by According to posts by court watchers, the jury in the NRA’s New York trial have returned with a verdict. The jurors reportedly are coming down to the court room.
From ABC News:
After five days of deliberations, a jury in New York on Friday held the National Rifle Association liable for financial mismanagement and found that Wayne LaPierre, the group’s former CEO, corruptly ran the nation’s most prominent gun rights group.
The jury determined that LaPierre’s violation of his duties cost the NRA $5,400,000, though he already repaid roughly $1.5 million to the organization.
LaPierre, staring forward with his hands clasped in his lap, sat in the first row of the gallery while the jury read the verdict.
I will be adding to this post as more info becomes available.
UPDATE I: More from Erik Uebelacker on Twitter.
Here's specifically what they ruled, as it relates to LaPierre. They said he cost the NRA $5.4 million but already repaid more than $1 million. pic.twitter.com/VUEO1iPS6c
— Erik Uebelacker (@Uebey) February 23, 2024
UPDATE II: It looks like Woody Phillips is on the hook for $2 million.
From Rachel Scharf of Law360:
VERDICT: Somewhat mixed, but crux is NRA is liable for almost everything, LaPierre must repay $4.4M, and Phillips must repay $2M.
— Rachel Scharf (@rscharf_) February 23, 2024
UPDATE III: I am getting mixed messages regarding John Frazer. According to Scharf, the jury did not ban him unlike Wayne LaPierre. However, another report reports they found Frazer acted “inappropriately” but did not cause financial harm.
The AP by way of The Hour is reporting that “NRA omitted or misrepresented information in its tax filings and violated New York law by failing to adopt a whistleblower policy.” There is no word yet on whether they were found guilty of retaliation against the whistleblowers. (They were)
Reportedly, LaPierre plans to appeal according to his attorney Kent Correll.
UPDATE IV: Rachel Scharf gives a bit more clarity with these charts:
The trial will now move to the bench phase where Judge Joel Cohen will implement remedies. I tend to agree with NRA In Danger that a court-appointed monitor is almost certain. I do know that Rocky Marshall deliberately made that suggestion in his first-day testimony which caused quite some consternation among the lawyers.
Seems kind of low, after all these years of mismanagement and malfeasance; roughly $1/member. Like one of those comedicly weak class action claims where only the lawyers get paid and the remainder can barely cover the postage.
So now it comes down to who the monitor might be and his powers and what the judge does to the structure of the board and organization. I don’t have a good feeling about having a NY judge/politician making this decision.
Ideally, a reasonably sized board. It would be nice if the reformers were in charge and no leftist moles were included. It would be nice if the training division were left intact as that is a critical resource for gun owners. The ILA can be and in part, already is, replaced. The spin-offs from the SAF and the state associations affiliated with the NRA have stepped up and there needs to be more of that as the ILA will certainly be a target, given the leftist mythology about the “all powerful NRA.”. Business operations obviously needs reform and it is a question about how far down the rot goes. Whacking a few bosses may not do the job or it may. And there is the question about how far in the can the finances of the organization really are. Untangling this is going to be a major job. It is not just about how much WLP et al looted but how much of the revenue base has disappeared and how much have operations kept going with one-time money.
Having been a member for 70 years, I have been concerned about the misconduct and when Oliver North recognized the problems, and tried to do something about them, Wayne got Oliver fired. Where can I get a list of the Directors who voted for and against the firing ? I will not vote for anyone who either looked the other way or never questioned the problems.
The NRA is completely unreformable as long as Bill Brewer and his “team” are still involved.