• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • About Current
    • Masthead
  • Podcasts
  • Blogs
    • The Way of Improvement Leads Home
    • The Arena
  • Support
  • Way of Improvement
  • About John
  • Vita
  • Books
  • Speaking
  • Media Requests

Washington Post on the NRA’s “long-overdue reckoning”:

John Fea   |  May 17, 2021

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre

Here is editorial board of The Washington Post:

AFTER IT was slapped with a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general alleging fraud and abuse, the National Rifle Association filed for bankruptcy in federal court in Dallas in a bid to reorganize and move to Texas. It was a brazen effort to try to evade New York officials enforcing the laws that govern nonprofits, and it backfired. Not only did the judge call out the NRA for its duplicitous use of bankruptcy laws, but testimony during the trial reinforced the claims made by New York officials of an organization riven by corruption and mismanagement.

Judge Harlin D. Hale, the chief of the federal bankruptcy court in Dallas, last Tuesday dismissed the NRA’s Chapter 11 petition, finding that the nation’s largest gun rights groups had filed the case not for legitimate financial reasons but to gain an unfair litigation advantage. “The NRA is using this bankruptcy case to address a regulatory enforcement problem, not a financial one,” he wrote in a 37-page decision. Judge Hale did not bar the NRA from refiling for bankruptcy, as requested by New York Attorney General Letitia James, but he warned that if the case returned to his court he would consider appointing a trustee to assume control of the organization because of concerns about transparency, secrecy and conflicts of interest.

The decision means the NRA will have to face the charges brought by Ms. James in a civil case that seeks to dissolve the organization, which, though headquartered in Virginia, was chartered as a nonprofit in New York in 1871 and continues to be incorporated in the state. In a suit filed last August, Ms. James outlined illegal self-dealing that funded the lavish lifestyles of NRA chief Wayne LaPierre, his family and a small group of allies. The actions, according to the suit, contributed to the loss of more than $64 million in three years.

Testimony during the bankruptcy case buttressed the charges with details of the organization’s tax-exempt funds used for wedding expenses, private jet travel and exotic getaways. Mr. LaPierre’s private travel consultant testified that he instructed her to alter travel invoices for private jets so as to hide their true destinations. Mr. LaPierre testified he didn’t know how his former chief financial officer had received a $360,000-a-year consulting contract after leaving under a cloud, and he admitted to trips on a luxury yacht belonging to an NRA vendor — a conflict of interest he did not disclose. That Mr. LaPierre kept the bankruptcy filing secret from other NRA officials, including its general counsel, was, the judge wrote, “nothing less than shocking.”

Read the rest here.

Filed Under: Way of Improvement Tagged With: National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre

Primary Sidebar

Patron Access

The Arena Blog

Vocation and Public University Education: Reflections on Developments in Florida and Beyond

February 7, 2023 By Nadya Williams 1 Comment

Finding the Good: NBA Father Figures

February 6, 2023 By Elizabeth Stice Leave a Comment

Equity and Justice at a Harvard Abortion Conference

February 3, 2023 By Daniel K. Williams 1 Comment

Complicity and the Failure to Care

February 2, 2023 By Elizabeth Stice Leave a Comment

More from The Arena →

The Way of Improvement Leads Home

Will Ben Sasse, the new president of the University of Florida, bow to Ron DeSantis?

February 7, 2023 By John Fea

How a Trump third-party run in 2024 would prove catastrophic for the GOP

February 7, 2023 By John Fea

Break out the Entenmanns and Sanka because we got company!

February 6, 2023 By John Fea

Commonplace Book #239

February 6, 2023 By John Fea

More from The Way of Improvement →

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

Footer

Contact Forms

General Inquiries
Pitch Us

Search

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide
Subscribe via Email


Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide