Editorial: The NRA vs. reality: The gun lobby cannot hide from cold facts
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This isn’t a sentence we get to type often, but here goes: The truth is catching up to the National Rifle Association and its boss Wayne LaPierre as they attempt to evade accountability yet again.
The welcome development came a week ago when, in an exceedingly rare move, an official with the U.S. Department of Justice Trustee’s office — the federal agency charged with keeping the nation’s bankruptcy courts on the level — sided in court with New York Attorney General Tish James and creditors looking to dismiss the NRA’s bankruptcy filing. Lisa Lambert, a lawyer with the office, agreed with James’s central claims, stating that the record “clearly and convincingly establishes” that the association’s leadership has been negligent, and that the filing is a transparent dodge sidestep consequences for self-dealing and other egregious violations of trust valiantly pressed here in state courts.
Rather than face the music in New York, where the organization has been chartered since the beginning, LaPierre would rather wash the NRA’s hands of its past, which is why he went and sought the okay from federal court in Dallas to reorganize and set up shop anew in Texas. It’s the rough equivalent of a felon seeking to evade prosecution by changing his name and address.
James rightly blew the whistle on the brazen move, resulting in a two-week trial that ended last week, with the NRA insisting that it’s already righted its ship, and the AG’s team ably presenting ample evidence, from a $360,000 consulting contract for LaPierre’s former chief financial officer to a big-bucks retainer for his personal travel agent, that it has not.
This week, weighing those piles of evidence and the stunning rebuke from the trustee’s office, Judge Harlin Hale will rule whether to let the NRA proceed with its shenanigans or force it to defend its many misdeeds. He must do the latter — and the rest of us must hope that someday, someone pries the whole truth from the NRA’s cold, dead hands.
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