front of the NRA rowdies and have him hold up a replica of a flintlock rifle someone gave him backstage and wave it over his head and scream, “You’ll take my gun from my cold dead hands!” That’s what Heston did at every NRA convention he addressed after assuming the presidency of the gun rights group in 1998. He screamed the slogan a year after two students killed 13 and wounded 24 at Columbine High School. NRA members opened their checkbooks and flooded the gun rights organization. Heston remained the NRA president until 2003.

I got myself in the NRA’s crosshairs in 1998 when I wrote a prominently featured op-ed for The New York Times on the killings by two boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The two shooters, aged 11 and 13, took rifles and ammunition from the home of one of their grandparents and killed four students and one teacher, wounding 10 more before they fled the scene. One of the students pulled the fire alarm, causing the teachers and students to be outside the school. The shooters fired on them from a nearby hillside.

Coverage of the killings emphasized that the boys had attended NRA-sponsored “practical shooting courses” before they fired on their schoolmates and teachers. My Times op-ed explained that the 11 and 13-year-old boys had been taken by their parents to the “practical shooting courses” where they underwent live-fire combat-style training and were taught to shoot at human silhouette targets.

This revelation earned me multiple invitations by television shows. One of them was the Today Show, where I appeared opposite Tanya Metaxa, then the spokesperson for the NRA. During the show, I asked Tanya if the NRA thought it was a good idea for parents to teach their children how to shoot at human silhouettes. She fumbled around for an answer, and finally after Katie Couric pressed her said that in fact, the NRA supported such training for children.

The next day, the NRA, under the direction of its executive director Wayne LaPierre and president Charlton Heston sent out a blast email to all of its chapters nationwide telling them not to provide an NRA representative to appear opposite me on any radio or television interviews. In the following days, I received numerous requests to appear on shows around the country, but when they couldn’t get an NRA person to debate me, they canceled the appearances. Suffice to say I wasn’t the NRA’s favorite person.

I had no idea how much of a pariah the gun nuts considered me until I ran into Mr. Cold Dead Hands himself in the restroom of the L.A. Public Library at a big fundraising dinner at which both Heston and I were honored guests since both of us had published books that year. It was the classic standing-at-the-urinal moment but in reverse. I was standing there doing my business when Heston walked up and took the next urinal and recognized me.

“You’re Lucian Truscott, aren’t you?” Heston asked, as we both stood there pissing. “And you’re Charlton Heston!” I replied sarcastically. “How does it feel to be the president of an organization that supports training 11 and 13 year-olds to shoot at human beings?” I asked him.

Heston looked like somebody had just ripped something from his warm, living hands. “Your grandfather would be ashamed of you!” he practically shouted at me as he zipped up and stepped over to the wash basins. I took the washbasin next to him and looked straight at him in the mirror. “You know what, Chuck?” I said, smiling at him. “I grew up with my grandfather. I knew him, and you didn’t. He wouldn’t have taken the time out of his day to piss on the NRA and you and your cold dead hands. So fuck off.”

Heston finished washing his hands and walked away.

I think I speak with some authority when I say that grandpa wouldn’t have taken the time out of his day to piss on Trump, either.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/nras-wayne-lapierre-warns-that-group-may-be-shut-down-forever-thanks-to-democrats/

National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre issued a stark warning that the group may be forced to shut down due to financial woes in a fundraising letter to supporters.

LaPierre wrote in a four-page letter that the group may be forced to shutter “very soon,” The Daily Beast reported. The NRA chief blamed the financial woes on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who last year directed state regulators to “urge insurance companies, New York State-chartered banks, and other financial services companies licensed in New York to review any relationships they may have with the National Rifle Association.”

LaPierre wrote that Cuomo’s “tactics are already working.”

“Right now we’re facing an attack that’s unprecedented not just in the history of the NRA, but in the entire history of our country. And if this attack succeeds, NRA will be forced to shut down forever,” LaPierre wrote.

“And let me be clear,” he added. “Cuomo’s tactics are already working. One by one, more and more banks and insurance companies across the country are knuckling under to Cuomo’s threat — and telling NRA they won’t do business with us — because they don’t want to be targeted and crushed by Cuomo’s strong-arm tactics and the vast power of thousands of New York bureaucrats.”

The NRA sued Cuomo last year, accusing him of violating its First Amendment right. A judge allowed the suit to move forward in November, The New York Law Journal reported.

The suit claims the NRA has “suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages” as a result of Cuomo’s actions and warned that “it could be forced to shutter its multimillion-dollar television network, NRA TV, or a number of its print publications.”Without insurance, the suit said, the group “cannot maintain its physical premises” or “convene off-site meetings and events.”

The NRA’s financial woes go well beyond Cuomo. While President Obama was a boon for NRA donations, Presient Trump’s across-the-board pro-gun stance has caused the group’s income to plummet by $55 million, The Daily Beast reported. The organization suffered an $18 million loss in 2017 after losing $46 million in 2016.

As a result, the NRA’s PAC spent just $9.2 million to back Republicans in the 2018 midterms, compared to the $27 million it spent on the 2014 midterms. The group spent $54.3 million in 2016, much of it to help elect Trump.

The NRA’s unprecedented support for Trump has also led to many questions. The group, which spent $30 million to help Trump, nearly three times what it spent supporting Mitt Romney in 2012, appears to have illegally coordinated spending with the Trump campaign, The Trace reported.

The NRA is also under scrutiny for its ties to Russian officials. Numerous of the group’s officials traveled to Russia in 2015 as part of a Russian effort to infiltrate conservative political organizations. The trip was organized by then-Russian central banker Alexander Torshin, an ally of Vladimir Putin, and admitted Russian spy Maria Butina. Torshin was the focus on an FBI probe into whether Russian money was funneled through the NRA to the Trump campaign, Politico reported last year.

“We should let them express their gratitude now,” Butina wrote in an email to Torshin after declaring the 2015 Moscow trip a success, “we will put pressure on them quietly later.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/sorry-world-the-nra-is-no-longer-just-an-american-problem-its-an-international-menace/

In recent years, the National Rifle Association — which since the 1970s has taken a famously hardline stance for relaxing gun laws in America, with deadly consequences — has no longer been content to litigate the gun control debate at home. Increasingly, the organization has turned its focus abroad.

A recent Al Jazeera investigation revealed that NRA officials recently advised Australia’s One Nation Party, an extreme-far right group, on their plan to ease the strict gun control the nation passed in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Pro-NRA social media accounts are also flooding New Zealand with pro-gun propaganda as the nation prepares to pass a similar ban on semiautomatic weapons in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shooting. NRA officials have also lobbied the Mexican Senate, and — as the Maria Butina saga shows — were open to partnerships with Russia as well.

So why is the NRA expanding into other countries? It could be similar to what happened with tobacco companies, but in reverse.

The second half of the 20th century in America saw a series of successful public health outreach, lawsuits, and regulations that reduced smoking. Tobacco companies responded by expanding their business abroad into countries where regulations are looser. Conversely, the NRA, as the firearms industry faces restrictions abroad, may be forming financial partnerships with foreign companies to get them to export more guns to America, where the market will be more receptive.

As Guns Down America director Igor Volsky explained in a Washington Post editorial, this strategy has been lucrative:

For those manufacturers, cultivating relationships with the American gun lobby is paramount for business. Who, after all, will defend foreign gun manufacturers after their firearms are used in mass shootings here in the United States and ensure that the market for American customers remains unrestricted? The alleged killer at the Pittsburgh synagogue in October relied on three AustrianGlock .357 handguns (along with a Colt AR-15 rifle). The shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School used a Glock 10mm handgun and a German SIG Sauer P226 9mm handgun as well as an American-made assault weapon to kill 26 people.

So it’s no surprise that in 2008, Beretta, anItaliangun manufacturer, pledged to donate $1 million to the NRA. Belgian FN Herstal gave as much as $200,000 to the lobby in 2013.Glock donated at least $115,000 during 2011, and both Glock and Beretta are part of the lobby’s Golden Ring of Freedom, an elite circle for donors that gift $1 million or more. SIG Sauer is also part of that club.

All of this has consequences, for just as guns within America travel from states with looser gun laws to those with stricter, so this pattern also occurs on the international level. “From 2014 to 2016, across 15 countries in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, 50,133 guns that originated in the United States were recovered as part of criminal investigations,” states a 2018 Center for American Progress report. “Put another way, during this span,U.S.-sourced guns were used to commit crimes in nearby countries approximately once every 31 minutes.” This is likely to get worse, as President Donald Trump is enacting new measures that ease export fees for guns and makes it harder to track where American guns are used.

The NRA, it seems, wants to enact its vision of arming everyone on a global scale —revealing that their real battle is not for American rights but for money.

:{NRA:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Advised Far-Right Australian Party on Overturning Gun Controls

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/nra-official-contacted-sandy-hook-truther-to-discuss-conspiracy-theory-on-parkland-shooting-report/

Wednesday, HuffPost reported that Mark Richardson, a National Rifle Association official and coordinator, got in touch with a noted Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist to speculate that the Parkland shooting in February 2018 may have been an inside job:

NRA officer Mark Richardson emailed Wolfgang Halbig, a noted harasser of parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, to float a conspiracy theory about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed last year.

“Just like [Sandy Hook], there is so much more to this story,” Richardson said in an email dated Feb. 15, 2018 ― just one day after the Florida shooting. Twenty children and six adults were killed during the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. “[The Parkland shooter] was not alone.” The email was sent from his official NRA email address.

Reached for comment by HuffPost, Richardson doubled down. “Since an individual who was prohibited from the school was aloud [sic] to pass through the front doors with a backpack containing a long gun, it is a legitimate question to ask if he had assistance concerning access to the school,” he wrote. “No one else seems to be interested enough to even ask the question?”

Conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook shooting have persisted for years. Far-right InfoWars host Alex Jones claimed that the whole thing was staged by the government with child actors and no kids were harmed ― which ultimately led to a lawsuit against him by parents of the victims.

With the Parkland shooting, conspiracy theories have tended to focus more on the student activists like David Hogg and Emma González, who have led the March For Our Lives youth campaign to effect reform of our nation’s gun laws. Hogg, in particular, has been the target of vicious smears, including claims that he wasn’t actually at the shooting or was backed by Hungarian billionaire George Soros.

The NRA has long agitated to crush tougher gun control laws in this country. But for its officials to be directly engaged in trutherism about school shootings is a new low.

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/03/13/national-rifle-association-s-media-operation-has-been-around-more-decade-and-it-s-always-been/223132

see nratv

Spreads hatred, bigotry, sexism and misinformation

Serves as an authoritarian defense and propaganda operation for President Trump

Launches inflammatory attacks on progressives

Uses violent and unhinged rhetoric when talking about the press

Smears peaceful protests as violent mobs

Makes false, misleading, and inflammatory claims about gun violence

Honed its extremism first as NRA News

The New York Times reports that several National Rifle Association board members are questioning “the value of” NRATV after one of its hosts showed an image last fall of cartoon characters wearing Ku Klux Klan hoods. But NRATV has been a cesspool of hate and outlandish claims since the beginning.

Launched in late 2016 as a rebranding of NRA News, which debuted in 2004, NRATV serves as the often-inflammatory propaganda arm of the National Rifle Association and, as of late, President Donald Trump as well.

In September, NRA spokesperson and NRATV host Dana Loesch showed an image of Thomas & Friends characters wearing Ku Klux Klan hoods during a broadcast. NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre was “livid and embarrassed,” according to the Times’ new report. It quotes NRA board members and Florida lobbyist Marion Hammer saying that since then, she and others on the board “have questioned the value of” NRATV -- though Hammer herself previously appeared on NRA News to make an embarrassing comparison between assault weapons bans and racial discrimination. The reported fracture between some NRA board members and the NRATV network comes amid reports of financial problems at the NRA and cutbacks on both staff and hosts at NRATV.

...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/nra-magazine-features-target-practice-headline-next-to-photo-of-nancy-pelosi-and-victims-of-gun-violence/

NRA is facing widespread condemnation after its latest magazine issue hit mailboxes, with a feature article titled “Target Practice” next to a large glossy color photo of Nancy Pelosi with House Democrats standing behind her. As if that weren’t bad enough, the photo was taken when Speaker Pelosi and her Democratic co-sponsors were announcing the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. Standing behind Pelosi in the photo is Rep. Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son, Jordan, was gunned down at a Jacksonville gas station when 45-year-old Michael David Dunn pulled up next to the car Jordan was in with his friends and fired on the teens because he felt their music was too loud; and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in 2011 during an assassination attempt by Jared Lee Loughner, whose murder spree that day killed six and wounded 18 others.

...

The article was written by Chris Cox, the chief lobbyist of the NRA. He described Nancy Pelosi as the “arch anti-gunner.” See if you can pick up on the problem with how he describes other participants at the press conference.

Giffords was in attendance as Pelosi and Thompson introduced H.R. 8, along with other fixtures of the anti-gun cause, including Josh Horowitz, David Hogg, Lucy McBath and Shannon Watts.

Two of those “anti-gun” fixtures had their lives turned upside down by gun violence.

Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post was the first to share the image on Twitter, and the reaction was swift. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said it seemed clear the NRA “knew what they were doing” with this outrageous pairing. Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jamie, was murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, called it an “incitement of violence.”

...[pix]

cf trms email says trip to give conduit to djt

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/leaked-documents-incriminate-gop-russia-ties-with-nra-as-a-common-denominator/

Leaked emails obtained by several news outlets contradict the NRA’s denials that it had nothing to do with its members traveling to Moscow to meet top Russian officials on a 2015 trip organized by admitted Russian agent Maria Butina.

Butina, who recently pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges after she was accused of working as a Russian agent to infiltrate conservative circles, organized a 2015 trip to Moscow for top NRA officials. While there, they met with Russia’s then-foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and other prominent figures as part of an apparent Russian campaign to gain influence with American conservatives.

Several NRA officials told the New York Times on Monday that NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre “was opposed to the trip” and ordered members not to go. “Given Mr. LaPierre’s power within the organization, it is unclear how such a trip would have proceeded at all despite his opposition to it,” the Times noted.

ABC News reported that internal NRA documents and emails, as well as photos on social media, appear to show that theNRA “was significantly involved in planning” the trip.

Among those who went on the trip was former NRA president David Keene.

An email obtained by the Daily Beast written by Paul Erickson, Butina’s boyfriend and longtime Republican operative, said that Russian Central Bank official and Butina’s handler Alexandr Torshin offered Keene, who was also a columnist for the Washington Times, an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“[I]mpressing the NRA’s Russian hosts is also the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin on behalf of David Keene and the Washington Times— a plum that was dangled in front of Keene by Torshin himself during a recent Torshin visit to Washington, DC,” Erickson, wrote according to the Daily Beast. “High stakes all around.”

Erickson’s email also said that the trip could ease tensions between the U.S. and Russia and pave the way for relations with a future Republican president.

“As we discussed over lunch in Iowa, Russia believes that high level contacts with the NRA might be the BEST means of neutral introduction to either the next American President OR to a meaningful re-set in relations with the Congress under a (God forbid) President Clinton,” he wrote. “This simple good will trip would have enormous diplomatic consequences for a future U.S. / Russia bilateral relationship to the world.”

The emails show thatKeene played a large part in organizing the trip with Butina, and was angry when another NRA official dropped out of the trip, putting Keene’s plans in jeopardy. Despite LaPierre’s claims, the NRA paid for Keene’s travel expenses, at least, and also bought official NRA “gifts” for the Russian delegation, according to the Times.

Among the members who accompanied Keene were Joseph Gregory, co-chair of the NRA’s Golden Ring of Freedom, a group for donors of $1 million or more; and Pete Brownell, the group’s vice president, who later became its president. Brownell also paid for former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, an NRA member, to go on the trip. Brownell later abruptly resigned from the NRA.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,who is leading at least four investigations into the NRA’s ties to Russia, told ABC News that “it’s not credible for the NRA to claim that they played no official role in the 2015 Moscow trip.”

“Americans would rightly be outraged if they learned that officers of a powerful, taxpayer-subsidized organization were offered personal incentives by the Kremlin in exchange for access to elite Republican circles,” Wyden later told The Daily Beast. “That question is right at the heart of my inquiry.”

After the meeting, Butina wrote to Torshin about the successful trip she organized.

“We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later,” she wrote.

Around the same time, Erickson wrote, in an email obtained by the FBI, that he was “involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key [unnamed political party] leaders through, of all conduits, the [unnamed gun-rights organization].”

When FBI agents raided Erickson’s South Dakota home, they found a note in whichErickson mused, “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” The FSB is the Russian state intelligence agency, successor to the infamous Soviet-era KGB.

During this same period, the NRA, relying on an arm of the organization that is not required to disclose its donors, spent a record $30 million helping to elect President Trump, which was nearly three times the $12.5 million it spent to help Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. The NRA and the Trump campaign went as far as coordinating their ad buys for maximum impact, The Trace reported.

All this has caught the eye of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose team has been “raising questions about the relationship between the campaign and the gun group,” according to CNN.

Despite mounting suspicions and eyebrow-raising emails, William Hurd, a lawyer for Erickson, dismissed the reports even as his client faces his own possible charges.

Hurd told the New York Times, “Anyone who thinks that a freedom-loving group like the NRA is going to get all cozy with Vladimir Putin is living in Fantasyland.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/nra-desperately-backpedaling-from-russia-as-investigators-look-closer/

illegal coordination tester, burr, hawley

NRA3

Campaign Coordination Inquiry: Filings

New York attorney general alleges the National Rifle Association engaged in years of financial mismanagement and fraud

Some in right-wing media rushed to dismiss the lawsuit as a political move in an election year

Several conservative media figures suggested Republican attorneys general go after liberal groups in retaliation

Republican bigotry and obedience to the NRA endanger renewal of the Violence Against Women Act

Dick’s crossed the NRA — and they hit back hard. Now Dick’s has to deal with… the best sales everDaily Kos

NRA’s big loss in Virginia, explained

Right-Wing Extremists to Speak

CNN’s Anderson Cooper rips Trump for cowering in fear of the NRA — after he slammed Republicans for doing exactly that

Document Shows NRA Money Helped Its Chief Search for a Personal Mansion

NRA president ousted following leadership dispute

NRA annual meeting, NRA top lobbyist Chris Cox says “the real America” is going to vote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of office

Week In Dumb

Dick’s crossed the NRA — and they hit back hard. Now Dick’s has to deal with… the best sales ever Daily Kos