The ATF, charged with policing the gun industry, lets dealers get away with falsifying records and selling firearms without background checks.
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American lives, shaped by guns.
The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful special interest groups in America. We’re investigating how it spends its money.
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National Rifle Association
An email obtained by The Trace criticizes a lack of transparency around ongoing staff reductions, which have hit the group’s fundraising staff especially hard. “Why have we not been advised regarding termination of employees?” it reads.
Despite its legal and regulatory problems, the gun group — which recently lost its bankruptcy bid — is in the black for the first time in five years.
Bang for the Buck
The ruling is a significant blow to the gun group, which is facing dissolution in New York and was seeking to move to Texas.
Accusations that the NRA’s board of directors has been a rubber stamp for Wayne LaPierre have been swirling for years. Evidence suggests the board attorney worked on the group’s bankruptcy plan before board members even knew of its existence.
Internal documents show an NRA law firm spent at least five months developing the group’s plan to declare bankruptcy and reincorporate outside New York — a strategy some insiders view with skepticism.
So far, the federal government is the biggest creditor to emerge in the gun group’s bankruptcy case.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office would not allow the group to “avoid accountability.”
Attorney General Karl Racine alleges the gun group improperly siphoned millions of dollars from an affiliated foundation.
CEO Wayne LaPierre, who is being investigated for tax fraud and collected $1.9 million in compensation last year, repaid $300,000 to the gun group.
Bill Brewer promised to rescue the National Rifle Association from perilous legal straits, but he’s won only one of the 10 expensive suits he’s filed. Insiders say he’s inappropriately prioritizing the protection of chief executive Wayne LaPierre.
While describing extensive corruption at the gun group, Joshua Powell’s book depicts its leader as an inept manager with a self-pitying streak.
Meanwhile, the gun group's legal costs soared.
Politics
The NRA and like-minded groups cast the sales surge as an inflection point in the gun debate. Experts aren't convinced.
Breaking down the allegations in the New York attorney general’s lawsuit seeking to dissolve the gun group.
Calling the gun group “a personal piggy bank” for executives, Letitia James laid out a pattern of financial mismanagement, many details of which were first reported by The Trace.
For more than two decades, the National Rifle Association has used member money to fund a covert campaign to keep Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and his loyalists in power. That’s the story told in a recently released episode…
