The Lawsuit That Keeps On Giving

The lawsuit and counter-lawsuit between the NRA and Ackerman McQueen is the lawsuit that keeps on giving. Reading the amended complaint filed yesterday by Ackerman McQueen is like reading about one of those Hollywood celebrity divorce cases but only better.

I give you the first three sections of AckMac’s “SECOND AMENDED THIRD-PARTY COMPLAINT AGAINST WAYNE LAPIERRE & THE NRA FOUNDATION, INC.” The Complementary Spouse said to me when I started snorting that it must have been funny.

This Third-Party Complaint arises from a series of ethically questionable
undertakings by the NRA through its longtime leader Executive Vice President and CEO, Wayne LaPierre (“LaPierre”). As a result of his authoritarian management style, love of money and power, and deep personal paranoia, today, LaPierre has reduced the NRA to a cult of personality as he continues to waste membership funds on media stunts and serial litigation with only one purpose: to save his own skin.

Through the intricate financial arrangements he constructed over decades with very little oversight from the NRA Board of Directors or other executives, LaPierre was able to obtain millions of dollars in personal benefits by keeping vendors and the NRA’s own accounting
department in the dark about his personal spending. As the gathering storm clouds of a possible investigation by the New York Attorney General (“NYAG”) started to form in 2018, LaPierre became concerned the details of his financial adventurism may come to light.

LaPierre sought assistance from lawyer/media-darling, William A. Brewer III (“Brewer”), and his law firm/public-relations firm, Brewer Attorneys & Counselors (the “Brewer Firm”), who together with LaPierre’s Chief of Staff, Joshua Powell (“Powell”), formulated a plan
to pin all liability on a convenient scapegoat, deflect media attention from LaPierre’s malfeasance and failed NRA programs, and maintain LaPierre’s domination of the NRA. Many of the resulting actions were made possible by LaPierre’s paranoia and guilty conscience, as he repeatedly proclaimed that Brewer was the only one who “could keep him out of jail.” By fantastic coincidence, Brewer determined that it was AMc—a company owned by his own father-in-law— who could be blamed for all of the NRA’s malfeasance and financial woes. In return for deflecting the spotlight from LaPierre, Brewer was given free rein to reap a financial windfall in exorbitant attorney fees, displace his father-in-law’s company as the public-relations firm for the NRA, and set up AMc as the perfect “fall guy.”

It was the “lawyer/media-darling” characterization of William Brewer III that had me in stitches.

While all of this is somewhat humorous to read, the sad thing is that from everything I’ve heard that Wayne LaPierre is paranoid and let Brewer be his “Rasputin” in an effort to save his own skin.

The ones to suffer from all of this will not be Wayne, Bill Brewer, or AckMac. It will be the ordinary NRA members who gave their hard-earned monies to the organization in order to protect their God-given right to self-defense as enshrined in the Second Amendment. Just when it is needed most, the NRA’s attention is on its series of lawsuits against AckMac and its bankruptcy stunt.

You can read the whole complaint here.