The N.R.A.’s lawyers have asserted that the group has greatly reformed its corporate governance practices. In recent years, they say, the association has fired vendors and insiders deemed problematic, implemented mandatory compliance training and annual risk assessments, and ended consulting arrangements with board members.
But the N.R.A.’s new leaders appear to be moving in opposite directions. The clash comes down to a battle between the old guard and the new.
[NRA President Bob] Barr is a longtime board member who described himself in his testimony as a friend of Mr. LaPierre. He also said he thought that Mr. LaPierre had acted in good faith.
[NRA CEO Doug] Hamlin, by contrast, previously ran the N.R.A.’s publications division and was among a group of insider candidates, mostly for open board seats, who billed themselves as reformers and were not stalwart LaPierre loyalists. Mr. Hamlin said in his testimony that he and other like-minded candidates ran because they had lost faith in N.R.A. leadership, including Mr. LaPierre and Mr. Barr, and thought the group had lost the trust of its members.
“My frustration was due to a lot of various factors that had been building over many years,” he said.
The two leaders, who gave back-to-back testimony in State Supreme Court this month, have many areas of disagreement.
Mr. Hamlin wants to reclaim control over decisions about litigation strategy. Mr. Barr and his predecessor, Charles Cotton, who remains a highly influential figure on the board, prefer to keep the board in charge of legal matters. The N.R.A. has paid its lead law firm — Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors — $182 million since 2018, according to trial testimony; in a statement, the board’s litigation committee noted that the money was used for a wide variety of legal work and included roughly $50 million for expenses and payments to third-party experts.
Mr. Hamlin also opposes a plan to relocate the N.R.A. to Texas, seeing it as a waste of resources that would destabilize the staff. Mr. LaPierre had pushed the plan, backed by Mr. Cotton and Mr. Barr. Ms. James’s office has portrayed it as an attempt to circumvent New York’s authority to regulate the organization.
In his testimony, Mr. Cotton said the N.R.A. was already shopping for a replacement for Mr. Hamlin. To that end, he and Mr. Barr have kept in place a search committee to find a new candidate, even though the chief executive is elected annually and Mr. Hamlin was just elected and could run again, as Mr. LaPierre did for decades.
The revelation led the presiding judge, Justice Joel M. Cohen, to ask during the trial why the search committee was still up and running: “Hasn’t there been an election already?”
Mr. Cotton, another LaPierre ally, explained that he wanted “some high-powered person to take it over.” His stance appeared to be news to Mr. Hamlin, who was not even aware there was a search committee until recently.
— Danny Hakim and Kate Christobek in At the N.R.A., a Battle Between the Old Guard and the New
No money from me until the poison is *gone*… 🙁
Same here.
It seems LaPierre was just the beginning of the cleansing.
It seems the old guard really wants to keep things same as it ever was.
Except with a membership of 0
The “way it has always been” crowd never wants to let go. Just like with the Repubs there are plenty of Romney, Cheney, Ryan neocons clinging on for dear life trying to drag it all backwards.
When the foundation is rotten…simply trying g to replace the bad sections won’t do a damn bit of good.
The only real option is to tear it ALL down and start over from the foundation up.
Exactly!
The NRA is no different than an old drugged out street whore. Ate up from the feet up and there’s nothing that will or can change that and their drug of choice is other people’s $$$. So they can continue to live the lifestyle of the choice while pretending they care about the people they are supposed to be representing.
This is the exact situation where I envy the Left’s ability to immediately “pivot”, dropping an org that no longer suits their needs and putting their enthusiasm behind a more effective one. The amount of wailing, moaning, and kvetching about this clearly corrupt BS entity seems a bit overdramatic, imho. There are plenty of smaller (but much more engaged and effective!) organizations that you can throw your money towards if you so desire.
This is what happens when millions are at stake. Corruption, lies, fighting for control… What happens when trillions are at stake? Answer: the 2020 election. The ideological battles are a distraction. It was always about raiding the treasury.
Give me a break. This is a New York Slimes article, and I don’t trust them to tell the true story at any time. They’re re-hashing testimony that was given during the February trial with some new stuff tossed in from the second phase of the trial from earlier this month.
The Slimes point is thus: “Revenue and membership plummeted, and the N.R.A.’s role as a political powerhouse in the Republican Party has greatly diminished.” And the Slimes is happy about that. Don’t be fooled.
Dan has quoted only the second half of the article: https://archive.ph/usoHQ