Some NRA members want to know more about the alleged financial malfeasance flagged by Oliver North
Monday is Oliver North's last day as president of the National Rifle Association, after an unusually public internal struggle evidently won by NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre. North announced Saturday he wouldn't seek the traditional second one-year term as president because the NRA board opposed him. Two days earlier, LaPierre had told the board that North tried to oust him by threatening to expose "a devastating account" of financial other alleged malfeasance.
North was absent from Saturday's meeting of NRA members, and near the end, "some members challenged efforts to adjourn and pushed to question the board about controversies involving its financial management, the relationship with its longtime public relations firm, and details of what North sought to raise about alleged misspending, sexual harassment, and other mismanagement," The Associated Press reports. Board members objected.
The meeting devolved into an intense 45-minute debate "over whether the NRA's financial woes should be discussed in public" and "a resolution calling for the resignation of LaPierre," reports Brian Freskos at The New Yorker. "The resolution, put forward by a member from Pennsylvania, accused LaPierre of having 'squelched and ignored' issues raised nearly 20 years ago regarding Ackerman McQueen," the NRA's longtime public relations firm, which it is now suing. NRA members eventually approved the NRA leadership's motion to move the discussions to Monday's private board meeting.
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And not all NRA members are upset by the drama and allegations of financial impropriety. "It just sounds like any other corporation we know of," Jeannette Sharp, who runs a shooting range in Louisiana, told The Washington Post on Sunday.
The NRA faces a potentially existential threat from New York's attorney general, who announced an investigation into the NRA's tax-exempt status on Saturday. You can read more about decades of alleged self-dealing and sweetheart deals among NRA leadership, Ackerman McQueen, and other vendors, in a recent joint investigation from The New Yorker and The Trace.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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