For three decades, Wayne LaPierre has been the implacable face of the gun lobby, a scourge of the left who argued that giving ground on gun control was akin to giving up on America. So it was remarkable to see the shambolic turn his tenure atop the National Rifle Association has taken showcased last week in federal bankruptcy court in Dallas, the New York Times reported. LaPierre acknowledged that he had secretly taken the N.R.A. into bankruptcy — without telling even his top lieutenants or most of his board — essentially as an end run around attacks from the New York attorney general, who is seeking to shut down the group amid charges of financial mismanagement and corruption. And he made a string of admissions that served largely to underscore the N.R.A.’s disarray and the questions about his own fitness to lead it. He didn’t know, he testified, that his former chief financial officer had received a $360,000-a-year consulting contract after leaving under a cloud. He didn’t know that the personal travel agent the N.R.A. had hired to book charter flights for him and his family — the Bahamas was a favorite destination — was charging a 10 percent booking fee on top of a retainer that could reach $26,000 a month. He didn’t know that one of his former top lieutenants had arranged for his wife to be hired by an N.R.A. contractor, or that her compensation had been billed back to the N.R.A. Weakened by internal strife, and after an attenuated presence in the 2020 presidential election, the N.R.A. these days often seems more fixated on litigation than guns. Among other things, it has spent nearly $8 million in legal fees to do battle with its former top lobbyist, Chris Cox, the attorney general’s office claimed, even though Mr. Cox is seeking a little over a quarter of that amount in a severance dispute. (A lawyer for the N.R.A.’s main outside firm called the figures “misleading” but did not provide a breakdown.) But perhaps the N.R.A.’s greatest power remains the perception of its power.
