NT
TEXT
A travel consultant who testified in the National Rifle Association’s bankruptcy case said Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre instructed her to omit certain flight stops from invoices she sent to the gun-rights group for Mr. LaPierre’s private-jet travel, a disclosure NRA attorneys are challenging to keep out of the court record.

The travel consultant testified, in a videotape deposition played in bankruptcy court Thursday, that certain invoices she sent the NRA omitted stops in Nebraska and the Bahamas, at Mr. LaPierre’s request. Some of Mr. LaPierre’s relatives who were frequent travelers on NRA-paid private jets live in Nebraska.

The NRA chief previously testified he frequently traveled to the Bahamas to stay for free on a 108-foot yacht in the Bahamas with family members, provided by an NRA vendor, for security reasons.

The testimony that alleged Mr. LaPierre sought to hide certain private-jet stops from the NRA’s own accountants could be evidence he knew what he was doing was wrong and was deliberately concealing it, legal specialists said.

“If true, this seems like a clear documented instance of knowing misuse of NRA assets and concealing that abuse,” said Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington nonprofit-law attorney.

The testimony came on the fourth day of high-stakes hearings in the NRA’s chapter 11 bankruptcy case in Dallas. The gun-rights group filed for bankruptcy protection in January, in part to counter fraud and expense-abuse allegations by New York General Letitia James, who is seeking to have the NRA dissolved.

Mr. LaPierre, in earlier testimony Thursday on his second day on the witness stand, was grilled by a lawyer for the New York attorney general on his management practices.

Mr. LaPierre admitted he didn’t know the group’s longtime chief financial officer was given a $360,000-per year consulting contract after he retired and didn’t know the NRA travel consultant for years had tacked an extra 10% fee onto millions of dollars in travel she arranged for the NRA. The consultant also was paid up to $26,000 a month, testimony showed.

The New York attorney general’s office has oversight for the NRA, which was founded in that state in 1871 and is officially domiciled there. New York officials have asked for the bankruptcy case to be dismissed or for the appointment of a trustee to oversee the NRA, citing allegations of dishonesty and gross mismanagement.



Mr. LaPierre said Thursday he repaid the NRA $300,000 after learning he received excess benefits in the form of certain travel expenses. Mr. LaPierre said he didn’t realize the air travel would be considered an excess benefit but when the problem was brought to his attention, he immediately sought to repay the NRA.

“I’ve self-corrected,” Mr. LaPierre said.

Lawyers for the NRA will have an opportunity later to question Mr. LaPierre.

The NRA and the New York attorney general’s office also battled in court Thursday over the admissibility of some of the travel agent’s testimony. Judge Harlin Hale, who is overseeing the chapter 11 case, for the moment didn’t admit into evidence the invoices the travel consultant testified about.

In addition, lawyers for the NRA said Thursday they had questions about the admissibility of a related document—a spreadsheet of hundreds of NRA-paid private-jet flights from 2015 to 2019—the New York attorney general’s office filed with the court but also hasn’t yet put into evidence.

The spreadsheet, which contains some duplicate entries, shows that NRA-chartered jets stopped dozens of times in Nebraska and the Bahamas, generally with Mr. LaPierre’s relatives listed on the manifest.

When the NRA’s travel consultant billed the NRA for those flights, almost all of the stops in the Bahamas and Nebraska were omitted from her invoices while other stops on the trips generally were included, the spreadsheet shows.

Mr. LaPierre said Thursday he supports a request, filed Wednesday, by the NRA to hire a chief restructuring officer to guide management through the chapter 11 case. The proposed restructuring officer, Louis Robichaux IV is a senior managing director at Ankura Consulting Group LLC.

Mr. Robichaux’s retention is meant to help assure NRA creditors and other third parties involved in the bankruptcy case that an independent fiduciary is overseeing the reorganization and the group’s financial operations, the NRA said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nra-ce...929414?mod=searchresults_pos2&page=1