Donald Trump Jr. and the NRA: A Match Made in Court

Last week, Business Insider reported that Donald Trump Jr. may be angling for the top job at the NRA. In response, Everytown put together a blog post outlining the many similarities between Don Jr. and Wayne LaPierre, his would-be predecessor. Some highlights below: 

• Exotic travel: Wayne LaPierre is notorious for billing around $300,000 in personal travel expenses to the NRA. Don Jr. is no stranger to letting others foot the bill for his luxury travel — for example, taxpayers paid more than $76,000 in security costs for Don Jr. to hunt Mongolian sheep in 2019. 
• Being named a defendant in the investigation of a charity: Just as Wayne LaPierre is a defendant in the State of New York’s suit against the NRA for allegedly violating nonprofit law, Don Jr. was a defendant in the case against the Donald J. Trump Foundation for misuse of charitable funds. 
• Running an organization to the brink of financial ruin: Under Wayne LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA has run a deficit for four straight years, while Don Jr. and a business partner reportedly racked up lawsuits and more than a dozen tax liens in a real estate venture. 
• Photo ops with foreign agents: Wayne LaPierre and Don Jr. have experience when it comes to Russian agents — both have been photographed with Maria Butina, the Russian national and lifetime NRA member who was convicted of “conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior notification to the Attorney General.”

Whether the NRA is led by Donald Trump Jr. or anyone else, they will likely continue to pursue an extreme ‘guns everywhere’ agenda into 2021 and beyond. A detailed history of the NRA’s finances and litigation can be found on NRAWatch.org.