The Attorney General of New York took action today to dissolve the National Rifle Association(NRA), following an 18-month investigation that found evidence the powerful gun rights group is “fraught with fraud and abuse.”
Attorney General Letitia James claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that she found financial misconduct in the millions of dollars, and that it contributed to a loss of more than $64 million over a three year period.
The state’s top prosecutor said the organization engaged in illegal conduct by diverting “millions of dollars away from the charitable mission of the organization for personal use by senior leadership, awarding contracts to the financial gain of close associates and family, and appearing to dole out lucrative no-show contracts to former employees in order to buy their silence and continued loyalty.
The AG office is not saying they can not be a gun rights organization, they are saying a nonprofit cannot commit fraud and fail to meet their basic legal/administrative requirements.
The charges are that the NRA is committing fraud and explicitly isn’t acting as a nonprofit. Senior executives spending tens of millions in lavish hotel trips, spas, and $25,000 steak dinners is not in the fiduciary interest of donating members.
The complaint against the NRA is very narrow and only pertains to their failure to carry out the legal/administrative requirements that come with being a nonprofit. Basically, they had no internal financial controls, funds were spent on lavish gifts and items for executives, filing fraudulent regulatory reports, etc.
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NY is successful in this arena. The Trump Foundation and Trump University do not exist anymore because they were dissolved by the NY AG under similar circumstances.