Trial over NRA’s lavish spending nearing jury
NEW YORK — The National Rifle Association and its ex-CEO were caught “with their hands in the cookie jar,” a lawyer with the New York Attorney General’s Office said Thursday at the conclusion of a civil trial accusing the gun rights group’s executives of wildly misspending millions of dollars on private flights, vacations and other lavish perks.
Earlier in closing arguments to the Manhattan jury, an attorney for Wayne LaPierre, the powerful nonprofit advocacy organization’s long-serving leader, had dismissed the case as a political witch hunt by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The NRA’s lawyer, meanwhile, said it could not be held accountable for LaPierre’s actions.
Assistant Attorney General Monica Connell countered that the NRA and its executives were doing everything they could to deny, deflect and soften the blow of the accusations.
“They’re going to try to get you to think about anything except what happened to those cookies,” she said. “They’re going to blame anyone else but themselves.”
The case, which unfolded over a sixweek trial, now heads to the jury, which is expected to begin deliberations Friday after receiving verdict instructions from the judge.
State lawyers said at the trial that LaPierre, who announced his resignation just days before the trial opened in early January, billed the NRA more than $11 million for private jet flights and spent more than $500,000 on eight trips to the Bahamas over a three-year span. They also say he authorized $135 million in NRA contracts for a vendor whose owners showered him with free trips to the Bahamas, Greece, Dubai and India, and gave him access to a 108-foot yacht.
Testifying over multiple days, LaPierre claimed he hadn’t realized the travel tickets, hotel stays, meals, yacht access and other luxury perks counted as gifts, even as he conceded he wrongly expensed private flights for his family and accepted vacations from vendors doing business with the NRA without disclosing them.
During Thursday’s closing arguments, LaPierre’s lawyer P. Kent Correll argued LaPierre’s use of private flights was necessary for safety reasons, given his prominence in the contentious gun debate. The costly flights were not for personal gain but to raise huge sums of money for the organization and gun rights causes broadly, he said.
“He was a visionary. He was a genius,” Correll said, dismissing the state’s allegations.
He also argued James had called the NRA a “terrorist organization” and campaigned on a promise to destroy it.
“This is a story made up by a person with an agenda that wanted him off the field,” said Correll, as he dinged James, a Democrat, for not even being present in court Thursday. “If this case was so important, why wouldn’t she be here?”
But Connell, the state’s lawyer, countered that if LaPierre truly had concerns for his safety, he should have raised them with the NRA’s board and received approval for the expenses.
The NRA’s lawyer, meanwhile, argued the organization worked to address problems soon after they came to light through whistleblower complaints.
“When the fraud was discovered, it dug in. It turned over the rocks it was told not to overturn,” Sarah Rogers said. “The NRA left no stone unturned.”
“If this was a case about corruption,” Rogers added, “it wasn’t by the NRA.”
Connell argued the NRA isn’t absolved of the misdeeds of its former executives. The organization allowed LaPierre to step down without any sanction, and many of the long-serving board members who enabled his actions still remain, she said.