Willes Lee Is Balking On Supplemental Deposition

Now that the New York Attorney General’s Office is requesting a supplemental deposition from Willes Lee due to his social media posts, he is balking. This past Friday, September 29th, Sarah Rogers of Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, filed a “Memorandum of Law in Opposition” to the state’s motion to compel further testimony from Lee. She included a number of exhibits with this filing including an affidavit from Lee. I should note that Rogers represents the NRA including Lee as a member of the Board of Directors.

The Memorandum of Law in Opposition asserts two main issues. First, it is asserted that the NYAG has failed to show “unusual and unanticipated circumstances” within the meaning of the rules of the court. Second, Rogers says that the NYAG would not suffer “substantial prejudice” if they did not have the supplemental deposition from Lee. Rather, she says it is the NRA and its attorneys who would suffer as it impairs their pretrial preparation especially with intervening holidays. I presume she means Thanksgiving, Hannukah, and Christmas but not Halloween.

The majority of the Memorandum is devoted to the first issue. They assert that Lee’s postings are nothing unusual and that he has not suffered any retaliation from the NRA’s leadership. Moreover, even if Lee’s posting provide somewhat contradictory or inconsistent information from his prior depositions, they say this is not grounds to allow a “post-note of issue” supplemental deposition. They then say differences of opinion within a 76-member board are not unusual and are par for the course. The NRA says that if the Attorney General’s Office wishes to question Lee about his postings, then do it during cross-examination at trial.

So while the arguments by the NRA’s attorneys in response to the motion of the Attorney General’s Office are on interpretations of law, I find the affidavit filed by Willes Lee to be of greater interest. He says he is an unpaid volunteer and that a supplemental deposition would place “an unreasonable burden on my personal and professional schedule.” I’m not sure whether a deposition legally could be done by Zoom or WebEx but will note this court has already had hearings using such electronic means.

I found Paragraph Five of the affidavit to be most interesting.

Moreover, contrary to the NYAG’s motion, my recent social media posts are not “unusual.” In fact, ever since first joining the NRA Board, I have raised questions and posed challenges to the NRA’s leadership, and urged other directors to do the same in the service of the NRA’s members. And since I began posting my “challenges” in a public forum, not a single member of the NRA leadership has tried to silence me.

Given the assertions of Lee that he raised questions and challenges to the leadership as well as urged others to do so were at odds with what I understood, I sought out a number of former NRA directors who served on the Board during this period for their impressions. I sent them a copy of the affidavit and asked if the assertions in Paragraph Five correlated with what they saw and heard. The responses I got cast serious doubt on Lee’s assertions.

One director said, ” I still can’t understand how anybody has taken his self-righteous reversal seriously.  He WAS the cabal. He enabled the CABAL.”

Another director who I asked if Lee had done as he said he did responded, “Nope. I only saw him as a cheerleader for the establishment.” A third director said, “If he ever did anything in the way of resistance to their “plans” it was not in my sight.”

Finally, there is this from a fourth director, “Willis never spoke out at any time on any issue ever! Even during the contentious meeting where the BOD had to ratify the bankruptcy filing after the fact, he sat at the head table like a stone.” He went on to add, “Willis was complicit in his silence and bears as much responsibility in the wrong doing as Charles Cotton because he was on the SLC and did not oppose anything that had occurred. It is rich, that after he was removed as an officer, suddenly he found so much wrong doing.”

While the NRA certainly doesn’t wish that Lee be deposed again, I would wager house money that many of the “Friends of Wayne” would cheerfully throw him under the bus after his spate of social media posts. They would agree with the former directors that Lee never challenged the leadership nor encouraged others to do so. I do understand why Lee doesn’t wish to be re-deposed. His social media rants are not under oath unlike his prior depositions. He could be accused of being a hypocrite but perjury would remain off the table. A supplemental deposition under oath might change things along those lines.