Anna Massoglia over at the Center for Responsive Politics has quite the deep dive investigation into the NRA’s money situation, and all of the crazy charity money they may have mismanaged into political lobbying. The Second Amendment, tax-exempt, nonprofit has been dealing with an internal civil war as well as ongoing litigation and state investigations into the management of their resources and the high costs incurred by leadership like Wayne LaPierre. Massoglia, going through the Second Amendment patriots’ 2018 tax returns, points that this past year was the first time that the NRA disclosed foreign fundraising efforts.
But like all things connected to the NRA, Donald Trump, and foreign funding, transparency is a far way off. “While the NRA’s disclosed spending on foreign fundraising makes up only a small slice of the operation’s total 2018 outlay, the actual amount of money brought in by that fundraising is unknown.” Massoglia explains that the NRA has been receiving foreign money for some time, specifically from gun manufacturers based abroad, but the fact that they are now spending money on those efforts shows in part how much more they have seemingly become reliant on outside help. It would explain some of the dangerous and dubious judgment they have shown in creating liaisons with hostile foreign assets like Russia’s Maria Butina.
But it is the hundreds of millions of dollars the organization has moved around from its charities, roughly $90 million of which has gone into political action, and many millions of which ended up supporting the pockets of its leadership, that has come under the scrutiny of New York State’s attorneys the past year. According to Massoglia, the NRA “drained over $31 MILLION from its charitable nonprofits last year through financial transactions like reimbursements, grants & loans while covering millions of dollars more in expenses for its PAC—without any record of reimbursement from the political arm.” And that has been a relatively consistent number, as the gun-loving association has pulled around $320 million out of its charities over the last 10 years.
And this past year, with the NRA’s falling out and legal troubles with its former PR firm Ackerman McQueen coincides with a jump in how much money the NRA has gotten “reimbursed,” from its foundations.
NRA Foundation payments to the NRA’s main lobbying arm labeled as reimbursements jumped to more than $17.4 million in 2018, the largest in at least a decade and nearly three times the $6 million reported in reimbursements the prior year.
It’s this inflation of funds that has led to news media investigations into how that money is being spent by the NRA, including random $70,000 checks written on behalf of the NRA to opaque Delaware LLCs, that seemed to fall into allegations that NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre was looking to get his nonprofit to fork out $6 million for a Dallas, Texas, waterfront mansion.