‘King of the NRA’: Civil trial scrutinizes lavish spending by gun rights group’s longtime leader
NEW YORK — The longtime head of National Rifle Association operated as the “King of the NRA,” spending lavishly on himself, punishing dissent and showering allies with country club memberships and no-show contracts, a lawyer for the New York attorney general’s office told jurors Monday.
Wayne LaPierre’s methods as the NRA’s executive vice president and chief executive officer allowed him to operate the powerful gun rights organization “as Wayne’s World for decades,” Assistant Attorney General Monica Connell argued in an opening statement in a civil trial scrutinizing his leadership and spending at the nonprofit.
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LaPierre, who said Friday he is leaving the NRA after leading it since 1991, watched stoically from a seat along a courtroom wall as six jurors and six alternates were seated for the trial, which is expected to take six weeks. He moved to the front of the gallery as Connell spoke, her argument augmented by a slideshow showing the NRA’s leadership structure and expenses at issue in the case.
Connell said LaPierre charged the organization more than $11 million for private jet flights over the years and authorized $135 million in NRA contracts for a vendor whose owners provided him repeated access to a 108-foot (33-meter) yacht and free trips to the Bahamas, Greece, Dubai and India.
At the same time, LaPierre, 74, consolidated power and avoided scrutiny by hiring unqualified underlings who looked the other way, routing expenses through a vendor, doctoring invoices, and retaliating against board members and executives who questioned his spending, Connell said.
In one example, Connell said, the NRA’s former chief financial officer, Craig Spray, found himself unable to log into the organization’s computer system after he objected to LaPierre’s way of doing business. In a November 2020 email to organization brass, Spray took issue with the boss’ authoritarian rule, writing: “There are no ‘Wayne said’ approvals at the NRA.”
LaPierre kept quiet about gifts he received from vendors until the morning he testified in the NRA’s failed bankruptcy in Texas in 2021, Connell said. For years before that, she said, he’d been checking “no” on an internal disclosure form that asked if he’d received any gifts worth more than $300.
LaPierre’s actions and that of the “entrenched leadership” that enabled his alleged behavior “breached the trust” of the organization’s five million members, Connell said. Their conduct violated laws governing nonprofit charities and the organization’s internal policies governing travel, expenses, conflicts of interest and whistleblower protections, she said.
“They acted illegally over and over again for years,” Connell told jurors.
New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the NRA, LaPierre and three current or former executives in 2020, alleging they cost the organization tens of millions of dollars from questionable expenditures.
