NRA avoids government monitoring in corruption case, but must bar ex-executive Wayne LaPierre, New York court rules

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the once-powerful gun owners’ lobbying group, will not be overseen by a government monitor, but is expected to bar its former leader Wayne LaPierre from serving in the organization for a decade, a New York court ruled Monday as part of a long-running corruption case.

Appointing a monitor to regulate the group’s finances and governing procedures would be “time-consuming, disruptive, and would impose significant costs on the NRA without corresponding benefits,” and could risk a “speech-shattering government intrusion” into a group that has long been opposes government regulation, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen he wrote in your decision.

“Right now, we’re relieved to be where we are in the process,” said Doug Hamlin, the group’s recently elected head. counted The New York Times after the decision.

“We are committed to transparency and good governance and being good stewards of our membership fees, and we will prove it,” he added.

New York Attorney General Leticia James, whose office brought the case against the NRA, celebrated the decision.

“After years of corruption, the NRA and its senior leaders are finally being held accountable,” she said in a statement to The Independent.

During the trial, LaPierre compared appointing a monitor to “sticking a knife into the heart of the organization and twisting it.”

In 2020, James sued the group, long an influential GOP fixer, after leaks revealed that executives like LaPierre spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxury goods, travel and high-end clothing.

During the first phase of the trial in February, LaPierre who resigned from his position days before the start of the trialit was considered responsible for corruption alongside another top executive and was ordered to return more than $5 million in misused funds to the NRA.

LaPierre, long the group’s most visible public spokesman, already reimbursed the NRA more than $1 million.

The ANR it says has no plans to rehire him.

Since allegations of corruption surfaced, the N.R.A. supposedly lost 1.3 million members.