A travel consultant who testified in the National Rifle Association’s bankruptcy case said Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre instructed her to omit certain flight stops from invoices she sent to the gun-rights group for Mr. LaPierre’s private-jet travel, a disclosure NRA attorneys are challenging to keep out of the court record, the Wall Street Journal reported. The travel consultant testified, in a videotape deposition played in bankruptcy court Thursday, that certain invoices she sent the NRA omitted stops in Nebraska and the Bahamas, at Mr. LaPierre’s request. Some of Mr. LaPierre’s relatives who were frequent travelers on NRA-paid private jets live in Nebraska. The NRA chief previously testified he frequently traveled to the Bahamas to stay for free on a 108-foot yacht in the Bahamas with family members, provided by an NRA vendor, for security reasons. The testimony that alleged Mr. LaPierre sought to hide certain private-jet stops from the NRA’s own accountants could be evidence he knew what he was doing was wrong and was deliberately concealing it, legal specialists said. “If true, this seems like a clear documented instance of knowing misuse of NRA assets and concealing that abuse,” said Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington nonprofit-law attorney. The testimony came on the fourth day of high-stakes hearings in the NRA’s chapter 11 bankruptcy case in Dallas. The gun-rights group filed for bankruptcy protection in January, in part to counter fraud and expense-abuse allegations by New York General Letitia James, who is seeking to have the NRA dissolved. Read more. (Subscription required.)
In related news, Wayne LaPierre told a federal bankruptcy judge that he violated the powerful gun-rights group’s policies by failing to disclose free overseas yacht trips and other potential conflicts of interest, Bloomberg News. Under questioning from a lawyer for New York’s Attorney General, LaPierre defended the use of the yacht, calling the trips a “security retreat.” Family members joined him occasionally on the yacht, which is owned by the principal shareholder of a company that was paid by the organization to raise money, handle public relations and produce television shows, LaPierre acknowledged in his testimony in federal court Wednesday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin D. “Cooter” Hale will take LaPierre’s testimony into consideration when deciding whether to appoint a trustee to run the NRA while it’s in bankruptcy, or throw the case out, as the New York Attorney General has requested. The NRA boss said that the yacht excursions were among several items of value that he failed to disclose from 2013 and 2020, including a hunting trip in Botswana. “It should have been disclosed,” LaPierre told Judge Hale during a court fight that could reshape one of the most politically powerful organizations in the U.S. LaPierre said he didn’t pay for the hunting trip, but described it as part of the gun-rights organization’s image-building efforts. He filed a disclosure form for the first time in the past few days listing items of value he’d received from people with, or who may be seeking, ties to the NRA. Read more.
