Yesterday's report that the NRA is suing NRATV and accusing Oliver North of double-billing the lobby he runs was apparently just a scratch on the surface of an organization completely mired in graft.
According to the New Yorker, Oliver North is far from alone in his scheme to defraud the lobby he runs.
According to interviews and to documents that I obtained—federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications—a small group of N.R.A. executives, contractors, and venders has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements. Memos created by a senior N.R.A. employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.” [...]
Marc Owens, who served for ten years as the head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, recently reviewed these records. “The litany of red flags is just extraordinary,” he said. “The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen. There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain venders and people in control.”
The full report from the New Yorker, which you should read for yourself, details a series of dubious business decisions made over the last 20 years including the lobby's most recent decision to create a murder insurance program otherwise known as "Carry Guard."
We've discussed that program here before and how it led to the NRA's pathetic lawsuit against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for persuading banks not to do business with the NRA; because financing their "Carry Guard" program could mean financing murder.
But that's just one program out of a dozen that make it appear as though everyone in a position of power or influence at the NRA had their own pet projects that extracted as much money as they could from the organization.
I don't know if it will matter to them, but I'd like to think the NRA's biggest donors will be outraged by this. They haven't been funding a gun rights organization as much as they've been funding a criminal racket.