NRA Doom Spiral Continues as First Vice President says Trump Has “Lost Faith” in the NRA

Years of Scandal Have Cost NRA $1.3 Billion in Revenue 

Last night, the New York Times reported that NRA first vice president Bill Bachenberg sent a letter to board members detailing Donald Trump’s dwindling respect for the group as they continue to spiral amid financial woes and Doug Hamlin’s disastrous start as Executive Vice President. The letter was cosigned by NRA second vice president Mark Vaughan.

“If you’re too scandal-plagued for Donald Trump, you know you have a serious problem,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “This year alone, the NRA has lost a major legal battle, its longtime leader, and — with Trump’s abandonment of the organization — whatever political relevance it had left.”

Key points:

• “I can say for a fact that President Trump and his most inner circle have lost faith in the NRA,” Bachenberg wrote last week in his letter, which was co-signed by Mark Vaughan, the NRA board’s second vice president. 

• Bachenberg told fellow board members that during this year’s election, Trump was upset that the NRA had not committed to doing more to help him win.

• Bachenberg wrote that during a conversation at the group’s annual conference in May, Trump expressed incredulity that the NRA was paying tens of millions of dollars a year to a lawyer, William A. Brewer III, whose political donations have favored Democrats over the years.

• The turmoil has cost the group roughly $1.3 billion in revenue over six years, Mr. Bachenberg and Mr. Vaughan estimated in their letter.

• The Times also reported on the NRA’s most recent tax filing, showing an annual financial deficit of $33 million, and quoted a charities expert who called the group’s financial situation “tenuous” and opining that “the annual losses for the last two years are not sustainable.”

• “The letter is the latest evidence of the NRA’s diminished political status. Once among the most influential lobbying forces in Washington, it has been reeling after years of scandal and corruption allegations.” 

• “The group is divided between loyalists to its former chief executive Wayne LaPierre and another wing, which includes Mr. Bachenberg, that wants to break from Mr. LaPierre’s controversial legacy.”

The full story can be read here.