DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Grifting With Fear: Head of NRA uses donations to fund lavish lifestyle with kickbacks

Click the tweet. It’s a 51 tweet thread that summarizes the lawsuit.

I feel bad for any of you who unknowingly contributed to the grift of this doofus.

Shocking!!!....not. Another deplorable half human pos in charge of the NRA. Karma is checking in as usual. Enjoy.

Sounds a lot like the UAW corruption/bribery scandal.

August 7, 2020


Is New York’s AG going to be the biggest NRA fundraiser ever?
By Andrea Widburg

On Thursday, New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James, proudly announced that she had filed suit to “dissolve” the National Rifle Association. She also sued four NRA executives for damages. The basis for the suit is her claim that the NRA has been mismanaging donor funds. She was able to attack the NRA because the organization is registered in New York, where it was first chartered in 1871.

James got a lot of attention with her announcement, but it might not have been what she was expecting. Forward-looking Democrats demanded to know whether she was trying to help get Trump elected. Meanwhile, the NRA, which has been gaining 1,000 new members a day since the “defund the police” movement began, immediately filed a lawsuit against James, accusing her of defamation and seeking to squelch the organization's right to free speech.

In a ponderous press conference, James announced that she had filed suit based upon her contention that the NRA has for years been guilty of self-dealing and other illegal conduct:

It’s no secret why James is going after the NRA. First, it was one of her campaign promises when she ran for Attorney General. In an October 2018 pre-election interview with Ebony magazine she attacked the NRA – which protects Americans’ Second Amendment rights – as a “terrorist organization” (emphasis added):

What is the most important issue you’ve have heard from prospective voters?

President Donald Trump and the threat to our democracy and our values. The fact that his policies have reversed all the progress that we made under President Barack Obama and others. There’s an issue of public corruption in New York state; I will seek to restore confidence and integrity in public service. The foreclosure crisis is not behind us, students debt is a major issue, health care is a challenge since they repealed the individual mandate, people are having a difficult time with premiums that have increased and are often times deciding to go without medicine because of the costs, resulting in premature death and gun violence. The NRA holds [itself] out as a charitable organization, but in fact, [it] really [is] a terrorist organization.

The NRA immediately struck back. Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s CEO and EVP issued a statement:

The NRA also issued a statement separate from LaPierre’s:

Additionally, the NRA filed a defamation suit against James for calling the NRA a “criminal enterprise” and “terrorist organization.” It also accused James of violating the NRA’s First Amendment rights.

The reason behind the lawsuit’s timing is obvious. The NRA, recognizing the threat a hard-left Biden administration poses to the Second Amendment, vowed to spend tens of millions of dollars to help Trump win battleground states. With his usual pithy flair, Trump spelled out what would happen if James’s suit were to succeed:

Thanks to the fundraising boost the Black Lives Matter movement created, the NRA’s coffers are well set for the fight. Additionally, if Twitter is any measure of general opinion, while leftists applaud the suit, those who cherish the Second Amendment are planning to show their approval by digging into their pocketbooks and sending money to the NRA.

Meanwhile, savvy Democrats looking ahead to November were horrified by what James had done. Thus, Pennsylvania politicos panicked:

Politico reporter Holly Otterbein said on Thursday after the suit was filed that several Democrats in Pennsylvania, a battleground state President Trump flipped red in 2016, are “panicked” the lawsuit may be interpreted as a Democratic attack on gun rights and the Second Amendment.

Ari Fleischer predicted that James made a bad “mistake during an election year,” because the lawsuit will inevitably “energize gun owners across the country.” Noting that gun owners already worry what Democrats will do if they gain the White House, he said, “Wait until the Democrats now try to get rid of the organization that represents gun owners.”

The year 2020 is proving to be a giant crescendo of every leftist value, attitude, and action. From using the virus to create a police state, to trying to destroy the actual police who help create a civil society, to engaging in race warfare, Democrats are giving their all. Fortunately, Americans seem more dismayed than charmed by Democrats red of tooth and claw.


NRA
@NRA
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15h
(1/2) Statement from NRA CEO & EVP Wayne LaPierre:

“The NYAG’s actions are an affront to democracy and freedom. This is an unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the NRA – the fiercest defender of America’s freedom at the ballot box for decades.


NRA
@NRA
·
15h
(1/2) Statement from NRA CEO & EVP Wayne LaPierre:

“The NYAG’s actions are an affront to democracy and freedom. This is an unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the NRA – the fiercest defender of America’s freedom at the ballot box for decades.
NRA
@NRA
(2/2) The NRA is well governed, financially solvent, and committed to good governance. We’re ready for the fight. Bring it on.”

NRA
@NRA
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19h
(1/3) NRA PRESIDENT RESPONDS TO NY AG:

This was a baseless, premeditated attack on our organization and the Second Amendment freedoms it fights to defend. You could have set your watch by it: the investigation was going to reach its crescendo as...

NRA
@NRA
·
19h
(2/3)...we move into the 2020 election cycle. It’s a transparent attempt to score political points and attack the leading voice in opposition to the leftist agenda. This has been a power grab by a political opportunist – a desperate move that is part of a rank political vendetta.

NRA
@NRA
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19h
(3/3) Our members won’t be intimidated or bullied in their defense of political and constitutional freedom.

As evidenced by the lawsuit filed by the NRA today against the NY AG, we not only will not shrink from this fight – we will confront it and prevail.


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/202...aiser_ever.html

abuses alleged by @TishJames.

j/c:

I think the NRA was being discussed in the Gun Confiscation thread. Of course, we need another bright headline to grab everyone's attention.

This is not about anyone's gun rights, it's about fraud. Yet people will defend their actions and attack the investigators.

Hope they bite the dust like the Trump foundation.

‘Bring It On’: NRA Counters New York AG’s Lawsuit With One Of Its Own


By Tim Pearce
•
Aug 6, 2020 DailyWire.com
•


The National Rifle Association (NRA) sued the New York attorney general’s office on Thursday, accusing the state AG of defamation and violating the organization’s First Amendment rights.

The NRA’s 19-page civil lawsuit, filed in the federal court of New York, was in response to a lawsuit announced by state Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday morning seeking to “dissolve” the gun rights group over alleged financial “fraud and abuse.” The NRA countersuit alleges that James “made the political prosecution of the NRA a central campaign theme” during her 2018 run, and has continued to denounce the group as a “criminal enterprise” and “a terrorist organization” since, according to Fox News.

“Despite hopes that playing by the rules would procure a just outcome, the NRA has not been treated fairly by James’s office,” the NRA lawsuit says. “The New York Democratic Party political machine seeks to harass, defund, and dismantle the NRA because of what it believes and what it says.”

“James boasted that she would strike foul blows against the NRA and pound the NRA into submission. She vowed that she would use the NYAG’s investigative and enforcement powers for the precise purpose of stanching political speech (‘deadly propaganda’),” the lawsuit continues. “She has begun to deliver on her campaign promises to retaliate against the NRA for constitutionally protected speech on issues that James opposes. As NYAG, James has regrettably succumbed to ‘individual passions, and individual malevolence.’”


https://www.dailywire.com/news/bring-it-on-nra-counters-new-york-ags-lawsuit-with-one-of-its-own?%3Futm_source=twitter

Famous last words... These clowns were knee deep in the Russia scandal and that led to the truth coming out about the NRA's finances. It's a scam, lmao. They didn't rise up against a fascist regime, they ushered it in and now they been caught stealing money from the donors supporting them.

I hope the NRA goes down hard. IMO, that would help responsible citizens retain their responsibly owned guns more than anything. Well, Democrats (the group, in general) would still have to sit down and figure out how to speak intelligently on the subject.

The NRA does more to hurt responsible owners future ability to exercise their 2A right.

Fish,

None of these article do anything to refute the charges listed. I’d really like to know why he was taking lavish vacations with money that was donated by Americans.

Fraud is a first amendment right? I must have misread the constitution.

I'm sure it has been said, but this is kind of a stupid move right before the election. Yall making sure that Trump is getting re-elected.

I agree the timing is stupid unless there is an October surprise in there somewhere, but stealing money from your non-profit isn't really political, it's criminal.

Businesses can expense a lot of things, even extravagant things as long as it serves a valid purpose for the business. It's not illegal.

That depends on what it is they are doing exactly and the rules are much stiffer for nonprofits.

I support a lot of things the NRA does, but if LaPierre and his cronies are embezzling funds ...they need to fry. I agree that this move wasn't very bright in election season.

National Review
New York’s Lawless NRA Lawsuit




The latest bananas news from the banana republic that is the State of New York: The attorney general, a political enemy of the National Rifle Association, is seeking to have the advocacy organization legally dissolved. The pretext is financial corruption and self-dealing on the part of the NRA’s leadership.


To say that the corruption case is pretextual is not to say that it is made up out of whole cloth. The NRA, once the most effective organization of its kind, has indeed been mired in incompetent leadership and financial mismanagement for years. Its evolution from sporting club and canny Second Amendment advocate to full-service culture-war outfit has done no favors either for the organization itself or, more important, for the cause to which it purports to be committed. As much as we share the group’s commitment to the Bill of Rights, we would not be entirely surprised if actionable financial wrongdoing were uncovered.

At the same time, the effort to dissolve the NRA is nonetheless a plainly partisan political attack. The point here is not to fight nonprofit fraud but a Democratic effort to embarrass and hobble a political opponent, to burden it with expensive and cumbrous litigation, and to weaponize the power of the attorney general’s office for partisan ends.

The NRA does indeed seem to compensate its senior executes rather splendidly, and some of those expenses — Wayne LaPierre’s reported $3.6 million spent on car services and travel consultants over only two years — would raise eyebrows at most similar organizations. But nonprofit executives do not take a vow of poverty, and many of them earn sums comparable to what executives in the for-profit sector make. You may be scandalized by it, but it isn’t a crime.

For comparison: Former Planned Parenthood boss Cecile Richards enjoyed a seven-figure compensation package, and nobody can say the nation’s abortionists didn’t get their money’s worth. The heads of the teachers’ unions are very nicely compensated. Nonprofit or not, if you want Wynton Marsalis to run Jazz at Lincoln Center, it’s going to cost you upward of $2 million a year — which is a lot less than the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art makes. The CEOs of nonprofit hospital groups sometimes earn tens of millions of dollars. Big salaries and generous expense accounts constitute neither a crime nor a civil offense — those are a matter for the boards and supporters of the NRA and other nonprofit organizations.

The specific accusations of wrongdoing against NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre are that he spent NRA funds on himself and his family, setting up a front company in order to charge personal expenses to the NRA while camouflaging that fact from the organization and from the IRS. If that were found to be the case, then LaPierre would very likely be convicted of several crimes, both state and federal. But he has not even been charged with any crime at all.

Instead, New York State Attorney General Letitia James is only working to deliver on her campaign promise to ruin the NRA legally after decades of Democrats failing to beat the organization politically. This is part of a nationwide Democratic campaign: In San Francisco, they declared the NRA a “terrorist organization”; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo attempted to use financial regulators to deprive the NRA of access to banking services and insurance, thereby ending its ability to engage in organized public advocacy; in Los Angeles, the city demanded that any NRA member doing business with the city identify himself, an attack on the First Amendment that was almost immediately shut down by a federal judge acknowledging the “overwhelming” evidence that the purpose of this was “to suppress the message of the NRA.”

If Wayne LaPierre or other NRA executives have committed a crime, then indict them and present the evidence in a criminal court. The attempt to legally dissolve the NRA instead is pure political score-settling, and an assault on the First Amendment, the rule of law, and democracy itself.

And we have seen too much of that in recent years: Consider the list of preposterous indictments from a single Democratic prosecutor’s office in Texas, which hung felony cases on Tom DeLay, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Rick Perry — all of which were obvious hooey, and all of which ultimately were dismissed, but not before imposing ruinous expenses and extraordinary personal costs on the victims of those political prosecutions. That is what Letitia James is up to in New York.

It may be the case that Wayne LaPierre is not a fit steward of NRA members’ resources — but it certainly is the case that Letitia James is not a fit steward of the rule of law in New York.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-york-e2-80-99s-lawless-nra-lawsuit/ar-BB17F7Xy

I have no axe to grind with the NRA. I don't know what the legal definition of financial impropriety is. If they aren't guilty of something the courts will clear them. If they are guilty I hope they get a suitable sentancing.

What I do know is that I work for a company with about a Billion dollar annual turnover. The CEO and any of the top brass of the company won't have a travel and expenses budget even 10-15% of that $3.6 million spent on car services and travel consultants quoted in the article.

The other thing I know is that it's a complete false equivalency to compare the 'car services and travel consultants' $3.6 million to other heads of other organizations total compensation packages.

Based on face value this article looks to be shallow and deflecting with a strong agenda rather than "news" or factual.

Let’s investigate a non profit organization who’s embezzling funds from their donors? Nope, can’t do that, they’re the NRA and we’re in an election year. Instead, let’s investigate Biden’s son. Yea .... Go for that. Pffft trump and his supporters