Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA

by Tim Mak

Overview

A blistering exposé of the National Rifle Association, revealing its people, power, corruption, and ongoing downfall, from acclaimed NPR investigative reporter Tim Mak

“Tenacious, careful and incisive.”—Jonathan Swan • “Deeply and meticulously reported, colorfully and precisely written.”—Olivia Nuzzi • “Nonstop revelations are told with gripping detail and intimate insider knowledge.”—David Frum • “Fantastic.”—Chris Hayes

The NRA once compelled respect—even fear—from Republicans and Democrats alike. Once a grassroots club dedicated to gun safety, the NRA ballooned into a powerful lobbyist organization that maintained an iron hold on gun legislation in America. This influential nonprofit raised millions in small fees from members across the country, which funded hidden, lavish lifestyles of designer suits, private jets and yachts, martini lunches and Champagne dinners—while the group manipulated legislators and flirted with a Russian spy.
 
Yet in 2012, the NRA’s grip on Washington began to loosen in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Facing nationwide outrage, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre gave a speech claiming the solution was not fewer guns, but more guns, in schools. The group’s rhetoric only escalated from there, a misstep that sparked a backlash and invited the scrutiny of the government.
 
Unveiled here for the first time ever are surprising, revelatory details spotlighting decades of poor leadership and mismanagement by LaPierre; the NRA’s long association with marketing firm Ackerman-McQueen; NRA executives’ 2015 trip to Moscow, a by-invitation affair packed with meetings with Russian government officials, diplomats, and oligarchs seeking influence in American politics; as well as the power struggle between LaPierre and former NRA president Oliver North that fractured the organization. 
 
Misfire is the result of a four-year investigation by journalist Tim Mak, who scoured thousands of pages of never-before-publicized documents and cultivated dozens of confidential sources inside the NRA's orbit to paint a vivid picture of the gun group's rampant corruption and slow decline, marking a sea change in the battle over gun rights and control in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524746452
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/02/2021
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	420,978
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Tim Mak is National Public Radio's Washington Investigative Correspondent, and was one of NPR's lead reporters on the Mueller investigation and the first Trump impeachment. While reporting for the Daily Beast in 2017, he broke the story of Russian agent Maria Butina and her connection with the NRA. He can often be heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and the NPR Politics Podcast.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

 

Wayne

 

"Where the fuck is Wayne?"

 

It's a question that everyone close to Wayne LaPierre has asked from time to time. The answer is usually "I have no idea," followed by another series of profanities. The bookish NRA executive has a habit of disappearing in times of stress. But this question, this Saturday in the late summer of 1998, was different. It was his wedding day, and he was missing at the worst time. Wayne had gotten cold feet.

 

It was not a problem that could be papered over. Guests had already arrived at the Basilica of Saint Mary in Alexandria, Virginia's Old Town district. With the ceremony delayed, word began to spread throughout the crowd as to the reason why. The priest was prepared to mediate, if only the groom could be found. The bride, Susan, began to cry. The guests, numbering between 100 and 150, casually congregated outside in the warm late-summer air as organ music played over and over.

 

His closest friends began to fan out to search for him. Wayne had made no secret of his reluctance to get married in the days leading up to the ceremony. He had been married once before and had been separated from his ex-wife for years, but the divorce had been finalized only four months prior to this date.

 

Wayne's conduct in the time leading up to his wedding with Susan was, to any outside observer, absolutely humiliating. He scurried around, according to a witness, nervously polling anyone he ran into about whether he should go through with it. He asked his staff. He asked a secretary. He asked his friends. To anyone watching, it was clear he was looking for a way out of a wedding that he had felt pressured into by the bride. According to two close friends of Wayne, Susan had sent out the invitations for the wedding without telling him.

 

When Wayne was finally found on the day of the wedding, he said he didn't want to get married. The best man honored that by placing a single, crisp hundred-dollar bill on the dashboard of his car, a Jeep Wagoneer. With the engine running, Wayne's best man told him they could leave whenever he wanted. The best man later recounted to friends that he offered to drive Wayne away.

 

But Wayne was ultimately persuaded not to leave by Susan and the priest. Wayne was a remarkably weak-willed man, friends said, and could be counted on to yield to any demand if it was issued strenuously and loudly enough. This in itself might not have been so consequential if he hadn't risen to head what would become a $400-million-a-year firearm advocacy organization.

 

The guests began to stream back into the church. But it is impossible to hide the disappearance of a groom. Wayne's reluctance had delayed the wedding for close to an hour, and the reputation-conscious Susan would not forget this humiliating blow to her social standing-a concept she valued above all else. Her social standing was largely determined by the people sitting in the pews of that Catholic church. Many of Wayne's invitees were linked to the NRA in some form: Angus McQueen, the gruff head of the NRA's symbiotic advertising and public relations agency, Ackerman McQueen, was there. As was Tony Makris, Wayne's longtime business associate who called him a "brother." Oliver North, the Iran-Contra figure and future NRA president, was present. So were Millie Hallow, Wayne's personal assistant; Woody Phillips, the accused (though never charged) embezzler whom Wayne chose to be the NRA's chief financial officer; and Chuck Cooper, who would be the NRA's outside counsel for decades.

 

Even though he went through the motions during the ceremony, Wayne's nervousness and anxiety seemed to betray his true feelings. As she said her vows, Susan stared deeply and lovingly at her groom, but Wayne looked like he was about to faint. His eyes darted everywhere but to his bride: the audience, the priest, the ceiling, the floor. For the guests who looked on, it was extremely uncomfortable to witness, and not the kind of wedding they would forget.

 

Wayne's wedding is emblematic of his character. By many accounts, he is a man driven by fear and anxiety over all other forces, and his reaction to these emotions is usually to flee and hide. He had told friends that he didn't want to get married, but if this was the case, he nonetheless permitted the ceremony to go forward because he didn't want to cause trouble. Despite being the head of one of the most controversial organizations in America, he is deeply unsettled by personal conflict. This has been his fundamental flaw, and why he has been prey to so many con men over his decades-long tenure at the National Rifle Association. His friends could only look on in horror as those around him manipulated this simple weakness. His best man did not attend the wedding reception that night.

 

 

z

 

Wayne Robert LaPierre Jr. was born in 1949 in Schenectady, New York, but was raised in Roanoke, Virginia, in a firearm-free household. Raised Catholic, he graduated from Patrick Henry High School and attended the Roman Catholic Siena College, his father's alma mater.

 

While Vietnam War protests raged on college campuses, Wayne landed an internship with a New York state legislator. He managed to avoid the military draft while in college through a student deferment. He also later received a medical deferment-the same categorization as Donald Trump's-although the exact reason for this is unknown.

 

Wayne is an awkward egghead type, and it's not hard to imagine that with a few different twists of fate he would have ended up as a college professor teaching political science, rather than rising to become one of the nation's most controversial gun rights advocates. He had a soft spot for children and was employed as a substitute special education teacher in Troy, New York, with poor and developmentally disabled students. In 1973 he started a Ph.D. at Boston University but dropped out to help a Democrat run for the Virginia state legislature; a few years later he received an M.A. in political science from Boston College.

 

His professorial demeanor is not well suited for leadership of a massive, powerful organization. He is easily bullied and doesn't have the ability to make firm commitments, or to keep his promises once he makes them. Perhaps the best description came from former NRA board member Wayne Anthony Ross, who said that Wayne had the "backbone of a chocolate eclair."

 

He has no core and has a reputation for never being able to say no, especially to the wrong people, NRA insiders said. He disdains the stresses of controversy-internal intrigue most of all-but by being unable to grow a spine and turn down bad ideas, he ends up causing a substantial portion of the drama inside the NRA described in this book. NRA insiders used to joke that even if you came into Wayne's office with a red nose and big rubber shoes, you could get him to approve an expenditure if you pressured him enough. In other words: if you could get in to see him, you could eventually get him to write a check. Wayne could never deliver critical news, and if it was absolutely necessary to do so, he would designate someone else to do it-then panic later over whether it was the right decision.

 

If he had not been a professor or an academic, there's a chance that his life could have led him to another passion: confections. He's expressed numerous times to friends that he would like nothing more than to retire and open up an ice-cream shop in New England. His heart was never really that much into gun rights advocacy. In 1995, four years into his role as the top leader at the NRA, he told the Los Angeles Times that the job was all-consuming, that he didn't want to live this sort of life, and that he couldn't wait to move to northern Maine to open up his ice-cream shop. "Your life goes by," he mused. A quarter century later, he still holds the top role at the NRA, but ice cream remains in the background: when the New York attorney general's office probed his expenses, investigators found that Wayne spent substantial amounts of money sending friends Graeter's ice cream for Christmas, all on his nonprofit organization's dime.

 

Originally a Democrat, like a substantial portion of the National Rifle Association's longest-serving staff, Wayne was active with the Roanoke Democrats in college but declined a job offer from the office of Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Instead, he got a job at the NRA. The NRA building at the time was right across the street from the Democratic National Committee, and so he walked right in and ran into some staff that he knew from his work in politics. They were looking for a Democratic lobbyist, so he signed on right away.

 

Wayne is a clumsy, meek, spastic man with a weak handshake, those who know him personally say. When he first started at the NRA, he was known for his wrinkled suits and detached gaze. Yet he was repeatedly promoted despite displaying no sense of professional ambition or charisma. After starting as a state-level lobbyist in 1978, he was promoted to head the state-level lobbying department in 1979 and then to direct the NRA's federal lobbying the next year.

 

It was like pulling teeth to get him to take a promotion, said John Aquilino, the NRA staffer who helped hire Wayne in the 1970s. "I've talked people out of murder, and this was harder," Aquilino said, recalling when he approached Wayne to head up the NRA's federal lobbying department. "Gee, I don't know," Wayne replied. It was only through reverse psychology that Aquilino was able to get him to agree: after Aquilino told Wayne not to worry about the promotion after all, Wayne was a lot more interested in the role.

 

His contemporaries describe him as a skilled lobbyist and strategic thinker, if a bit odd and absentminded. While a lobbyist on Capitol Hill in the 1980s, he earned the nickname "Shoes" because he wore black Florsheim wingtips, unpolished and noticeably scuffed. He paid no attention to his clothing, wearing nondescript, rumpled pin-striped suits. But he managed to cajole lawmakers, and he became good at it. This was true even though he didn't partake in the Washington, D.C., hobby of drinking alcohol, aside from an occasional sip of champagne. Wayne would sip on soft drinks and buy members of Congress liquor-and was never ostracized for not taking part.

 

The stories of Wayne's inattentive personality are plentiful. He had a habit of utterly disassociating from the world around him and was allergic to practicality. In the 1990s, Aquilino ran into his former subordinate at Reagan National Airport, near D.C. Wayne was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands, totally overwhelmed. He had lost his itinerary, or he had been insufficiently informed about what it was, and had no idea what he was doing or how to fix the problem.

 

During that same decade, LaPierre slept in and missed a golf outing with former vice president Dan Quayle-a pretty important meeting for an NRA lobbyist. Wayne's excuse for missing it was not very good: he wasn't aware of the makeup of the golf foursome. "Quayle gets out there and he starts walking around the cart . . . going, 'Where's Wayne?'" LaPierre recalled later in an interview.

 

In the early 1990s, Wayne's house was burglarized. The local police called NRA headquarters to inform him. Wayne wasn't there at the time, so his staff took a message. When he arrived at the office, he was told to urgently call the police about the burglary at his home. "That's funny," Wayne said. "I was just there. I didn't notice a thing."

 

One joke told in NRA circles was that you would only be able to make eye contact with him if you lay on the floor while the two of you were talking. In social settings, the same scatterbrained Wayne would emerge. He would almost begin to automate his interactions in crowds: "Hi. I'm Wayne LaPierre," he repeatedly told guests at one function, and continued this even when he came across his longtime associate Chris Cox, the head of the NRA's lobbying arm. They had known each other since the '90s. "Hi. I'm Wayne LaPierre!" Wayne said. Cox responded in consternation, "Wayne, what are you talking about?"

 

Wayne also has an obsessive personality when it comes to documenting the world around him. He doesn't take notes on any electronic devices but instead always carries four colored Sharpies and yellow legal pads. He scribbles constantly during meetings, using a color-coded system that only he can decipher. The terrible handwriting further obfuscates the meaning of the notes. "It was when he was in conversation and thinking," a Wayne associate said. "I think for him, writing like that . . . that helped him think." The practice grew so cumbersome that Wayne would carry a roller duffle bag, the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, specifically to carry the pads, and pull out different pads depending on the topic.

 

Wayne has a history of hoarding everything: he would attend political events and leave with a stack of notes, agenda items, and brochures. When Wayne was the head of the NRA's federal lobbying team, Aquilino once emerged into the office's lobby to find a long line of pads and congressional publications lining the floor from the elevator, through the lobby, to the curb. Wayne had rushed to a car and had been oblivious to the fact that he was leaving a trail of documents behind him.

 

Wayne's note-taking habit led to voluminous stacks of yellow legal pads. He once had an apartment in Arlington, Virginia, that appeared to be largely for his collection: filled with boxes, legal pads, and writing utensils-a collection of all the things he took out of his office and dumped there. It wasn't clear whether he ever lived there, or it was just a place to accumulate mail and papers.

 

He no longer has that apartment. His garage at his home in Virginia was once stuffed with these pads, filling up to fifteen bins, often organized by year. In a room near his NRA HQ office, yet more yellow pads were stacked up between his desk and the executive bathroom, in a pile approximately four and a half feet tall and six feet wide-yet he had the uncanny ability to find precisely what he was looking for in those messy stacks. The various government investigators looking into his conduct may have been stymied by this cumbersome system.

 

"It's kind of my own shorthand. It's hard to read if you're not me, but I can read it," Wayne once said when questioned by lawyers. "I used to keep them in my house. . . . They're all with the attorneys now."

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Wayne 7

Chapter 2 "Just a Volunteer" 18

Chapter 3 The NRA's Fiefdoms 27

Chapter 4 The NRA Before Sandy Hook 43

Chapter 5 The NRA's Lobbying Animal House 54

Chapter 6 Sandy Hook 57

Chapter 7 Manchin-Toomey Collapses 67

Chapter 8 The Rise of Everytown 82

Chapter 9 Wayne's Posse and NRA HQ 93

Chapter 10 Maria Butina and the Roots of NRA-Russia 111

Chapter 11 The Obama Years 123

Chapter 12 Operation Second Pozner 137

Chapter 13 Ackerman McQueen Power Grows 149

Chapter 14 Moscow Bound 162

Chapter 15 Butina's Back Channel 174

Chapter 16 The NRA and the 2016 Campaign 180

Chapter 17 Butina's Downfall 190

Chapter 18 The Start of the End 200

Chapter 19 Whistleblowers and an Angry Mother 212

Chapter 20 Brewer Replaces Ackerman McQueen 220

Chapter 21 The Colonel 230

Chapter 22 Wednesday, April 24, 2019 251

Chapter 23 The Weekend from Hell 262

Chapter 24 Rebellion 271

Chapter 25 Lawfare 280

Chapter 26 The AG Strikes 288

Chapter 27 Bankruptcy 291

Acknowledgments 299

Notes 301

Index 363

About the Author 372

Editorial Reviews

11/22/2021

NPR reporter Mak debuts with a disturbing look into the recent history of the National Rifle Association. He notes that the organization was founded in 1871 to promote marksmanship and supported the regulation of firearms until 1977, when activists staged a revolt at the group’s annual meeting and replaced the existing leadership “with a much more aggressive regime focused on fighting gun control laws.” Soon thereafter, the NRA began working with the advertising firm Ackerman McQueen, a partnership that helped turn the gun lobby into “an identity, a way of living, a secular religion,” but eventually led to internal discord over allegations of corruption by CEO Wayne LaPierre and a 2020 lawsuit filed by New York state attorney general Letitia James seeking to dissolve the organization for misappropriating funds. Mak presents a particularly damaging portrait of LaPierre, “a remarkably weak-willed man” whose tone-deaf responses to school shootings brought intense scrutiny of the NRA. He also reveals that the group provided a lifeline to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape scandal, and that Russian agents have used the NRA to gain access to Republican political circles. The book’s convoluted timeline is somewhat difficult to follow, but Mak’s access to NRA insiders impresses. Readers will be astonished by the levels of corruption and incompetence this sweeping investigation uncovers. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Fantastic… [Misfire] is really great work. People should pick up the book.”—Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC’s All In

“A bullseye from Tim Mak… a sprawling tale of the greed, incompetence and narcissism which has dominated the National Rifle Association.”—The Guardian

“Revealing and lively… Mak’s account of the NRA’s gothic decline and fall is both crisply narrated and deeply reported.”—The New Republic

“The book lays bare the rot and turmoil that has unfolded during LaPierre’s nearly 30-year tenure at the helm of the NRA, based on interviews with employees, leaked documents and depositions.”—The Times

“From the reporter who broke the story of the NRA-Russia connection, Misfire is a searching expose of the corruption and crookedness that pushed the NRA itself into ruin. The nonstop revelations are told with gripping detail and intimate insider knowledge.”—David Frum, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and New York Times bestselling author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

“To tell the story of the NRA is to reveal how a political power has defined, for much of the last century, how we live and how we die in America. Misfire is among the most important works documenting this era in American history, a story of ideology and unbelievable scandal, corruption, and rot. Tim Mak has given us the definitive account of the NRA—deeply and meticulously reported, colorfully and precisely written.”—Olivia Nuzzi, Washington Correspondent at New York magazine

“Tim Mak has written the definitive book on the fall of the NRA. It’s fun, packed with insider reporting, and authoritative. Unbiased but unforgiving, this book is one of the most enjoyable reads imaginable for a topic you don’t normally associate with page-turners: the confluence of political lobbying, financial mismanagement, and organizational corruption. You will devour this book.”—Matt Fuller, Politics Editor at The Daily Beast

“Tim Mak has been at the forefront of the NRA story for years now. He has broken numerous exclusive stories that provide insight into the group's infighting and the impact on their finances. His reporting is invaluable to anyone from any political perspective who simply wants to know the truth about what's going on inside the National Rifle Association.”—Stephen Gutowski, former Staff Writer at the Washington Free Beacon and Founder of The Reload

“Tim Mak has written the defining story of America's most powerful lobbying organization. It is investigative journalism at its best. His reporting is tenacious, careful and incisive. Read this book.”—Jonathan Swan, National Political Correspondent at Axios

“Mak’s access to NRA insiders impresses. Readers will be astonished by the levels of corruption and incompetence this sweeping investigation uncovers.”—Publishers Weekly

“The inside story of upheavals within the once-secretive gun rights organization… Captures the shrill absurdity of this soap opera, managing a colorful rogues’ gallery, including the since-convicted [Maria] Butina, Oliver North, and various wealthy, unsavory insiders competing for influence over the ‘remarkably weak-willed’ LaPierre.”—Kirkus

From the Publisher

06/01/2021

National Public Radio's Washington investigative correspondent, Mak spent four years digging through previously unpublicized documents and cultivating dozens of contacts within the National Rifle Association to show how a grassroots club focused on gun safety became a corrupt and powerful lobbyist organization blocking efforts to regulate guns in America. He also gives evidence that its power is beginning to slide.

Library Journal

2021-11-02
Muckraking exposé of the National Rifle Association, revealed as sleazy and insular in its zero-sum political gamesmanship.

With measured glee, Mak, Washington investigative reporter for NPR, unearths the inside story of upheavals within the once-secretive gun rights organization, arguing that its corrosive effect on American politics (particularly during the Trump administration) is matched only by internal cynicism, greed, and incompetence. These qualities are embodied by unflattering portraits of Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and his Machiavellian wife, Susan, both of whom “had for years tapped the NRA for personal gain.” The author notes that LaPierre’s craven responses to spiraling crises, including connections to Russian election interference, led many former allies to cooperate with investigators and his reporting. LaPierre oversaw the organization’s movement from a traditional focus on hunting and firearm safety to immersion in the far-right culture wars, abetted by lobbying and legal firms that developed covert, lucrative relationships with LaPierre’s circle. This led the organization to go all-in with support for Trump’s 2016 campaign; his surprise victory positioned the NRA at the center of power. “Yet in the fall of 2019,” writes Mak, “everything was falling apart.” The NRA had spent political capital sabotaging bipartisan legislation supporting background checks after the Sandy Hook massacre. Then the story emerged of Maria Butina, a Russian agent who developed cozy relationships with key NRA figures. “The NRA repeatedly opened doors for Butina,” writes the author. By the time a New Yorker article “blew the lid off the corruption inside the gun organization,” the NRA was in open conflict, with multiple lawsuits going back and forth and LaPierre’s control threatened. Mak captures the shrill absurdity of this soap opera, managing a colorful rogues’ gallery, including the since-convicted Butina, Oliver North, and various wealthy, unsavory insiders competing for influence over the “remarkably weak-willed” LaPierre.

Valuable documentation of the malfeasance underlying the NRA’s outsized influence on American life.

Kirkus Reviews