NEW YORK — For decades, Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s longtime leader, has been a survivor. He has endured waves of palace intrigue, corruption scandals and embarrassing revelations, including leaked video that captured his inability to shoot an elephant at point-blank range while on a safari.
But now, LaPierre, 74, faces his gravest challenge, as a legal showdown with New York Attorney General Letitia James goes to trial in a Manhattan courtroom. James, in a lawsuit filed amid an abrupt effort by the NRA to clean up its practices, seeks to oust him from the group after reports of corruption and mismanagement.
Much has changed since James began investigating the NRA four years ago. The organization, long a lobbying juggernaut, is a kind of ghost ship. After closing its media arm, NRATV, in 2019, it has largely lost its voice, and LaPierre rarely makes public pronouncements. Membership has plummeted to 4.2 million from nearly 6 million five years ago. Revenue is down 44% since 2016, according to its internal audits, and legal costs have soared to tens of millions a year.
When the NRA filed for bankruptcy in Texas nearly three years ago, the step was part of a strategy to move to the state amid the New York investigation. But a Texas judge dismissed the case, saying the NRA was using the filing “to address a regulatory enforcement problem, not a financial one.” Now, longtime insiders say, the organization may be reaching a point where a legitimate bankruptcy filing is necessary.
James seeks to use her regulatory authority over nonprofit groups to impose a range of financial penalties against the defendants and to remove LaPierre; any money recovered would flow back to the NRA. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday before state Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen. The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks.
A parade of revelations from recent years will be front and center. LaPierre, for instance, was a regular for more than a decade at a Zegna boutique in Beverly Hills, California, where he spent nearly $40,000 of NRA money in a single May 2004 outing. He also billed more than $250,000 for travel to, among other places, Palm Beach, Florida, Reno, Nevada, the Bahamas and Italy’s Lake Como. He has argued that these were legitimate business expenses.
During his testimony in the 2021 bankruptcy case, LaPierre said he did not know Phillips had received a $360,000-a-year consulting contract after being pushed out of the NRA. He also said he was unaware that his personal travel agent, hired by the NRA, was charging a 10% booking fee for charter flights on top of a retainer of up to $26,000 a month. LaPierre’s close aide, Millie Hallow was even kept on after being caught diverting $40,000 in NRA funds for her son’s wedding and other personal expenses.
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