Who Paid for the N.R.A.’s ‘Special Projects’ Trip to Russia?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/nra-russia.html

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In January, as congressional investigators were examining a trip to Russia by a delegation of its board members and supporters, the National Rifle Association issued a statement of disavowal.

“Wayne was opposed to the trip,” the gun group’s outside counsel, William A. Brewer III, said, referring to Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s chief executive. To bolster its argument, the N.R.A. pointed out that it was repaid last year for expenses associated with the trip.

But that payment, emails and interviews show, was actually the final step in a series of previously unreported transactions that appear to undercut the N.R.A.’s claims about the trip.

The Moscow visit, in December 2015, was hosted by Maria Butina, a Russian who pleaded guilty last year to taking part in a covert effort to infiltrate American conservative groups.

In the months after the trip, facing unpaid bills of more than $21,000, N.R.A. officials had one prominent member of the delegation, Pete Brownell, cover costs by writing one check to an N.R.A. account, and another to a company co-owned by Ms. Butina. But in June 2016, the N.R.A. electronically transferred the combined amount back to Mr. Brownell, essentially reimbursing his reimbursement, after asking him to submit an invoice for “special projects.”

In addition, emails reviewed by The New York Times suggest that Mr. LaPierre authorized the trip, including one from May 2016 in which a top aide wrote that “Wayne approved" invoices related to the delegation’s travel.

The trip, which was ostensibly an effort to foster closer ties between gun-rights supporters, has become a central episode in the congressional inquiries. The delegation included both a former and a future president of the organization. And Ms. Butina arranged for high-level access and meetings with Russian officials such as Dmitry Rogozin, then a deputy prime minister who was under sanction by the Obama administration for his role in the Russian occupation of Crimea; and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

The N.R.A. has said it did not agree to pay all of the expenses related to the trip, but emails show that there was confusion long afterward about who was supposed to pay for what. Mr. Brownell, then the first vice president of the N.R.A.’s board, was a late addition to the trip and was asked to help sort out the bills.

“There has been a lot of re-engineering” of “who is paying what on this Russian nra trip,” Mr. Brownell wrote in a December 2015 email to one of Mr. LaPierre’s aides. “I have no knowledge how this trip was set up or what the understanding was.”

The N.R.A. would not say why the circuitous 2016 payments had been structured that way, but more than half of the money was used to reimburse the travel costs of one member of the delegation, David A. Clarke, Jr., who was then sheriff of Milwaukee. His public ethics form listed Mr. Brownell, not the N.R.A., as having financed a Russia trip.

The payments have troubled some in the N.R.A.’s orbit, and led to contentious debates within the organization earlier this year. Mr. Brewer argued in a series of internal presentations that those involved had exposed themselves to wire fraud charges, a contention that other lawyers advising the organization found to be meritless. But some worry that the payments could pose problems for the N.R.A. in an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office is examining whether the organization violated laws relating to its tax-exempt status and has taken a particular interest in how donor funds are spent.

Information about the payments has also been turned over in congressional inquiries.

“These financial transactions were examined during the course of the investigation and are of ongoing interest,” said an aide to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, who has been leading an investigation into the N.R.A. The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is ongoing.

Mr. Brownell paid the N.R.A. again for the Russia trip in mid-February 2018 — the only reimbursement the group has previously disclosed, and one that it did not refund. That payment was for $17,000. It was not clear why that amount was chosen, and the N.R.A. did not offer an explanation.

But the rationale for the payment was fairly clear. By then, the group faced a budding public relations crisis. News reports had begun to raise questions about the N.R.A.’s ties to Russia, and days earlier, on Feb. 2, Mr. Wyden had sent the N.R.A. a letter seeking information. A note appended to Mr. Brownell’s check by one of his lawyers seemed aimed at broader consumption, noting that the payment was for “the unauthorized trip to Russia.”

Asked this week about the 2016 payments, Mr. Brewer, the outside counsel, said, “Wayne had no awareness of the transactions in question,” adding that “it is a matter of public record that he opposed the trip.” He declined to discuss the legal advice he had provided.

The 2016 transactions were overseen by Millie Hallow, an aide to Mr. LaPierre, according to emails. In one February 2016 email, Ms. Butina sent an invoice directly to Ms. Hallow for “Hosting of NRA leadership group for six days in Moscow,” according to the document, and thanked her “for your invaluable advice these past few months.”

In a May 26 email that year, Ms. Hallow told other N.R.A. officials that an invoice related to the trip submitted by Mr. Brownell’s company, the firearms retailer Brownells, had been authorized: “Wayne approved these special projects involving Outreach that Brownell has done,” she wrote.

On Thursday, Josh Powell, the N.R.A.’s chief of staff, said in a statement that “in order to facilitate the transfer of funds to Brownell, Millie falsely stated that Wayne approved of certain expenses when he had not. In fact, Millie apologized to me (and others) later for the misrepresentation.”

But Ms. Hallow is one of Ms. LaPierre’s closest aides, and raising questions about her credibility comes at an inopportune time. The N.R.A. is relying on her word in its battle with Oliver North, the organization’s former president, who stepped down this year shortly after making a call to Ms. Hallow that N.R.A. officials described as threatening toward Mr. LaPierre. Ms. Hallow also once pleaded guilty to a felony related to the theft of money from an arts agency she ran in Washington.

One of the most pressing questions surrounding the N.R.A. and its Russian ties has yet to be answered: whether there are significant financial connections. The N.R.A. said last year that since 2015 it had brought in roughly $2,500 “from people associated with Russian addresses” or Russian nationals living in the United States, and no evidence has emerged to suggest that more has come in directly or indirectly from Russian interests.

The Russia questions are unlikely to subside soon — Mr. Wyden’s investigative report on the N.R.A. and its Russia connections is expected to be released in the coming days.