NRA’s attorneys are still fighting to keep the Frenkel Report, from 2007, secret. Having lost before the Special Master, lost a second time before the Special Master, and lost before the judge, they have now filed an appeal. The only question is whether they’ve spent tens, or hundreds, of thousands of members’ dollars trying to keep it secret.
So what can be in that report that is so terrifying 15 years after it was written? We know a few things that may give clues. We know that NRA commissioned it, and that the author was an attorney specializing in defending white-collar criminal cases. It likely concerns someone highly-connected at headquarters, and who either is still there or was there recently; otherwise why worry about keeping a report secret. Two former NRA directors recall that, around 2007, every director received an anonymous letter detailing how Millie Hallow, LaPierre’s closest assistant (and a convicted embezzler) was using NRA money to buy expensive clothing and shoes for herself.
An educated guess would be that, whatever she was doing, it was big enough and caused serious enough concerns that HQ hired a white-collar criminal defense expert to tell them what to do about it.
Another educated guess would be, whatever he told them to do, they didn’t. Otherwise, they’d wouldn’t be fighting so hard to keep the report secret.
It’s also possible that his inquiry turned up other serious problems that the leadership doesn’t want to see the light of day, especially since it’d show the corruption dates back at least 15 years (some of our sources say the corruption dates back into the 1990s, making it more like 25 years).
NRA in Danger 
There have long been problems within the Association, and the seeds of much of the eventual corruption were planted all the way back in the 1980s, but things didn’t really get corrupt until the late ’90s, when fundraising soared and the Association was suddenly flush with cash. All of that money flowing through an outdated control structure resulted in more and more of it sliding into the pockets of those tasked with taking care of it. That’s when the organization shifted from a rights and shooting organization that engaged in fundraising to advance its objectives, into a fundraising organization that engaged in rights and shooting to keep the money flowing.
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