NRA sued over donations

WASHINGTON — A gun-control nonprofit founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords filed a federal lawsuit against the National Rifle Association on Tuesday, alleging the group orchestrated an illegal, secret donation scheme involving millions of dollars that violated campaign finance laws and benefited President Donald Trump and other Republicans.

The lawsuit was filed by campaign finance watchdog Campaign Legal Center on behalf of Giffords, a Democrat, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It accuses the NRA of using a network of shell companies to skirt campaign finance laws and give money to Trump and GOP candidates.

The nonprofit, which is called Giffords, alleges the shell companies affiliated with the NRA illegally coordinated with Republican campaigns to use the same personnel and vendors to run ads for GOP candidates, claiming the vendors were “functionally indistinguishable.” Campaign finance laws state that such a practice is illegal.

The complaint came after a federal judge granted Giffords’ nonprofit the right to sue the NRA when the Federal Election Commission failed to act on previous complaints. It calls for the court to prevent the NRA from “violating the law in future elections” and for the gun-rights group to pay a fine to the Treasury Department equal to the alleged total in the donation scheme. The lawsuit alleges as much as $35 million in “unlawful” and “unreported inkind campaign contributions” went toward the scheme that goes back as early as 2014, with $25 million alleged to have gone toward Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Republican campaigns for Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rep. Matthew Rosendale of Montana are named as defendants in the lawsuit, and GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cory Gardner, a former senator from Colorado, are also mentioned.

David Pucino, a senior staff attorney with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an organization that works in conjunction with the former legislator’s nonprofit, said in a news release that the lawsuit demonstrates how “the NRA broke the law.”

Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday. None of the spokespeople for the GOP lawmakers or candidates cited in the lawsuit immediately responded to requests for comment. The NRA told The Washington Post in a statement that the lawsuit is “as misguided as it is transparent.”