Glenn Reynolds links to an article that suggests Marina Butina was railroaded. I met Maria Butina briefly at an NRA function at the annual meeting. I still have her business card. She was completely up front that her organization had the blessing of the Kremlin. I remember her saying that, and saying that they were not an opposition group, since such things aren’t allowed.
I didn’t think much of it because at the time the UN Arms Trade Treaty was among the buzz, and the Kremlin was opposed. So I figured the outreach was to build alliances against the treaty. I don’t recall her claiming she was just a little old Russian girl from Siberia who started a gun rights group, though she did pitch she was hoping to build an RKBA movement in Russia.
I take the Spectator article with a grain of salt. I accept that Butina is probably sitting in prison for engaging in what a lot of foreign nationals in DC routinely do. I accept that she was unlucky enough to get caught up in the Russian collusion narrative and that her activity would never have risen to the level of being noticed otherwise. I do agree she wasn’t a spy in the sense most people understand it. But she is, in my opinion, guilty of what she was charged with, along with a lot of other foreign nationals that will never be unlucky enough to get caught up in a red scare-like whirlwind.
This time over the leaks. I’m not surprised by that. Most contracts are going to have non-disclosure agreements within them. But I suspect the end of the relationship with NRA will mean the end of Ackerman-McQueen. Or at the least, they’ll go back to being a small firm serving Oklahoma City. Have you ever seen their Glassdoor Reviews? Not great. One comment notes:
There have been a growing number of layoffs, due to not winning any major new clients, so irrationality, desperation is setting in – it may just be karma.
Very unprofessional at times and disrespectful to employees. AM puts power over people and rules by fear while successful companies put power under their employees and rules by encouragement. The funny thing is, I’m not making this up. It’s evident in that the company is losing clients left and right and is HEAVILY dependent on one client. If we lost that one client, AM would nearly collapse.
Now, I take bad Glassdoor reviews with a grain of salt, because unhappy employees are going to be the ones leaving reviews. But I do think patterns are useful. If everyone complains about the same things, it’s probably happening.
But note the last line. I suspect that is now what’s happening. I know some people are annoyed at my focus on Ack-Mac, but right now I view booting them as an achievable victory. The Board has signaled they are with Wayne, for now. There’s nothing that can be done there in the short term. I also don’t trust the people gunning for Wayne right now. There are no good guys here, so I am holding out for at least throwing one of the bad guys in this bad drama overboard.
John Richardson has it. Ack-Mac is going away, right guys? We’re done paying for crappy YouTube videos no one watches, right? Note, from the letter:
The vast majority of the travel in question involved donor outreach, fundraising, and stakeholder engagement. As an example, The Wall Street Journal reported that a trip to Italy was “tied to a 2015 documentary feature on the Italian gun maker posted on NRATV.” Beretta, as you may know, is a major supporter of the NRA and our Second Amendment.
How many people watched the video? I can’t find it, but how many views did it get? I only found one video on location in Italy, and it has 1052 views.
Nice video, but how much money went out for each of those views? I probably don’t even want to know.
UPDATE: Just for the record, I’m not buying the smokescreen that everything is hunky dory.
In the NRA’s story, we can see reflections of some of the patterns exhibited at the Wounded Warrior Project. Success, public support, and leadership excesses offended donors and created a backlash that eventually ended in a nearly clean sweep of leadership, but not before it suffered deep and long-lasting damage to its donor base. Like Wounded Warrior, the NRA is conducting an internal investigation and trying to offload responsibility for the scandal onto what it characterizes as organizational “haters.”
There does seem to be a parallel, except for the Board’s unwillingness to jettison Wayne. Someone asked in the comments what the proper means of redress was, which I think is a fair question.
Really, you need to win elections. When you try to upend the status quo and fail, in an organization like NRA, you need to put people on the Board who back your position. For me that goes back to an earlier post I did talking about how NRA needs a sensible reform movement.
Winning elections is hard, and NRA’s Board is huge. But it’s not impossible to win an election by petition, especially if the membership is angry and wants change, and the alternative is palatable.
From my point of view, the current backlash against Wayne looks to be instigated because he stopped toeing the line vis-a-vis NRA’s PR firm. I will readily concede that probably happened because the NRA ran out of Danegeld, and not because Wayne suddenly had a crisis of conscience.
Maybe that’s all carefully orchestrated kabuki theather, and I’m a dupe. I’m sure many of you believe that. But that’s how it looks to me. I think the focus on payments to Brewer’s firm is because he’s sucking up money that could be used to buy more shitty YouTube videos no one watches. Is he sucking up too much money? I’m open to the answer being “yes.”
I would follow a movement to reform NRA that distanced itself from North and a lot of these other players I don’t trust. I don’t know Allen West. I have met Tim Knight before, and he seemed like a straight player. But we need more of that.
Now that she’s being called out for her hypocrisy, the presidential hopeful is spinning the policy shift as a “simple mistake.” “I didn’t do the right thing,” Gillibrand told CNN‘s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” Wednesday. “I mean, I think someone who can’t recognize when they’re wrong is far more concerning if you can never admit when you’re wrong. And not only was I wrong, and not only should I have cared more about gun violence in other parts of my state or other parts of my country, I just didn’t.”
It’s easy. When she was a Congresswoman from upstate New York, it was beneficial to her politically to be pro-gun. When she became Senator of New York, it was beneficial for her to be anti-gun. What politicians never want to admit is that their views are fungible depending on political expedience. It goes back to the old Groucho line: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
Even your favorite politician who tells you how much he loves the Second Amendment, in most cases, is telling you that because it’s politically expedient. Our great task is to make it politically expedient. There are true believers out there, but they are rare.
So it turns out that people who have hated NRA and/or Wayne LaPierre for years… you might want to sit down for this, as it’s a shocking revelation… still hate NRA and Wayne LaPierre. So if I seem a little tired of this, that’s why.
There are no good guys in any of this, I’m increasingly convinced. But here’s the key issues as I see it:
Why did Pete Brownell step down and make way for Ollie North? North wasn’t in line for President.
What was North’s angle in all of this? The problem in this whole thing is I don’t trust any of the players.
Was Ack-Mac trying to peddle influence on the Board to shore up its position for the the post-Wayne era, which is coming soon (he’s 70, half a decade past typical retirement age) whether or not the Board’s circled wagons succeed in fending off the Indians.
Why did Wayne’s expenses go through Ackerman-McQueen instead of NRA?
Why are Bill Brewer’s legal fees so high? I’ve had attorney friends tell me the fees do indeed look high, but not out of the realm of possibility for handling several pieces of complex federal litigation.
I agree NRA needs to hire an independent auditor to get to the bottom of some of these questions. But understand that if they do, none of us are ever going to see the results. Because the purpose of an external auditor is to tell you what you’re doing wrong off-the-record before a real auditor shows up and it counts.
I’m a lot less concerned about the travel and clothes, other than if they went through the PR firm to conceal them from auditing.
But it’s pretty clear the Board isn’t prepared to remove Wayne, so those wanting to depose him have more work to do. There’s a way to handle these things, and leaking shit to our enemies isn’t one of them. This is not new. Anyone who’s been following the Trace’s (admittedly good) journalism on this issue for any time knows someone or someones have been leaking shit to them for a while. Who? And Why?
I’d be a lot more willing to join a movement to push Wayne along to retirement if I could be convinced that the movement is realistic, focused on improving NRA, and isn’t just settling old scores and trying to drive NRA to a disastrous hard-line position.
It is unfortunate that certain board members have resorted to making false and misleading public statements about proceedings of the NRA board of directors. As those board members know, we are not at liberty to discuss the particulars of the board of directors meeting that occurred in executive session on April 29. However, every board member was afforded the opportunity to speak openly about any issues of concern to them. To suggest otherwise is dishonorable.
During the meeting in question, the board had a healthy discussion where the issues that are being reported upon now were vetted and discussed. Beyond that, every board member was invited to attend committee meetings where legal, financial, regulatory, and business issues are thoroughly addressed. The NRA has an office of the general counsel, and separate independent outside counsel to represent the board of directors. In sum, there is no excuse for any board member to claim they are unaware of legal and business concerns being addressed by this Association.
It shocks the conscience to read that certain board members have apparently not kept themselves updated, informed and active on matters that are of interest to our 5 million members. They have an open invitation to get more actively involved — and to join the conversation in an appropriate way, as is provided for in our Bylaws.
In closing, it occurs to us that board members ‘voicing’ concern may have been part of a failed attempt to oust Wayne LaPierre as CEO and Executive Vice President of the NRA prior to the board meeting in Indianapolis. In fact, we were all warned that a scorched earth campaign would ensure unless Wayne moved to withdraw the NRA’s lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen and walked away from the NRA. Wayne chose the principled path — and did neither. He will continue to press for full transparency from all vendors, even the ones that employ Col. North and others.
Fact — when the board met, Wayne was unanimously voted to continue his leadership role of the Association. Anyone could have run against him, or any one of us for that matter or even called for a roll call vote. They chose not to do so.
We should end this petty bickering immediately. Now is the time for the NRA to return to its core mission: representing our members and defending the conditional freedoms of America.
Emphasis is mine. Wayne cheerleading aside, it’s been apparent to me that this is a follow through on that threat, and while I think Wayne should have retired after the 2016 election, I don’t know that Wayne stepping aside now wouldn’t intensify the current crisis or start a whole new one on top of it. If NRA is committed to ridding itself of Ack-Mac, right now that is enough for me. It’s apparent to me that the parasite is willing to kill the host if it’s going to be excised.
I’m no great fan of Wayne’s, and I think he’s got a lot to answer for, but if it’s Wayne or Ack-Mac, I know which side I’m taking.
A bunch of fresh revelations. Many are wondering what Wayne is doing flying charter, which, as you can see, is horrendously expensive. However, I’d encourage everyone to look at the dates on this. It’s immediately after Sandy Hook.
I’m not really believing Wayne was off cavorting in the Bahamas on vacation just a few weeks after Sandy Hook. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were looking to get out of dodge and find some place to meet that would be hard for the press and opponents to get to. The media would have been able to track a commercial flight Wayne was spotted on, and if you’ve ever been to a business meeting of any size, you’ll have venue staff servicing the meeting, and staff can be paid to talk and spy. So I would not be so quick to say these couldn’t have possibly been legit business trips.
I also fully believe these revelations are Ack-Mac following through on threats if NRA didn’t keep flushing millions of dollars down them. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see Wayne retire and get some younger blood in the EVP’s office. But I’m also not going to help them burn NRA to the ground. I think if Wayne retired, it would help put this behind us. But I’m not going to get too bent out of shape over his having a lot of travel expenses, even for flying charter, immediately after Sandy Hook.
The fact that the New Yorker is hostile to gun rights and the NRA shouldn’t blind us to the fact that there are very real financial oversight issues that need to be addressed, and the NRA audit committee isn’t far enough away from those problems to address them. The NRA board should bring an outside audit team from one of the big five accounting forms with expertise in nonprofits to do a full, forensic audit of NRA finances going back at least five years.
I would endorse that idea. I’d be wary of anyone in any kind of non-profit that balked at the idea of an independent auditor. But just because its sensible doesn’t mean it will happen. I’ve seen a lot of sensible things fall by the wayside in a non-profit and we don’t have to deal with paid staff who also have opinions, and have a lot more time and incentive to manipulate things to come out in their favor. I’m not holding my breath. Even if it does happen, it’ll probably be kept internal.
