MANHATTAN (CN) — Wayne LaPierre’s more than three-decade reign as the CEO of the National Rifle Association has been marred by controversy. Besides a number of corruption scandals with LaPierre at the helm, today’s NRA faces issues like declining membership and revenue.
But it’s a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James that could prove to be the gravest threat to LaPierre’s legacy. James sued LaPierre and three other NRA executives in 2020, accusing them of misappropriating the gun rights nonprofit’s funds to finance gaudy luxuries for LaPierre and other higher-ups.
James claims LaPierre for years used the NRA as his “personal piggy bank,” using donor money to fund African safaris and trips to the Bahamas — often by private jet.
“In the last five years, LaPierre and his family have visited the Bahamas by private air charter on at least eight occasions, at a cost of more than $500,000 to the NRA,” James says in the complaint, filed in New York Supreme Court. “On many of those trips, LaPierre and his family were gifted the use of a 107-foot yacht owned by an NRA vendor.”
That’s just one example of the “culture of self-dealing, mismanagement, and negligent oversight” in the NRA under LaPierre’s rule, James claims.
More than three years after filing, James’ case is finally set to go to trial in a Manhattan court. Jury selection began Tuesday in a courtroom closed to the press. Opening arguments are set to start Jan. 8.
Many experts, like Pace University law professor James Fishman, are shocked that the NRA allowed the lawsuit to get this far.
“Usually what happens is, if an organization is approached by the attorney general who says ‘you are doing wrong,’ they will do whatever they can to settle before trial,” Fishman said in an interview. “Because it’s disastrous for the organization. Some organizations never recover from it.”
Fishman said he's skeptical the NRA will be an exception. The organization has already faced a slew of reputational issues not just because of the corruption claims, but due to the polarizing political shift the NRA has taken under LaPierre.
“He changed the whole nature of the NRA,” Fishman said. “It used to be the NRA was one of these organizations whose primary role was gun safety, to teach people how to use firearms safely and things of that sort. It was nonpolitical. LaPierre changed that and moved it far to the right.”
That political charge has been omnipresent in the proceedings thus far. The NRA’s attorneys have long claimed James’ suit is retaliatory, driven in large part by political differences.
This past June, Judge Joel Cohen disagreed and tossed the organization’s claims of political bias out of court.
“The trial will rest on the merits rather than a war of words between the NRA and the New York attorney general," Cohen said in court at the time.
Seth Pearlman, an attorney specializing in nonprofit law, sees those political arguments as distractions being thrown in by the defense to muddy the case.
“When the law and the facts are not on your side, you throw everything you possibly can to obfuscate the entire process,” Pearlman said. “I don’t think that’s going to be very successful for them.”
The NRA already unsuccessfully tried to declare bankruptcy in New York and move to Texas in an apparent bid to dodge James’ lawsuit and interrupt her investigation. In 2021, a federal judge dismissed the bankruptcy case and found the organization’s request was made in bad faith.
Notably, James seeks to remove LaPierre as CEO. Depending on the outcome, the NRA could also face a number of financial penalties and could see a number of other executives replaced.
Those potential consequences are a far cry from James’ earlier bid to shutter the organization completely — Cohen ruled in 2022 that state-imposed dissolution should only “be the last option, not the first.” Still, Pearlman sees this trial as one that could be “existential” for the future of the NRA and its executives in the hot seat.
“This is, on a lot of levels, very existential for the NRA,” Pearlman said. “If they lose this case, it’s going to be very difficult for the same people to reestablish a new organization. There are other gun rights organizations out there that will probably step in to fill the void, but the NRA has been a 500-pound gorilla amongst these groups, so it’s certainly going to hurt the cause.”
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