NRA Feeling the Pinch

ToolAA said:

Those are good points and worthy of support. If the NRA didn’t sponsor another shooting match or train another range safety officer others would fill that void. However if they cannot effectively create a unified battle front politically none of that training matters.

Right now I feel support for MSI is better bang for your buck in MD than the NRA and it seems to be money well spent.

That being said I am a Life member and I’ve made additional donations to PVF and ILA and I’ll continue to do so as I feel compelled to do so.

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Bob A said:

Yup.

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Biggfoot44 said:

Still the 750lb gorilla .
The Anti reaction to the other 2A groups combined = Who ?
Massively in need of reform from the inside
Does bunches of good stuff in catagories other than lobbying .

We need to hold our noses and keep NRA viable until we can fix it .

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Biggfoot44 said:

We need to hold our noses and keep NRA viable until we can fix it .

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Occam said:

I was at NRA HQ yesterday with Mrs. Occam, using their 50-yard indoor range. The staff and RSOs are always super friendly, but vigilant with the less-than-veteran shooters. I asked the lady at the counter to pass the word upstairs that a lot of life members like me would like to see some house cleaning. She said, very obliquely, but in essence: "That message is ringing off the walls up there, trust me."

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Tebonski said:

Even if Wayne has done some bad things why side with the gun banning left?

Support the NRA regardless!

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Jerry M said:

Couple of points.

Every organization I belong to asks for money: church, political affiliation, school fundraisers, scouts etc. Do I agree with all 100% of the time; No.

For the past 40 years the I've been involved, NRA has had representatives in the MD legislature to help lobby against unjust firearm legislation. May time unsuccessfully, but that is because of the political makeup of this state. (small s). Not from lask of trying.

As stated above NRA are to whose-who for safety training and firearms certifications.

DON'T listen the the liberal news smear of the NRA.

Good thing some of you guys weren't with the Continental Army when the British came to take firearms away the first time... And make no mistake about it, this fight is as serious as 1776! Unite of Die!

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When the National Rifle Association needed more legal firepower in New York state last year, the gun rights group brought aboard an unlikely lawyer: a Democrat who had no experience in Second Amendment litigation.

By this spring, William Brewer III had emerged as a top counselor to NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and a victor — for now, at least — in a civil war that he helped set in motion and that is ripping apart the powerful gun lobby.

The ugly public fight has led to an exodus of high-level officials and warring accusations of financial impropriety. At the center of the fray is Brewer, a brash lawyer who has drawn ethics complaints and has a reputation for escalating disputes into pricey legal battles.

Several NRA veterans accuse Brewer of instigating an almost Shakespearean feud to protect his bottom line and growing influence. According to internal board correspondence, his small law firm billed $24 million in fees in 13 months — leading top NRA board members to demand early this year that the organization stop paying until they could review the bills.

But LaPierre sided with Brewer, saying that the lawyer’s bills were appropriate and that he was bringing long-overdue scrutiny to the nonprofit group’s workings.

“The NRA has full confidence in Bill Brewer and his law firm,” LaPierre said in a statement. “The firm is creative, dedicated, and effective — and is helping to protect and advance the NRA’s interests in multiple venues.”

Brewer said he came under attack once he began examining lucrative financial deals inside the organization that he thought posed conflicts of interest. His firm said those complaining about its bills have a misinformed view of its work but declined to elaborate.

... after helping to jettison NRA president Oliver North, rival lawyers and other key NRA lieutenants, Brewer counsels LaPierre on some of the group’s most important decisions, including legal strategy, management and public relations, said multiple people familiar with his role.

Those who have been pushed out shared a common concern: that Brewer ran up excessive fees and then cemented his role by overstating claims about the organization’s legal jeopardy and the potential conflicts of his critics, according to the people and internal documents.

With Brewer’s backing, LaPierre this spring turned against Ackerman McQueen, the marketing firm that had been the NRA’s image maker for more than three decades — a company run by Brewer’s own father-in-law and brother-in-law.

“Mr. Brewer is orchestrating a purge of every person who disagrees with his flawed strategy,” Ackerman McQueen said in a statement.

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Brewer, whose eponymous law firm also has an office in New York, has a history of confrontational and high-priced legal fights, according to former employees and lawyers who encountered him in cases and a review of thousands of pages of court records.

Ted Lyon, a personal injury lawyer in Dallas who has battled Brewer in the past, said he was shocked that Brewer had “convinced the NRA that he was some type of star litigator.”

In 2016, a Texas judge sanctioned Brewer, finding that he took actions that could have improperly tainted a jury pool. The court found Brewer’s attempts “to avoid responsibility and accountability for his conduct to be at the very least unpersuasive and at the worst in bad faith, unprofessional, and unethical,” the judge wrote.

Four lawyers’ associations filed a friend-of-the-court argument in August in favor of the punishment.

Citing the sanctity of the promise of a fair trial, the legal groups said they “can imagine nothing . . . more poisonous to this ancient ideal than William A. Brewer III’s behavior.”

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Brewer, 67, does not have the typical profile of a lawyer for the NRA, one of President Trump’s staunchest allies. Campaign filings show that he has donated to numerous Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Beto O’Rourke.

But in March 2018, the NRA was dealing with a challenge by New York state officials to its Carry Guard insurance, which provides coverage to firearms owners who shoot someone and claim self-defense. The state Financial Services Department found that the NRA had illegally marketed what critics call “murder insurance.” Insurers, facing millions in state fines, demand that the organization cover the penalty.

The NRA wanted a lawyer with ties to New York Democrats. Steve Hart, the NRA board’s lawyer, enlisted Brewer, according to people familiar with his involvement. Hart did not respond to a request for comment.

When New York officials warned financial institutions and insurers that a relationship with the NRA could harm their corporate reputations and jeopardize public safety, Brewer urged the NRA to sue the state, arguing that state officials were targeting an advocacy group whose views differed from their own.

From there, Brewer pressed to take on other matters, said people familiar with internal discussions. That included the organization’s response to a broader threat: At the time, Letitia James, the leading candidate to become the New York state attorney general, was campaigning on a pledge to investigate the NRA’s nonprofit status amid reports of financial irregularities.

Brewer said he recommended to LaPierre that he prepare by auditing the group’s spending and vendor contracts, including those of Ackerman McQueen, its largest. For 38 years, the Oklahoma City-based advertising agency had served as a powerful adjunct to the NRA, promoting the group’s combative, no-compromise stance on gun rights.

The inquiry put him on a collision course with his father-in-law, Angus McQueen, who founded the firm — another larger-than-life figure of the same generation, who died in July. Brewer said he did not view the matter as a conflict of interest.

Brewer said people within the NRA began raising questions about Ackerman’s billing and its hiring of the group’s officials, such as North. North had a multimillion-dollar contract to host a series produced by the firm, documents show.

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The McQueens grew suspicious of Brewer’s questions and worried that he sought to take over some of the firm’s public relations business, according to people familiar with their views.

In a statement, Ackerman McQueen accused Brewer of “pursuing a personal vendetta against his own family and their business.” The firm said it has cooperated with every audit requested by the NRA and never overcharged the group, adding that LaPierre approved all expenses.

The company alleges that Brewer went after Ackerman McQueen “to serve as a distraction from the failure of NRA executives and its board to properly fulfill its oversight duties.”

Current NRA officials rejected that, saying the audit was part of a move to increase oversight. Brewer’s firm said that the focus on Ackerman was not personal and that the agency stonewalled requests for information. And the firm dismissed as absurd the idea that it was trying to steal the public relations business.

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The audit set off a bitter legal fight, fracturing the alliance between the NRA and its longtime marketing agency. It also exposed lavish spending by LaPierre that flowed through Ackerman McQueen, such as hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel, invoices show. The NRA has defended the expenditures as necessary.

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Late last year, NRA budget officers began warning about staggering legal bills from Brewer’s firm, according to people familiar with the communications. Since March 2018, his firm’s fees had routinely topped $1.5 million a month, according to internal documents.

In a Feb. 26 letter, North and board vice presidents Richard Childress and Carolyn Meadows told LaPierre that they believed Brewer’s retainer agreement was not properly executed and demanded that the NRA cease payments to him until they could discuss the matter.

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Brewer moved quickly to demonstrate his value to the organization.

In internal presentations, the lawyer warned of impending legal threats that he said he was uniquely equipped to address, according to people familiar with the meetings.

He said the NRA could face significant criminal liability in an ongoing investigation of Russian gun activist Maria Butina, who had cultivated ties to the NRA, the people said, as well as exposure in congressional inquiries into Russian connections to the group.

Brewer, who is not a criminal lawyer, claimed in one March meeting that North could be implicated, according to one of the people.

Federal prosecutors had already told NRA lawyers that the organization and its officers were not under criminal investigation, according to the people familiar with the conversations.

Others familiar with Brewer’s presentations said they greatly inflated the legal risk, with one former prosecutor warning other NRA advisers that Brewer was a “charlatan.”

Brendan Sullivan, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer representing North, later called Brewer’s presentation something “a fifth grader might have put together,” according to people who heard his reaction. Sullivan declined to comment.

Brewer declined to address the substance of his meetings, saying they were privileged. But he said he did not think the other NRA lawyers addressed the legal and reputational risks the group faced, adding that they were “assuming away all of the problems that needed to be confronted.”

In March, North pushed the NRA to hire an outside auditor to examine Brewer’s bills, internal correspondence shows.

But LaPierre emailed Brewer to tell him to ignore the request, according to a message read to The Post.

“My office, not any member of the board, has the authority to hire and oversee legal counsel,” the NRA chief wrote in the email. “Your engagement is valid, is vital to the survival of the NRA and is well known to the entire board. Please keep up the good work and disregard this and other missives you may receive.”

LaPierre had been warning North to stop inquiring about the legal bills, saying he had a conflict of interest because of his financial relationship with Ackerman McQueen, according to internal documents. But North kept up the pressure. “The Brewer invoices are draining NRA cash at a mindboggling speed,” he and Childress wrote in an April letter to NRA officials obtained by The Post.

That month, the fight burst into the open.

On April 12, Brewer sued Ackerman McQueen on the NRA’s behalf, accusing the firm of concealing how it was spending money under its $40 million contract. The suit also questioned the propriety of North’s contract with NRA-TV and Ackerman McQueen, which North said LaPierre had authorized.

Then LaPierre took on North directly. On the eve of the organization’s convention in Indianapolis, he publicly released a letter to the board in which he claimed that the NRA president had tried to extort him by threatening to release a “devastating account” of the group’s financial status if LaPierre did not resign and drop the suit against Ackerman McQueen. LaPierre urged nominating committee members not to support North for another term, board members told their colleagues.

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The NRA is now locked in legal battles on multiple fronts. Amid the turmoil, seven board members have resigned and some of the group’s top strategists and advisers have been pushed out, including Christopher Cox, an NRA lobbyist whom LaPierre long described as his heir apparent. The NRA chief has accused Cox of conspiring with North, a charge Cox denies.

Last month brought a new defenestration — this time of lawyers. LaPierre announced that the NRA was severing relations with Charles Cooper, its longtime Second Amendment defender. Michael Volkov, its outside lawyer who had been handling the Russia investigation, also resigned.

In a statement released by Brewer’s firm, the NRA chief accused the lawyers of being part of the conspiracy against him.

Cooper, who had represented the NRA for the past three decades, said he had always been loyal to the group, “not to any individual officers or directors of the organization.” Volkov declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the New York attorney general has issued subpoenas seeking records of LaPierre’s jet-setting lifestyle, including his efforts to buy a $6 million mansion with NRA money, and has sought information about why some of his spending was kept a secret from the NRA board, according to people familiar with the requests.

Meadows said in a statement that the NRA has offered to cooperate with the inquiry and called the claims of misspending “baseless allegations.”

In late August, New York investigators spent a day interviewing North. Among their questions, according to people familiar with the matter, were queries about Brewer’s fees and growing role in the NRA.

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When the National Rifle Association needed more legal firepower in New York state last year, the gun rights group brought aboard an unlikely lawyer: a Democrat who had no experience in Second Amendment litigation.

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