Someone Is Going Under The Bus

The New York Times ran a story by Danny Hakim regarding the financing of the “Russia trip”. It appeared in Thursday’s paper. The “Russia trip” was a visit to Moscow organized by Maria Butina. It was attended by former NRA President David Keene, then-1st VP Pete Brownell, Sheriff David Clarke, and some other board members. The trip was for the purpose of building stronger ties between the NRA and gun-rights supporters in Russia.

The financing of the trip has been of interest to both Congressional investigators and to NY Attorney General Letitia James. There have been a complicated series of personal checks and reimbursements which has attracted their attention. According to the article, the NRA’s outside counsel William Brewer III has asserted in internal presentations that “those involved had exposed themselves to wire fraud charges.” Other attorneys disagreed with this assertion.

Brewer is also asserting that Wayne LaPierre was opposed to the trip. This, however, is contradicted by emails from the time which marked trip-related invoices as “Wayne approved”.

While the whole financing issue is of interest to investigators, it is what is buried in this story that caught my attention. In other words, the story within the story. It concerns the bureaucratic infighting between some of LaPierre’s closest associates.

The invoices for the trip were overseen by LaPierre’s closest aide Millie Hallow.

The 2016 transactions were overseen by Millie Hallow, an aide to Mr. LaPierre, according to emails. In one February 2016 email, Ms. Butina sent an invoice directly to Ms. Hallow for “Hosting of NRA leadership group for six days in Moscow,” according to the document, and thanked her “for your invaluable advice these past few months.”

In a May 26 email that year, Ms. Hallow told other N.R.A. officials that an invoice related to the trip submitted by Mr. Brownell’s company, the firearms retailer Brownells, had been authorized: “Wayne approved these special projects involving Outreach that Brownell has done,” she wrote.

Now it appears that Josh Powell, Chief of Staff to LaPierre, is trying to throw Millie under the bus.

On Thursday, Josh Powell, the N.R.A.’s chief of staff, said in a statement that “in order to facilitate the transfer of funds to Brownell, Millie falsely stated that Wayne approved of certain expenses when he had not. In fact, Millie apologized to me (and others) later for the misrepresentation.”

You may remember that in late July I did a blog post regarding Millie Hallow. It detailed how she had been convicted of felony embezzlement while directing the DC Commission on Arts and the Humanities. My impression was that had been kept a closely guarded secret. I had NRA board members tell me they didn’t know Ms. Hallow was a convicted felon until that post was published.

It now appears that someone wants that information in the public domain.

But Ms. Hallow is one of Ms. LaPierre’s closest aides, and raising questions about her credibility comes at an inopportune time. The N.R.A. is relying on her word in its battle with Oliver North, the organization’s former president, who stepped down this year shortly after making a call to Ms. Hallow that N.R.A. officials described as threatening toward Mr. LaPierre. Ms. Hallow also once pleaded guilty to a felony related to the theft of money from an arts agency she ran in Washington. (emphasis mine)

It would be interesting to know which one of Hakim’s sources pointed that out to him. It does serve the purposes of Josh Powell but the question remains whether he is smart enough to made use of it. I don’t see it serving the purpose of Brewer as he needs her to be a credible witness against Ollie North. That is, unless it is more important to protect LaPierre in the Russia investigation than it is to continue the fight against Ollie North. If that is the case then there is a lot more substance to this whole Russia fiasco than we previously thought and it is a lot more dangerous to the personal fortune of LaPierre. Time will tell.


7 thoughts on “Someone Is Going Under The Bus”

  1. Perhaps try looking at it assuming Brewer’s purposes include running up billable hours and damaging or destroying the NRA? In that case he could tactically turn on a dime if a more promising legal direction demands ostensibly sacrificing another. I.e. losing the lawsuit against North with maximum anti-NRA publicity might not be unwelcome.

  2. The (only) good news in this is that some NRA board members read your stuff. Or are they former board members now.

    I don’t have a problem with the NRA reaching out to gun rights advocates in other countries given how much of a threat the UN and other international agencies are to our rights. Not sure why convoluted financing would be necessary. Or is it just more fake news from the NYT.

    1. Richard, one thing you may be missing is that Maria Butina is one of the many innocents persecuted by Mueller and his extremely abusive prosecutors (his lead one, Andrew Weissman, has a long trail of abuses with more than a few reverses by appeals courts). So this is politically charged, automatically part of the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA!!! conspiracy/plot against Trump.

      1. No, not missing that. I am aware which is why I made the Fake News comment. With all the turmoil inside the NRA though, I worry about that. A lot of our purists have never liked the NRA for being too soft but like them are not they were the 800 lb gorilla. If they are diminished, I worry about the future.

  3. Sigh… The rats are not only deserting the sinking ship, they’re throwing the ‘other’ rats overboard first for the sharks to eat.

  4. Okay, convicted felon so can’t own guns but works for a gun-rights organization? Weird.. Very weird.

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