by From what I can gather, the Frenkel Report was a confidential document prepared by an outside attorney for the NRA in approximately 2003. The attorney’s name was Jacob Frenkel. His specialty is conducting internal investigations and providing white collar criminal defense. The report in question concerned expenditures by Wayne LaPierre for travel as well as multi-million dollar payments to favored vendors. This report was provided to the Audit Committee and then laid dormant until recently.
The blog NRA In Danger has done great work in bringing out the testimony and legal wrangling over disclosure of this report. The NRA wants the document kept sealed contending that it is covered by attorney-client privilege while the New York AG’s office and the Special Master disagree.
Judge Joel Cohen agrees with the Special Master and the NYAG regarding the sealing of the document.
From NRA In Danger:
The ruling was that the NRA attorneys screwed up and waived the argument by not raising it earlier. “The NRA’s piecemeal approach to raising objections to producing this document is inefficient. and inappropriate. All objections to production should have been raised and litigated in connection with the prior motion. Those that were not argued are waived. The fact that the NRA purported to reserve the right to assert additional objections at a later date does not make it so.”
The court adds that the objection would have lost anyway. Attorney-client privilege is lost if the client shares the document with non-attorneys, and NRA shared it with its accountants. “In any event, even if the privilege objection is considered timely, it is unavailing. The Report was, by design, shared with a third party, namely PricewaterhouseCoopers. Any privilege that otherwise might have attached to this document was waived.”
Again, Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, have lost in court and the NRA has racked up even more legal bills.
More on the Frenkel Report can be found here and here. As NRA In Danger notes, whatever is in that 19 year report must be “really hot”. If I had to speculate and this is all it is, the report must be enough to at least bring criminal charges against Wayne along with potential liability to both the current President and 2nd VP of the NRA who have served on the Audit Committee.
Sadly the only real result will be to further destroy the NRA’s effectiveness. How nice would it be to have a President who, upon the request of someone suspecting nefarious behavior, would have just opened the books and said “there you go”.
The veteran’s organization that I belong to had to deal with an accusation of misappropriation by one of our members. We immediately sent our Treasurer and Sergeant at Arms to go through the books and released a full report about three months later showing that there was no misappropriation, just poor record keeping. The report was provided to the membership, the issue was settled and closed. A model for the way to operate.
Apparently, the corruption is of long-standing.
By the time the report was produced, Wayne and his cronies were in total charge. Anyone left from the Cincy Revolt on the Board was gone.
We are seeing more and more of this in my small area of MI. It makes one wonder just how a person can continue on with this BS with no remorse.
They don’t seem to have any sorrow at their crime, only at getting caught, just anger at being inconvienced. Like it is not their fault and your mistake, not theirs.
The young people getting caught invariable being caught are without fail guilty, but instead are celebrated as a hero, like Brittney Griner, the recently prisoner who is being swapped for her arms dealer criminal who is a well k known gun sales broker and who has a ton of arms and the ability to get his hands on large numbers of small arms in a short notice, with no trail.