New audio tapes have emerged that show how the NRA agreed to hide certain luxury expenses for their outgoing president – and these new tapes could be the final nail in the coffin for the group. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: New audio tapes have emerged that show that the NRA agreed to hide certain luxury expenses for their outgoing president. And these new tapes could be the final nail in the coffin for that group. Interesting story, again, this is ProPublica that did this story. Of course, they’ve never liked this guy. But lay this story out for us, would you?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This story goes all the way back to 2009 where they uncovered this audio of a meeting where the organization was trying to figure out, hey, we got this guy Wayne LaPierre, he’s been running the group for decades. He likes to spend money. He likes to go on these lavish vacations. He likes his private jets. He likes these luxury resorts. But we’re a nonprofit and there are rules that say we can’t do this. So they came up on this audio call with the brilliant idea, they’ve got this PR group, what was it, Ackerman?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Ackerman McQueen. And they said, okay, so the PR group, that’s an outside company, they’re gonna get these American Express cards, the Platinum American Express, and they’re gonna be the holders of those accounts. We then use the cards. And this again is everything in a nutshell. We use these Amex cards, and they started passing out what they called the Ackerman Amex. They were handing them out to executives like crazy at the NRA.
Mike Papantonio: This is special account.
Farron Cousins: Right. And so what happens is Ackerman pays the bill that has the itemized expenses, private jets, luxury resorts, fancy meals. And then the NRA just pays PR expenses on the Amex.
Mike Papantonio: But I want to tell you something. We’ve seen this in a lot of cases besides this.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, big pharmaceuticals, Wall Street. It’s just a scam. They’re all doing it. They’re all doing it. And he got caught.
Farron Cousins: He did. You know, this is a good Icarus story. Right. His greed went on for so long that it just increased and it increased and it increased along with the hubris. And eventually you come crashing down because you’re gonna slip up every now and then, you’re gonna screw things over. And look, they’re facing a pretty big trial that actually started just a few days ago in New York.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. If he had another prosecutor, I’d feel better about it.
Farron Cousins: But LaPierre, even NRA members have been sick of this guy forever. He’s doing nothing but just running an organization to put money in his own pockets. He’s not actually doing anything to help the members of the NRA. I mean, the members of the NRA, if you look at the polls, they’re normal people. They’re not.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they pay a lot of money into it. We’re talking about tons of, tons of money coming in here. And so this idea of, well, let’s have this special account that our donors don’t really know about. That if we do an audit, it’s really not gonna show up as a ridiculous expense like Ritz Carltons and Jets and million dollar parties, that kinda stuff. It’s not gonna show up. So let’s not worry about it.
Farron Cousins: And the big thing too is it’s not just that he was pulling the wool over the eyes of the donors. It’s that because this is a nonprofit organization, you are legally not allowed to do this.
Mike Papantonio: You can’t do that. Right. Exactly. See this with hospitals a lot, by the way. Nonprofit hospitals.
