A couple of updates here - the NRA Intervention, rescheduling the NRAAM, and the status of the most recent board election, and the petition process for the 2022 election.
The Judge denied our motion to intervene. The court filing is here.
We still have 3 avenues open to having Members views heard in the NY AG’s actions.
We have 30 days to appeal the Judge’s order (under discussion)
We could refile the Intervention with a sitting director(s). There was not enough time to get the sitting director added to our intervention and the Judge could only rule on what was in front of him.
The Judge said that the members’ cause needed to be heard, and he would consider other ways of letting them participate, but it is unclear how.
While this is going on, The NY AG’s filed a complaint that should be an eye-opener to the NRA Board and NRA members https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=dUXFofQkWi/QYGimiwIE3Q==
The indispensable NRA In Danger Blog has a great summary of the 187-page filing https://nraindanger.wordpress.com/2021/08/17/attorney-general-files-amended-complaint/ “The original complaint was brutal, this is beyond that. Staff and some directors are looting the corporation for millions or tens of millions. The Audit Committee (Charles Cotton, chair and soon to be NRA president) ignore their duties and rubber-stamp the looting. The board is rubber-stamping everything, even handing LaPierre loot that he didn’t ask for. LaPierre diverts NRA resources into influencing board elections. Tax forms have been falsified. When the treasurer refused to sign the IRS Form 990, LaPierre fired him. He refused to sign because he asked for documentation, it was refused, and he asked other officials to at least vouch for its contents, and they refused. The supposed reforms are not even a good sham, the looting continues and the board could care less so long as it gets its dinner and drinks. Here is a skim of the amended complaint.”
One note from the NRA In Danger Summary - Paragraph 729 is not asking for a receiver to be appointed, but for the Court “to enter an appropriate order to secure the proper administration” of NRA funds. The Intervention will ask for a receiver when Intervention is granted.
On top of this, the NRA sent an email to the Directors announcing that the Annual Meeting and the Board meeting where officers will be elected will be on Saturday, October 2 in Charlotte. No other details provided as yet. The short notice, combined with the fact that this directly conflicts with the annual USCCA meeting seems designed to keep attendance low so that Wayne can have a majority of his loyalists in the audience.
This meeting is where the Elections committee will share its report and we can finally get a sense of where the write-in campaigns for Rocky Marshall and I stand. If one of us gets to succeed Alan West (whose resignation has yet to be announced to the NRA Board or membership), it will be a short tenure as the term will only go to April 2022 encompassing at most 2 board meetings.
I was recommended to the Nominating Committee as a board candidate. I submitted my paperwork by the deadline. The Nominating Committee meets later this month. I expect that this year will go like last year with my nomination being declined and that I’ll have to go the petition route.
On the 2022 petition process, it’ll likely be a joke. No signatures can be collected before the end of the annual meeting on October 2. For the 2021 election, the petitions had to be submitted to the NRA by mid-November. That’ll leave less than 60 days to collect signatures. In 2019 we had 6 months to collect signatures. Even in 2020, the Elections Committee notified us in August that we could start collecting signatures. No such waiver this year. I’m still waiting for the petition packet with the required number of signatures needed.
I’ll need all the help I can get to gather signatures of NRA voting members to get on the ballot. 3rd try is the charm.
It's difficult to retain hope upon reading the amended filing. Perhaps the Judge will be shown that the whole administrative/Governing body was corrupted so hopelessly that the membership was incapable of setting the ship right. And maybe he will address the rights and desires of the membership as a result. There are far too many members that remain clueless about the whole thing and blindly retain trust in the leadership. That does not help. The Judge could take from that a darker perspective about the whole thing. I have a few FB friends who's livelihood depends on their relationship to the NRA. Gun writers, Firearms instructors, Lawyers, Staff, are either stunningly quiet or still support WLP and his cabal of crooks. This seems to be a reality in America now. Scared or unprincipled personalities refusing to speak out against corruption has become the real pandemic. Only Hickok 45 stands out as principled in that he quit the NRA sponsorship. Others ran for the hills instead of standing and fighting.
I'm doubtful, at this point, that much of anything will happen to Wayne and cronies -- including extracting reimbursement from them for association assets taken or squandered.