For nearly three decades, Wayne LaPierre has served as the face of the National Rifle Association, burnishing the organization’s influence and power in Washington, taking a defiant stance against gun control advocates in the wake of mass shootings and once famously declaring “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
On Thursday, LaPierre’s fixture as CEO and executive vice president of the most dominant gun lobby in the United States became increasingly precarious after New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against him and three other high-ranking current or former NRA executives, alleging they have undercut the nonprofit organization’s charitable mission by engaging in illegal financial conduct.
According to the lawsuit, that includes diverting tens of millions of dollars for personal trips and expenditures, lucrative no-show contracts to buy people’s silence and other improper spending.
“The NRA was serving as a personal piggy bank for four individual defendants,” James said at a news conference.
LaPierre is named in the suit along with Wilson “Woody” Phillips, a former NRA treasurer and chief financial officer; Joshua Powell, a former chief of staff and executive director of general operations; and John Frazer, currently corporate secretary and general counsel.
The suit says their actions contributed to the loss of more than $64 million in three years as they enriched themselves and “overrode and evaded internal controls … without regard to the NRA’s best interests.”
None of the men have been criminally charged as part of James’ lawsuit, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and follows an 18-month investigation that included issuing subpoenas and collecting testimony. The complaint seeks to have a judge dissolve the NRA, recoup the lost assets and prohibit the defendants from serving on the board of any nonprofit charitable organization in New York.
While the NRA is headquartered in Fairfax County, Virginia, the New York attorney general has investigatory authority over the organization since it is chartered in New York. James said criminal charges could still be referred to prosecutors.
In a statement, LaPierre said James’ investigation is “an unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the NRA.” While he did not address each allegation individually, he said the organization is “well governed, financially solvent, and committed to good governance.”
Phillips, Powell and Frazer did not immediately respond to the lawsuit, although the NRA filed a countersuit Thursday claiming James has violated the group’s First Amendment rights. In a statement, NRA President Carolyn Meadows called James’ suit a “baseless, premeditated attack on our organization and the Second Amendment freedoms it fights to defend.”
The lawsuit lays out how the NRA is allegedly “fraught with fraud and abuse.”
LaPierre allegedly paid for private jets for family.
According to the suit, NRA records showed the CEO using the organization to pay for private planes, including for his wife, Susan, who co-chairs the NRA’s Women’s Leadership Forum, and for other family members. None of the flights were necessary for security reasons nor were they approved by the organization’s board, the suit says.
The flights amounted to millions of dollars. They reportedly included:
- In 2017, LaPierre got his niece and her daughter a nearly $27,000 private jet to fly from Dallas to Orlando, Florida.
- Also in 2017, he authorized a private jet to pick up his niece’s husband in Nebraska for a Safari Club convention in Las Vegas, where the husband was needed to watch their child, and then flew him back home at a cost of about $15,000.
- And in 2019, LaPierre took a private flight with his wife from Washington, D.C., to Orlando, and also stopped in Nebraska to drop off his niece and grandniece, at a cost of $78,900.
LaPierre reportedly took private flights to and from the Bahamas at least eight times.
According to the suit, “on most of those trips, LaPierre stopped in Nebraska on each leg of the trip to pick up and drop off his niece and her family. The NRA paid over half a million dollars for these flights.”
LaPierre said he often goes in December to attend a “celebrity retreat” organized by a principal stakeholder in several companies that have business relationships with the NRA.
According to the suit, LaPierre has benefited from that person by staying on their 108-foot yacht named Illusions, which includes four staterooms, jet skis and a personal chef.
LaPierre, however, allegedly failed to disclose his use of the yacht on NRA financial disclosure questionnaires that he, as an officer and ex-officio director of the NRA, must submit to the NRA secretary each year.
The yacht is considered a “gift from an NRA contractor in excess of $250 requiring disclosure under NRA policy. It also constituted a private benefit to LaPierre in violation of NRA policy,” according to the suit.
In testimony shared with James, according to the suit, LaPierre said that he didn’t disclose the use of the yacht for security reasons and that he considered it was for a legitimate business purpose.
In his testimony, according to the suit, LaPierre said he believed it was NRA policy that he travel by private aircraft at all times for security reasons and that he was unaware of any restrictions on how often he can charter a plane, where he can travel to and how much he can spend.
LaPierre also allegedly received “hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from another NRA vendor in the form of complimentary safaris in Africa and other world-wide locations for himself and his spouse.”
LaPierre is accused of giving no-show contracts to former employees.
In one example, Powell was fired from his job as executive director of general operations in late 2016 after four years in that role.
LaPierre then had the NRA pay Powell $60,000 a month over 2017 and 2018 for “consulting services,” according to the suit, and for a “final payment for consulting services” worth $240,000. He reportedly earned $1.8 million in total under the agreement, which had a “non-disparagement clause” and “confidentiality obligation.”
But the suit said the agreement did not undergo a competitive bid process, which violated the NRA’s purchasing policy requiring competitive bids and pricing be solicited for goods or services valued at $5,000 or more, and that the contract “must still be reported to the Finance Committee on an annual basis.”
According to the suit, LaPierre was unsure of whether Powell provided any services in exchange for the money and believed “it was just more of a severance.” The NRA’s treasurer also said, “I don’t know if that was consulting or some sort of severance or what it was,” according to to the suit, “I just don’t know.”
The NRA allegedly reimbursed LaPierre for personal expenses.
According to the suit, from 2013 to 2017, LaPierre was reimbursed for more than $1.2 million in expenses.
The reimbursements consisted of more than $65,000 for Christmas gifts that LaPierre gave his staff, various donors and friends, including an ice cream gift basket from Graeters, an Ohio-based ice cream chain.
For his inner circle, LaPierre handed out gifts from high-end retailers like Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman that were then expensed to the NRA. Such gifts were in excess of the $25 limit permitted by the IRS, and reimbursement should have been reported as income, according to the suit.
Between 2009 and 2017, LaPierre reportedly expensed over $100,000 in membership fees for a golf club in the Washington, D.C., area, which he visited for both business and personal use.
In 2017, Susan LaPierre was appointed to the board of directors of the National Park Service Foundation, the official charity of America’s national parks. According to the suit, Wayne LaPierre submitted expense reports for nearly $14,000 for foundation-related trips to Alaska and Arizona for himself, his wife and niece, and for more than $150,000 for private flights to take them to foundation events.
Out of pocket expenses were also allegedly passed on to the NRA.
LaPierre is accused of using “pass-through arrangements” with the the NRA’s outside public relations and advertising marketing firm “to conceal private travel and trips that were largely personal in nature.”
According to the suit, LaPierre would have the firm pay for expenses, including for NASCAR events, country music shows and medical visits, and then bill those to the NRA.
One NRA executive allegedly stayed at luxury suites at hotels like the Four Seasons, the St. Regis and the Beverly Hills Hotel by employing the “pass-through” method.
In addition, the public relations firm billed the NRA for hair and makeup for Susan LaPierre in connection with the NRA’s annual meetings and the Women’s Leadership Forum, according to the suit. The NRA reportedly paid one makeup artist more than $16,300 to cover Susan LaPierre for three events.