Astonishing Testimony Of Steve Hart, NRA Board Attorney

Steve Hart was officially attorney to the NRA board of directors. As soon as he advised directors in a way that LaPierre and Brewer didn’t like, he found out he was considered an attorney to NRA, incidentally assigned to the board, because LaPierre was able to terminate him, and the board dared not make a peep. His deposition transcript in NRA’s suit against Ackerman McQueen is worth reading.

The bombshell is this. NRA had planned, long before all the scandals arose, to re-incorporate in a state other than NY. (Ex-directors have told us those proposals go back to the 1990s; it’s obvious that NRA being a NY corporation, and subject to NY legal control despite its HQ being in DC/Virginia, was a bad idea.) The major barrier to legally relocating was knowledge that that would trigger an audit by the NY Attorney General, which would expose NRA leadership’s financial scandals.

P. 13: “I mean, this, there has been a historical effort to reincorporate the NRA outside of New York for — New York is an unreliable partner and they have the ability to dissolve us under some conditions. So, we had begun a process, long before the Brewer Firm was involved, working with Morgan Lewis (a big law firm), to start working on a process so we could re-incorporate in Delaware, Texas, Tennessee, no decision was ever made on that.

Q. What connection did that have with any of the lawsuits that the NRA filed more recently?

A. We would have proceeded with a detailed review, audit of all of the major contractors, and Ackerman was on that list because they were the largest at the time.”

(P. 217: This was in March 2017 (Over two years before the scandals were went public).)

P. 52: “Q. That is a great story. You said that in recent years there have been some efforts to try to transfer, I think you said that there were efforts to try to transfer the (c)(4) registration out of New York to some other location?

A. That would trigger an audit by the New York AG. So, in preparation of that, we would have had to gone through sort of the self-correction process that has been going on more publicly now.

Q. What self-correction process? Could you describe?

A. We would have to go through and see if there were problems that would have been payments to vendors, or payments to executives that would have been inappropriate, and you self-correct, you try to do it quietly and get reimbursements of whatever is appropriate.

Q. Is that what was going on in NRA in 2018 and 2019?

A. Before that. I mean, it started before that.”

P. 54: NRA was hoping to reincorporate in Delaware, Tennessee, or Texas. But it had to clean house financially first, because trying to reincorporate would cause the NY Attorney General to conduct an automatic audit.

P. 200: “You know, keep in mind the context here which is under Wayne’s instruction, we are getting ready to reincorporate, and we know it is going to take some time to review all of these vendor contracts and discover the problems that might exist that need to be self-corrected. Under New York law if you self-correct before the investigation you have some cover, not for all actions, but for, I would say, most of them.

So, this was a preliminary discussion between Bill (Brewer) and I to kind of figure out the parameters of how we are going to move forward with more of a full scale audit than what had been conducted by the staffer. . . .”

P. 255: “Q. Then he, Tony says, “How are you doing? ” And you respond, “Personally pretty good.” And then you say, “Professionally what is happening under Brewer’s mind control games will destroy the NRA.”

A. Fairly accurate.

Q. What did you mean by that?

A. Well, what I have said already, which is, you need to resolve these things privately. We were — hindsight will show that instead of resolving it quietly, we created a road map for the New York AG. I think that is a highly destructive path.”

P. 299-300: “At this stage (after Brewer led NRA to sue Ackerman), you know, I have pretty much concluded that things are going to get out of control once you sue your public relations firm of 40 years. You know it is not going to go well. And it is going to bring information to light that is going to lead to a New York AG investigation with 100 percent certainty. So, I was pretty unhappy. And I was expressing my unhappiness to a lot of people and I realize, you know, that that was counter to Bill’s advice and I wasn’t going to last much longer, because Wayne wasn’t talking to anybody but Bill.”

P. 383: “Q. Okay. Did you believe that Bill Brewer was actively destroying the NRA from the inside?

MR. COX: Objection to form.

THE WITNESS: That has been reported in the press.

Q. BY MR. DICKIESON: Did you believe that?

A. You know, somebody leaked one of my e-mails to the New York Times. And it says he is either Manchurian, I didn’t leak it by the way, but it says that I think Bill’s either a
Manchurian Candidate or a moron.”

Hart’s testimony (and he was at the core of the events he is describing) shows how insane NRA’s legal “strategy” has been. The “official story” has been that NRA leadership was tipped off about a NY Attorney General probe, started a “self correction,” and then discovered the scandals. That’s BS. NRA wanted to relocate legally from NY and that that would trigger an audit, tasked Hart with quietly conducting the investigation and self-correction, and already knew it had financial problems.

Knowing that, NRA leadership got into a legal battle with Ackerman McQueen, which had evidence of almost all of the scandals, before NRA could clean up its house and make ready to legally escape NY.

Other testimony:

P. 343: Josh Powell frequently said that Brewer’s hold on Wayne (LaPierre) was that he “was going to keep Wayne out of jail.”