NRA infighting spills into public as Wayne LaPierre reportedly says he's being 'extorted' by Oliver North
The Wall Street Journal is out with a bombshell report about the already flailing National Rifle Association, just hours after President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence addressed the group's annual members conference.
"Longtime National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre [photo, right] has told the group’s board he is being extorted and pressured to resign by the organization’s president, Oliver North, over allegations of financial improprieties," The Wall Street Journal reports Friday evening.
The Journal calls it, "an extraordinary battle roiling one of the nation’s most powerful nonprofit political groups."
"In a letter sent to NRA board members late Thursday afternoon, Mr. LaPierre, the group’s CEO and executive vice president, said he refused the demand."
The New York Times adds that "Mr. North asked Mr. LaPierre to resign on Wednesday, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. He said he had also created a committee to review allegations of financial improprieties that threaten the N.R.A.’s status as a nonprofit organization."
The NRA has been beset by legal and financial challenges.
Just minutes before it kicked off its annual conference on Friday, a judge sentenced Russian agent Maria Butina to the maximum that federal prosecutors had asked for. She was convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the Kremlin, and had ties to NRA officials.
On Thursday it was alleged in a lawsuit that the NRA had donated to the Trump campaign and others 9,259 times the legal limit, amounting to tens of millions of dollars in alleged illegal contributions.
And reports claim membership is dropping and the organization is having major financial difficulties.
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