The embattled National Rifle Association reportedly shook up its legal team Thursday and severed ties with its longtime outside counsel in an escalation of a revolt that’s upended the gun rights lobby.
According to the New York Times, the NRA dismissed its longtime outside counsel, Charles Cooper, while a second outside counsel, Michael Volkov, and a top in-house lawyer quit.
The departures come after an internal inquiry showed the lawyers were entangled in an effort to undermine NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, the Times reported.
The NRA is also considering halting payments to its former second in command, Christopher Cox, who left in June but is still on the payroll, the Times reported, citing unnamed sources.
The departures come as LaPierre has been working with another NRA outside counsel, William Brewer, to fend off allegations of financial mismanagement, the Washington Post reported.
In a statement, LaPierre said the lawyers who left were part of a broad effort to push him out that he claims was led by the NRA’s former president, Oliver North, in coordination with the group’s ex-ad agency, the Post reported.
“It disturbs me that the NRA’s supposed ‘friends’ — a man I personally recruited to be president of the NRA, our trusted ad agency of four decades, a couple of our attorneys, and a chief lieutenant — would engage in this obviously premeditated extortion scheme to harm our association,” LaPierre said, the Post reported.
The unraveling coincides with the departures of half a dozen board members in recent weeks.
“Donald Trump and Wayne LaPierre are made for each other,” Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, the gun control group started by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., told the Times.
He called them “mirror images” engulfed in “allegations of corruption and mismanagement.”
But Todd Rathner, a member of the NRA board, told the Times: “Wayne is leading and proving that he has the political juice to get the job done.”
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