We were starting to create a detailed timeline of events, and something jumped out at us.
April and May, 2018, saw a number of events happen, events indicating that the high and mighty were foreseeing a dangerous future, one that they wanted to be protected against, financially.
On May 5, 2018, Wayne LaPierre got a “golden parachute” retirement package for himself, providing for payment of millions over ten years, should he ever leave his post as Executive Vice President. On the same day, treasurer Woody Phillips got his own “golden parachute” signed, providing for hundreds of thousands as a consultant should he be fired. Sometime the previous month LaPierre gave the powerful director Marion Hammer a ten year consulting contract that would have netted her something over $2-4 million total.
That same month, May, 2018, NRA president Peter Brownell resigned. Then in September, actor Tom Selleck resigned as director, claiming it was consuming too much of his time (our sources say he showed up for one meeting a year, the one after the annual meeting, so that wasn’t the real reason.)
A lot events occurring in April-May 2018. This is a full year before the scandals became news, and the new NY Attorney General announced an investigation, both of which came in April, 2019. What might have been brewing back then, that the high and mighty would suddenly want “golden parachutes,” or if unpaid, to get out of the way?
One possibility is this. Director Tom King testified that he was tipped off by the then-New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, that there were people in his office investigating NRA. King couldn’t give an exact date. Schneiderman’s term ended abruptly with his May, 2018 resignation in the wake of a scandal, so it must have been before that. That fits perfectly into the timetable.
King gave no details on the call. For it to scare the high and mighty it must have been more than “someone is going to investigate the NRA.” It was more likely something like, “my people have already begun investigating, and they’ve found some serious, serious fraud, enough that it’s too late for me to stop them. You’ve been caught.” That would be the type of phone call that would make the high and mighty to suddenly create golden parachute contracts or resign and get clear.
NRA in Danger 
In the first NRA BoD meeting that I attended, I had the opportunity to speak with one of directors who had been quoted in a couple papers defending LaPierre. We had common ground in the Army, so after the small talk I started mentioning the blatant grievances I had with LaPierre’s spending (the suits, jet and at the time the mansion story had just broke). He looked at me and said, “It’s big news now but Brewer came to us and told us that this would all happen in 2018. Everything he said would happen has happened.”
Looking at the resignations that happened afterwards, my money is on William Brewer III being a pied piper.
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