Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Trump jokes 'I didn't need a gun' to stop 'coup'" video.
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The National Rifle Association appears to have shot itself in the foot.
A massive new report by The Trace, in conjunction with The New Yorker, alleges that the gun lobbying group has willfully obscured where its money goes, permitted multiple conflicts of interest and engaged in dubious payout arrangements, all while crying out to its members for more donations.
Reporter Mike Spies viewed internal documents and state filings for his story. His investigation found that hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned off to top NRA executives and vendors, and that public relations firm Ackerman McQueen, which has worked with the gun group since the 1970s, is essentially running the ship. Tax filings for 2017 reveal that the NRA paid Ackerman McQueen more than $40 million that year.
The NRA and Ackerman McQueen have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra operative, who now serves as the NRA’s president, is paid roughly $1 million a year through Ackerman, according to two NRA sources. According to interviews and to documents obtained — federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications — a small group of NRA executives, contractors, and vendors has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements.
Memos created by a senior NRA employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.”
Marc Owens, former head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, told The Trace that the “litany of red flags is just extraordinary.”
“The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen,” Owens said. “There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain vendors and people in control. Those facts, if confirmed, could lead to the revocation of the NRA’s tax-exempt status.” And without its tax-exempt status, the Trace report suggested, the NRA would “likely not survive.”
This latest hit can be added to a long list of problems for the NRA. In 2017, the group reported a loss of $55 million in income as membership plummeted. More recently, a HuffPost investigation found that an NRA official was in contact with a prominent Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist in an attempt to cast doubt on the facts of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 people dead. The NRA declined to say whether it fired that official.
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Bovine One
It's not so dumb at all. its actually a plausible reality, especially when you take the time and do some research, and anyone who does will eventually ask themselves why was the NRA so cozy with Russian Oligarchs and officials with close ties to Putin.
In December 2015, Russian spy, Maria Butina’s Russian gun-rights organization sponsored an NRA delegation to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials ( aka, Russian spies) including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.
The attendees to Moscow included David Keene, Trump campaign surrogate Sheriff David Clarke, president and CEO of the Outdoor Channel Jim Liberatore, soon-to-be NRA president Peter Brownell and NRA donors Jim Gregory, Arnold Goldschlager and Hilary Goldschlager.
Alexander Torshin — a Russian politician and longtime associate of Butina who has since come under U.S. sanctions — played a key role in the trip, and Russia’s decade-long operation of infiltrating American conservative groups. A conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV who has done business in Russia claims that he first introduced David Keene to Torshin in 2011 while Keene was NRA president. Keene and Torshin quickly forged an alliance based on mutual interests.
In 2013, Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. Paul Erickson, who became Butina’s asset, accompanied Keene to the 2013 conference, where he reportedly first crossed paths with Butina.
Senate intelligence and finance committees have requested documents on the NRA’s connections to Russia, including documents related to whether the NRA took Russian money and the 2015 delegation. After spending a record $54.4 million to put Trump in the White House and support Republicans in Congress, the NRA’s membership dues dropped precipitously the following year.
The NRA’s lawyers initially lied about the Russian money, they eventually admitted to receiving “a total of approximately $2,512.85 from people associated Russian addresses” and “about $525” from two Russian nationals living in the United States in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The NRA also acknowledged “membership dues” from Alexander Torshin, who has been a non-voting life member of the NRA since 2012 — the year after he first connected with Keene. Butina's partner, GOP operative Paul Erickson, has lawyered up in light of reports that he too may be targeted by federal prosecutors as a covert Russian agent. Signs that Butina has reached a plea deal follows a September filing by federal prosecutors indicating that Butina offered to provide information to the the feds about Erickson’s illegal activities.
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