Wayne's Board - Thoughts from the NRA Trial Part 6
It is well past time for the NRA Board of Directors to step up and remove EVP LaPierre, and the current Officers (Meadows, Cotton, Lee).
The NRA Board is meeting today and tomorrow (May 1 and 2, 2021). This is a pivotal meeting. From the depositions and testimony at the trial and the number of NRA Board members that were watching or listening to the Webex of the testimony in the trial, the Board can no longer claim ignorance or misinformation as to the level of corruption and mismanagement by EVP LaPierre, current and past members of NRA senior management and the current NRA Officers (Meadows, Cotton and Lee). The EVP and Officers not only enabled those activities but actively hid those activities from the full Board. Most recently, the Special Litigation Committee and the Chief Restructuring Officer agreement continue to enable LaPierre and hide activities from the full Board.
The NRA in Danger Blog posted a devastating summary of the last day of the trial. The key points from that blog are quoted here: “Just the last day of testimony saw Wayne LaPierre claiming that he’d begun cleaning everything up in 2017, but forced to admit that he’d been given an incredibly lucrative “golden parachute” agreement in mid-2018 (it would have given him many millions had the board ever stopped electing him) that was signed by an outgoing president and Carolyn Meadows, now NRA president and head of the board’s Special Litigation Committee. The signing of the contract implicates NRA’s current board leadership, and also LaPierre himself, and shows his supposed 2017 reforms are a sham. He himself is free to loot despite them. On the same day those board officers signed another golden parachute for Woody Phillips, the NRA treasurer who had to “take the Fifth” dozens of times in his testimony. Others who got such agreements, LaPierre testified he had no idea of the contracts, showing that even if he were honest, in practice others are free to loot NRA at will without his being able to discover it. The board itself is implicated: all this went on undetected on its watch, and when detected by the media the board chose to endorse the corruption; its current president even signed off on some of it! Its previous president, who tried to investigate things, the board chose to purge.”
How did it get so bad? “Buz” Mills testified that the NRA Nominating committee gets its marching orders from management (LaPierre). Management picks the nominees. It sounds like they are nominated from floor but directors are picked by management for their willingness to follow EVP Lapierre’s lead or have celebrity status to help with publicity and fundraising, not for their ability or experience to exercise fiduciary responsibility for a governing a complex organization. This process, combined with a lack of term limits and until last year, not even board and committee meeting attendance requirements, ensures that LaPierre gets to call the shots with superficial oversight.
Even the election for the 76th seat, as John Richardson of the Only Guns and Money Blog reported on the 76th director election from 2020, LaPierre gets Paul Payne to mobilize the California Members Council to ensure that his handpicked candidate gets enough votes to be elected (full disclosure, I came in second in that election) so that there are no Directors challenging the status quo on the board, or as Director and member of the Nominating Committee, Marion Hammer calls them “the enemy within.”
Board members Esther Schneider, Timothy Knight, Sean Maloney, Duane Liptak, and Col. Robert Brown asked the tough questions that are the responsibility of a Board member. For doing the job that the members elected them to do, and challenging the “Gang of 4” (EVP LaPierre and Board Officers Meadows, Cotton and Lee) they were stonewalled on information requests and were all removed from their committees. All but Col. Brown have resigned from the Board. Col. Brown was not re-nominated for election this year.
Directors Phillip Journey and Rocky Marshall have been asking the tough questions since their election this year. Director Buz Mills is supporting them. Lapierre’s defenders continue their stonewalling and ostracizing. Only this current legal action has broken through the stonewall so that NRA members and Directors can see what is and has been going on.
Can you name a Board of Directors of a successful organization that actively works to eliminate robust debate and competitive ideas, that suppresses the Tough Asked Questions (TAQ’s)? I can’t. It is well past time for the Board of Directors to step up and remove EVP LaPierre, President Meadows, 1st VP Cotton and 2nd VP Lee and bring in a slate of Officers that will faithfully execute their fiduciary responsibilities in services to the members of the NRA whether as a New York or a Texas corporation.
I’ve been a vocal critic of NRA EVP Wayne Lapierre for his leadership style, and the Board leadership in not properly exercising their fiduciary responsibilities by submitting petitions calling for EVP Lapierre’s resignation as well as the resignation of the Board Officers and members of the executive, audit and finance committees at the 2019 and 2020 NRA Annual meetings. If they have not been removed by the 2021 meeting in Houston, I will do so again.
The 2021 Board election is where the members can have a say and change the culture of the NRA Board and get long overdue new leadership. The only director up for re-election that deserves support is Owen “Buz” Mills as he is publicly supporting Judge Journey’s efforts to reform the NRA. The remaining board candidates deserve no vote.
I ask that you please write me in on the ballot for the 2021 board of directors election when you get you ballot in the next couple of weeks. It will be out in the June/July issue of your NRA magazine.
Write In’s MUST have the information as depicted below. Thank you for your support.
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