I’ve been going through the amended complaint as I have time, and a few things stand out. For one, it seems that there is great effort for pinning all the wrongs in Wayne. It looks to me, reading between the lines, that Wayne got along with Angus McQueen, but maybe didn’t get along so well with his son Revan, who took over the business.
I’m intrigued by this accusation:
LaPierre also structured certain “back-scratching†relationships to siphon money to pet projects that the NRA would otherwise be prohibited from financially supporting. Upon information and belief, the NRA makes improper expenditures to directly support Youth for Tomorrow, by making charitable contributions to a third-party charity that in turn donates the money to Youth for Tomorrow, an organization for which Susan LaPierre acted as President.
But even more by this one:
Brewer’s relationship with Angus was toxic from the outset. . For over 20 years, Brewer has had a strained relationship with Angus and a resentful, disrespectful attitude toward him and other McQueen family members. In fact, his personal history of animosity with the McQueen family, his anti-gun political sentiments, and his parade of prior ethical violations raised numerous eyebrows among NRA officials. Brewer was often disrespectful to the McQueen family, voicing frequent professional criticisms about AMc, slow-paying for the services his law firm received from AMc, and vocalizing his disdain for AMc’s relationship with the NRA due to his own political sentiments against Second Amendment rights. Indeed, Brewer has had 20 years, as a family member and AMc client, gaining key insight into AMc’s business strategy and the personal lives of the McQueen family. In that role, and as a McQueen family member, he apparently saw something that he coveted: the prestigious public-relations work that AMc provided to the NRA.
Keep in mind who the source is here, but if there’s any merit to this accusation at all by AMc, we’re in a lot of trouble. A LOT. Bitter and I have speculated whether Wayne might honestly be losing it. He’s at an age where mental decline is not out of the question.
“making charitable contributions to a third-party charity that in turn donates the money to Youth for Tomorrow, an organization for which Susan LaPierre acted as President.”
Has anyone looked for where the money may have gone after YFT? Or did they say “AHA! Susan LaPierre!” and stop looking right there?
I’m smelling the possibility of sectarian jealousies underlying NRA conflicts. I witnessed them in other “gun rights” organizations, and as I’ve mentioned, I began to sense them in NRA activities more than a decade ago. E.g., was the Grover Norquist/Muslim Brotherhood nonsense really about a bizarre conspiracy theory?
If WLP were truly losing it, I would think even his pet board would act. They all may be grifters but having WLP ride the bomb down ends their grift. I read it more as a classic intra-Politburo fight.
Who is “we†exactly? NRA is not “we†and hasn’t been for several years now as far as I can tell from this and other interesting findings.
@Andy B: Has NRA historically ever been “we?â€
It’s common usage to refer to an organization to which you belong in the collective “we” or “us”
Nah. Hey, when the emperor has no clothes, you don’t throw him a pair of pants!
“@Andy B: Has NRA historically ever been ‘we?'”
I don’t really know. I know I thought it was in my younger days, when I became a member at 18 and a Life Member ten years later. I remember being so proud of putting down that I was a Life Member when I joined my club c. 45 years ago. It implied status and rank in the gun community.
There are probably dozens of things for which I can look back decades and say “If only I had known…” Except of course there was no way to know, without a lifetime of experience in “the course of human events.”
For example, I know today I would not seek to become a “life” member of anything, because organizations have a way of evolving out from under you, and no one has ever been successful in changing human nature for very long. It goes where it’s going, whether you approve of it or not. Meanwhile of course, you will be evolving yourself.
Since I’ve started on a philosophical path, I will continue:
Per the old cliche’, “power corrupts”. Even the quest for power appears to corrupt, no matter how pure the motive was for seeking power in the first place. That may be one of the oldest themes in human history, but in more-or-less contemporary terms of pop culture, I think of Tolkien’s “Lord of Rings”, which I last read 40+ years ago. As I recall, possession of the Rings of Power conferred wonderful powers on the beings that held them, but over time, possessing them would transform the owner into a disgusting, perverted individual.
The NRA didn’t become power-seeking until after the 1977 “Revolt in Cincinatti.” At that time a conscious decision was made to stay close to “the seat of power” in Washington, DC, and the NRA-ILA already had been founded. In 1980, the NRA endorsed a POTUS candidate for the first time. I’m sure every step taken was for the best of reasons, but the point is that the quest for and achievement of power was undertaken for the first time in the mid-1970s, and by 2016 NRA’s contemporary history was a foregone conclusion. It was thoroughly corrupted. I may maintain that it was corrupted long before that, but the degree of corruption at any given time is always arguable. That it became irretrievably corrupted during the Trump era is pretty much simple empirical observation.
The paradox is that in a system of political power, having power will always be necessary, if only for self-defense, but that power is what is going to corrupt everyone involved in getting and keeping it. Maybe what we need are power-seeking organizations with “sunset” provisions, that will cease to exist after 50 years, at most. Start building a new one before the old one sunsets, and don’t use any corrupted pieces salvaged from the old one.
Now, since I’ve already gone down the path of allegory, I’ll refer to this, purportedly from Old English:
The problem is that the presence of power attracts people of bad character, the way blood in the water attracts sharks. The office of NRA Executive Vice President descended from personalities like Col. Franklin Orth and Major General Maxwell Rich, to Harlon Carter, and finally to total political snakes like J. Warren Cassidy and Wayne LaPierre.
So funny seeing YFT coming up in this debacle. YFT is Joe Gibbs’s charity. Not to get into too many details, but an executive of the first company I worked for sits on their Board of Trustees. I had no idea Wayne’s wife was the President, although looking at their site today, doesn’t seem to serve in that capacity anymore.
YFT also has a bit of a strained relationship with some of the local populace. They like to use their good deeds as a blank check to expand their facilities and demand county subsidies and expect little to no pushback. They also have regular runaways from their homes, though in their defense when I lived in the area I never heard of an instance of a runaway doing anything illegal. It’s just interesting reading about them again.
“They like to use their good deeds as a blank check to expand their facilities and demand county subsidies and expect little to no pushback.”
This is hardly a scientific sampling technique, but if you Google the word “Godly” at youthfortomorrow.org, you’ll get at least 25 hits.
That usually means an outfit regards being said “no” to, as a violation of their First Amendment rights.