MANHATTAN (CN) — Former National Rifle Association President Oliver North claimed in court on Tuesday that the group’s longtime chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, chided him for poking around the NRA’s finances.
“Stay in your lane, stop doing this, stop asking questions,” North said LaPierre instructed him.
North, who served as the nonprofit’s president between 2018 and 2019, said he was “stunned” to find out how much the NRA was paying Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, the organization's longtime law firm.
According to a letter from North shown to the court, the NRA’s monthly expenses to Brewer grew from $25,000 in March 2018 to more than $1.8 million in February 2019. North said he was already fielding complaints from board members concerned about the NRA’s spending, so he decided to look into these legal fees.
LaPierre had initially agreed to let him do so, North said Tuesday. But that eventually changed.
“When I asked to see the numbers,” North said, “I was told, ‘Wayne’s changed his mind. You can’t see the details of what those expenses are.’”
North said he then wrote LaPierre several letters urging him to share the details of these transactions.
“On February 26, 2019, I along with the first and second vice president of the NRA wrote to you regarding the contract with the Brewer firm, which had not been executed in accordance with the board’s policy,” North wrote in one letter to LaPierre. “You responded with a letter that same day refusing to make Brewer’s bills available and ‘request[ing] again that [I] kindly cease and desist from any further involvement or communications relating to these matters.’”
North claimed that, as LaPierre continued to withhold this information, the pair's once-chummy relationship started to sour. Letters between him and the NRA’s chief got increasingly hostile.
“You … have indicated that I should stay out of this because I have a ‘conflict.’ That is nonsense,” North wrote to LaPierre in a subsequent note.
When it came time to run for reelection as NRA president, North said LaPierre tried his best to thwart his efforts.
“Wayne actively intervened with the nominating committee,” North said, adding that “Wayne had already told the committee” not to nominate him.
North wasn’t reelected, and he eventually left the NRA’s board after feeling he was being retaliated against. He said that the NRA launched an ethics probe against him, claiming that he had attempted a “coup” against LaPierre, to ensure that North wouldn’t be protected under New York’s whistleblower law.
“I never initiated a coup … or any of that garbage,” North said Tuesday.
North’s relationship with LaPierre wasn’t always so tumultuous. Prior to his tenure as NRA president, North was a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with a successful Fox News television deal. Facing a vacancy, LaPierre wanted to pull North away from TV to be his next president.
“Wayne came to me and said, ‘I’ve got to have you as the next president of the NRA,’” North said.
He said he was hesitant to step away from his job, which paid him well and provided quality health insurance for him and his ill wife. The NRA president is typically an unpaid, ceremonial role, one that North told LaPierre he couldn’t take as-is.
“I made it clear to him that I had to be employed by someone who was going to give me insurance for my wife,” North said. “Wayne’s words were to me, ‘I’ll take care of that, as long as you’ll be the president of the NRA.’”
North claims LaPierre orchestrated a deal in which North would serve as NRA president, but work as an employee of Ackerman McQueen, the NRA’s longtime advertising firm through which the attorney general’s office says LaPierre ran personal expenses.
Under the unusual deal, North would produce segments for the NRA’s online TV channel in exchange for around $2 million per year. That would allow him to serve as the NRA’s president while still receiving a handsome salary and insurance deal from Ackerman McQueen, presumably to be billed back to the NRA.
Earlier in the trial, the NRA’s longtime finance chief Wilson “Woody” Phillips confirmed the attorney general’s claim that this contract was reached without approval from the NRA board.
On Tuesday, LaPierre’s lawyer Kent Correll tried to distance his client from the deal, which North claims LaPierre “drafted.”
“Have you ever seen Wayne LaPierre use a computer?” Correll asked North.
North said he hadn’t, but insisted that LaPierre had still been critical to facilitating the contract’s terms, which were identical to LaPierre’s promises.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is accusing LaPierre and other ex-NRA executives of misappropriating donor funds for personal expenses, including private jet travel, vacations and luxury clothes. She claims that LaPierre used Ackerman McQueen to bill many of these gaudy buys, which were then billed back to the nonprofit.
James also alleges that some NRA higher-ups helped silence complaints about the errant spending by retaliating against whistleblowers and withholding certain financial records.
State lawyers on Tuesday said they planned to call LaPierre to the stand Wednesday. But Correll sought to delay LaPierre’s testimony, citing the 74-year-old’s health issues and his need to read more than 100 documents before testifying.
“He can barely read at this time of day, his eyesight is bad,” Correll said. “There’s no way he can look at documents before tomorrow morning.”
Judge Joel Cohen didn’t immediately issue a ruling about LaPierre’s pending testimony. But as it stands, the longtime NRA chief is slated to be on the stand for at least a portion of Wednesday.
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