Yesterday was a dark day in our country as a gunman brought vicious political violence back to the forefront by attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump. It’s an act without justification in a functioning republic such as our own. It makes me sad to see our country have to experience this sickness once again and to see news that the attacker took the lives of at least one attendee and seriously wounded several others.
There will be time to process what this means for our nation and for the election as facts come out and are verified over the next several days. For now, I just want to extend my prayers and condolences to former President Trump and the other victims of this depraved act.
In the meantime, I do have some thoughts for you on the final phase of the upcoming NRA civil corruption trial. New York Attorney General Letitia James (D.), who many NRA supporters distrust given her comments labeling the group a “terrorist organization” in 2018, filed a detailed plan for what she’d like the judge to do with the group in light of the jury verdict against it. I look at those details, which may ease some of the concerns surrounding what will happen to the gun-rights group.
Plus, NRA board member Phil Journey joins the podcast to explain his effort to intervene in the trial and offer the judge a third option. And Contributing Writer Jake Foglemen offers his view on what the lack of gun policy promises in the GOP platform means–though yesterday’s events carry the potential to scramble gun politics even further.
*Oh, and I wanted to note there has been a WordPress issue affecting a small number of membership renewals. I’m working with the company to resolve the bug, but I’m going to keep the accounts of those affected live for now. Please email me if you’ve been having any issues with your account lately so I can help you out.
Analysis: What the New York AG Wants for the NRA [Member Exclusive]
By Stephen Gutowski
The final phase of the National Rifle Association’s civil corruption trial begins on Monday, and the New York Attorney General has laid out the details of what she wants the judge to do with the group.
In a series of filings during the lead-up to the trial, AG Letitia James (D.) described the steps she hopes Judge Joel Cohen will take in response to the jury’s findings. In February, the jury in the case decided the NRA failed to safeguard its charitable assets or protect whistleblowers while former members of its leadership diverted millions of the group’s funds toward lavish personal expenses. Now, James wants those former leaders barred from returning to the group and a court-appointed monitor to oversee at least some of its functions.
The requests would keep former CEO Wayne LaPierre away from the NRA for life and use the combined millions owed to the group by him and former treasurer Wilson Phillips to fund the monitor. The monitor would have broad authority to audit the group’s finances but would also be limited in key ways, according to the AG’s filings.
“Tailored Third-Party Oversight, conducted by a person or entity nominated by the NRA and appointed by the Court, with input from [Office of the Attorney General], to work with the NRA’s new compliance personnel, oversee independent testing of the NRA’s internal controls and compliance program, and conduct a governance audit and make recommendations to the NRA and the Court,” the AG’s first filing said. “The oversight would be limited to certain ‘In-scope’ matters and carve-out oversight of mission activities of the NRA. It would easily be funded by earmarking specifically for this purpose part of the monetary awards imposed by the jury against LaPierre and Phillips.”
A second filing provided greater detail on how the oversight process would work and exactly how much access the court-appointed official would have. The AG proposed that the new official serve for three years after being nominated by the NRA and approved by the court. They would primarily be responsible for watching how the NRA spends its money, especially in areas that lead to the corruption central to the case—like related-party transactions and travel arrangements.
“This entails ensuring that the NRA implements and enforces its internal controls, policies, procedures and practices governing financial transactions and matters, including without limitation for purchasing, procurement, conflicts of interest and related party transactions, business ethics, expense reimbursements, travel expenses and gifts, gratuities and entertainment, are effective,” the second filing said. “This means that they are in place, compliant with governing law, communicated to staff, directors, vendors and NRA members, and consistently executed and enforced by the NRA’s management, and the NRA Board has knowledge of the content and operation and exercises reasonable oversight to ensure compliance.”
The filing also laid out what the overseer wouldn’t have authority over. It said the court-appointed official wouldn’t have a say over the “NRA’s Core Fundamental Mission Operations.” Those operations include the “political, legislative and advocacy activities of the NRAILA, including, without limitation, management of donor-restricted funds, the substance of programs comprising the NRA’s nonprofit mission,” as well as “mission-related (meaning advocacy) litigation.”
Perhaps most importantly, the official won’t have a say over “the subject matter and substantive content of marketing, donor, membership and fundraising activities” at the NRA. Nor will it have authority over the “maintenance of any member or donor lists, membership categories, donation histories, and information regarding members and potential members.”
However, the official will oversee “compliance with NRA’s internal financial controls in these areas, including, for example, travel expense and reimbursement, conflict of interest, related party and other finance and governance-related policies.”
While the official’s initial job will be to study how effective specific reforms could be rather than implement them, the thrust of what the AG wants to see is evident in the list of potential reforms. Those include several changes seemingly aimed at addressing long-time concerns of reformers.
For instance, the official would examine the feasibility of creating a secure online “portal for sharing information with Board members” so “all board members have timely access to the information necessary to carry out their fiduciary duties.” They would examine whether board committees should be elected by the board rather than appointed by the NRA’s president. They would also consider whether the NRA should implement “heightened protections for the chief compliance officer” to “insulate him from adverse actions so long as he performs his duties in good faith.”
The official will also try to determine if it would be best for the board to officially re-evaluate the CEO’s performance every year, “periodically” review its bylaws, and “prohibit the use of nondisclosure agreements in the resolution of disputes.”
The plan lays out several board reforms the official would consider recommending as well. Those include a “reduction of the size of the NRA’s 76-member Board,” “formal term limits” for directors, and electing “a majority of new directors who have not served on the Board in the last ten years.” They would also look into “requiring standards, reporting, and disclosure in meeting minutes of all executive sessions of the Board or any committees of the board.”
This is the first time since Judge Cohen tossed AG James’s request to outright dissolve the NRA over its former leaders’ corruption that we’ve gotten a detailed look at what might come of this prosecution. Of course, it will be up to Judge Cohen to decide if the AG’s latest request makes the most sense. The NRA has maintained its position that it dealt with the corruption years ago, and no further court action is needed or warranted. Then there’s NRA board member Phil Journey, who wants to intervene as a separate party from the group and the AG to give Judge Cohen a third way forward.
Judge Cohen will hear those arguments starting on Monday and likely make his decision by the end of the month.
Podcast: NRA Board Member Explains Attempt to Intervene in Group’s Corruption Trial [Member Early Access]
By Stephen Gutowski
This week, we’re turning our attention back to the National Rifle Association. Just as the nation’s largest gun-rights group heads back to a Manhattan courtroom for the final phase of its civil corruption trial, one of the leading reformers on its board has made a last-ditch effort to intervene.
Phil Journey joins the show to explain why he emailed Judge Joel Cohen seeking to join the trial separately from the NRA and the Attorney General’s office.
He argued that neither the NRA’s lawyers nor the AG truly represented him or the NRA’s membership. He said the judge should remove the Brewer firm from representing the group, and he should listen to what NRA members want over what the AG wants. Journey said he had been encouraged when candidates he backed won most of the leadership elections a few months back, but he grew disillusioned with how things have played out since then.
Journey admitted the intervention request is a long shot, but he felt it was still the best way forward. He accused new NRA President Bob Barr of withholding committee appointments to try and control reformers–something Barr and the NRA deny. He argued the best path forward is for him to be able to argue his own point of view in court.
You can listen to the show on your favorite podcasting app or by clicking here. Video of the episode is available on our YouTube channel. An auto-generated transcript is here. Reload Members get access on Sunday, as always. Everyone else can listen on Monday.
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Plus, Contributing writer Jake Fogleman and I discuss the GOP’s first new platform in 8 years dropping almost all of the party’s gun policy promises and what that means for the future of gun voters. We also discuss newly released NRA documents revealing the true extent of the group’s membership decline and the ongoing arguments surrounding its attempts to avoid punishment and further reform in the wake of the New York corruption verdict. Finally, we wrap up with a quick discussion of a new ruling striking down the gun ban for illegal immigrants, a gun rights challenge to New York’s body armor ban, and the advent of ammunition vending machines in grocery stores.
Analysis: What the New GOP Platform Says About Gun Politics [Member Exclusive]
By Jake Fogleman
The Republican Party stripped all of the gun-policy promises from its 2024 platform this week. Is that a sign that the party is turning away from gun voters?
In its first official platform in eight years, the GOP reduced its commitments to gun rights to just a single passing reference. In a preamble statement preceding any discussion of the party’s actual policy priorities, the document pledges that any Republican majority will defend “our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.” Further discussion of the Second Amendment, or any concrete gun policy ideas, appear nowhere else in the 16-page document published Monday.
Gun rights receiving just seven words in the GOP’s official platform came as a surprise to most onlookers, not only because guns have been such a critical Republican piety for many years but also because the party gave a much more full-throated embrace of them during its last presidential victory.
The GOP’s 2016 platform dedicated an entire section to the Second Amendment, explicitly listing pro-gun policies it supported and gun-control measures it opposed. That the Second Amendment received such short shrift comparatively in the new platform could signify that the party is softening its stance on the issue. However, it’s more likely that something else is going on.
Donald Trump, the party’s standard-bearer, has not shied away from cozying up to gun-rights proponents in his current campaign to retake the White House. He has already made multiple appearances at National Rifle Association (NRA) events, where he has directly courted gun voters by promising to undo all of President Biden’s gun control accomplishments and blocking any future legislative attempts.
While platforms are useful communication tools for informing voters where a party stands generally, they rarely mean much concretely in terms of political action. Policy outcomes under a given administration almost always hinge on the facts of the day rather than preordained platform planks. This is especially true in the age of Trump, where the GOP’s policy positions have increasingly been contingent on his whims–including gun policy.
The 2024 platform is no different in that sense. It reads more like a Donald Trump stump speech than a traditional party policy document, and multiple news outlets have reported that the former President personally authored and edited vast sections of the final product. So, while the lack of formal gun-rights promises in the adopted platform may appear like an institutional retreat from the issue, the changes are more cosmetic, and the practical impact on policy outcomes is effectively none for the time being.
What the removal of extensive pro-gun commitments does say, however, is that gun politics and their relative status in our current political culture is at a multi-year low point. At least, that’s how Trump and GOP leadership seem to perceive it.
The new platform was clearly crafted to attract (or at least not repel) moderates and swing voters in an attempt by the Trump campaign to help shore up their support in key swing states. It removed language endorsing a national abortion ban for the first time in 40 years, struck the party’s opposition to same-sex marriage, removed language on tackling the national debt, and pledged to leave intact Social Security and Medicare—all longtime GOP shibboleths the Trump campaign now appears to perceive as electoral weaknesses.
At the same time, the platform is by no means moderate throughout. On issues like immigration in particular, the new platform plants its flag much further right than recent GOP platforms, including in its pledge to “carry out the largest deportation program in American history” and to deploy both troops to the Southern border as well as the Navy to form a “Fentanyl blockade” around US waters.
That suggests Trump and the rest of the current GOP establishment view gun politics as a particular liability for them with swing voters and independents, akin to abortion restrictions and entitlement reform. That mirrors the thinking of President Biden and the Democratic Party in ways that should make gun-rights supporters uncomfortable.
The Biden campaign has already signaled to multiple national news outlets that it planned to use gun control as a winning issue for the President’s re-election bid among swing voters, particularly those in the suburbs. President Biden also spoke at Everytown’s national conference for the first time in his presidency earlier this year. Meanwhile, his campaign started running a gun-control ad in key swing states. His social media accounts have also been regularly posting support for new gun restrictions, including firearm and magazine bans.
Both parties now seem to agree, at least tacitly, that playing up gun rights is an electoral liability in ways that would have seemed alien to campaigns courting swing voters in past elections. If that holds, it’s an unsettling sign for the political prospects of gun owners. And it’s not the only one.
The gun-rights movement’s most politically influential interest group was smacked down in court earlier this year in a high-profile corruption case that has severely diminished its stature and financial capabilities. None of the Republican candidates who challenged Trump in the primary sought to challenge his bump stock ban or comments supporting new gun restrictions or even attempted to bolster their own pro-gun credentials.
Now, the GOP is so gun-shy that it didn’t even pay lip service to the top policy priorities of the gun-rights movement.
It remains to be seen if the party’s reticence is a one-cycle blip or a longer-term trend. Concrete gun policy shifts from prominent GOP figures remain unlikely in the near term. However, it is safe to say that the party feels more comfortable taking gun voters for granted than they have in a long time and that alone is remarkable.
That’s it for now.
I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Thanks,
Stephen Gutowski
Founder
The Reload
