Now that a New York judge has spared the NRA from an independent monitor, while barring former executive vice president Wayne LaPierre from holding a paid position with the group for the next decade, what happens with the internal efforts to institute reforms and regain the trust of members? 

On today's Bearing Arms' Cam & Co, The Reload's Stephen Gutowski joins the show to discuss the outcome of the NRA's latest trial in New York, the ongoing internal efforts to reform the organization, as well as Everytown's plans to spend $45 million electing anti-gun candidates in November. 

Judge Joel Cohen laid out a list of six specific reforms he'd like to see from the NRA, and instructed the organization and its attorneys to meet with New York Attorney General Letitia James to see if they can come to an agreement. Gutowski says it's still somewhat unclear whether these are merely suggestions from the judge, or if he'll order those changes be made if the two sides can't reach a decision on their own. 

At this point I'm a little unclear on how this is going to come out, and I think that's really going to matter a lot in how people view this case in the end. Some of this stuff he wants turned into a court order, like the NRA's Audit Committee put out a document listing some reforms that the committee thinks the NRA should make, and the judge wants to turn that into a court order, so that sounds like it would have teeth to it. The other five I'm not as clear on how it goes. It sounds like he wants them to negotiate a consent decree;  you saw that with the NRA Foundation case in D.C. They ended up settling with the D.C. Attorney General and agreeing to a certain number of reforms that the NRA is going to do. 

Gutowski says if all six of the suggested reforms are adopted by the NRA, reformers will get most of what they've wanted. I took a look at the transcript of Cohen's remarks, and it certainly sounds like the judge is willing to impose these reforms via court order if necessary. 

However, since this trial was really not focused on that and has focused almost entirely on the monitor remedy, I would like to give the parties an opportunity to discuss this, to consider it carefully, and any other ideas they might have for what I hope would be a consent order, but if not a consent order, their arguments back and forth on the various things that I’ve suggested or proposed or thought about. Ultimately, it will be up to me whether to order them and what to do, but I would like more precise guidance on the points that I’ve made.

One of Cohen's "recommendations" is that board members who were serving during the time period in question should not be allowed to serve on the audit committee going forward. In his comments in open court, Cohen made it clear that he believes there are still elements of the old regime in place that could hinder reforms in the future. 

And I will say, as someone who oversaw every second of the jury trial, I can state plainly that the NRA leadership’s spin, and specifically the testimony here of Mr. Cotton and Mr. Barr, that the NRA prevailed or was otherwise vindicated by the jury’s verdict is simply false and demonstrates a stunning lack of “accountability,” which is a word I saw and heard many times at trial, this week, and is supposed to be a hallmark of the new NRA. 

In my view, the record showed not only misconduct by individual officers and employees, but also failures by the board of directors and its committees to properly supervise the expenditure of the NRA’s charitable assets and to react quickly and decisively once questions about financial management arose, which really began as early as the 1990s, though more specifically and pointedly in 2018.

This is not the first case in which that type of long-term entrenchment of management and directors has created blind spots in oversight. The evidence showed that a number of prominent board members reacted principally with the goal of protecting Mr. LaPierre and his team rather than with protecting the NRA itself against financial mismanagement.

I recognize the NRA operated, at the time and today, in a sometimes hostile political environment, and there thus may be an initial instinct to protect an otherwise very effective and popular Executive Vice President from attack, regardless of the merits. That instinct is particularly acute when both the Executive Vice President and the leaders of the Board have been in place and mutually supporting each other for many years. In doing so, however, the NRA, through its board and senior management, abandoned the basic blocking and tackling of ensuring that the financial resources of the association are being responsibly spent. Here, instead, management and certain leading board members, when called to account for the NRA’s problems, went on the attack, including against legally protected whistleblowers. 

I was persuaded that the employees now in charge of compliance efforts — in particular, Executive Vice President Hamlin; the Treasurer, Ms. Rowling; the Compliance Officer, Mr. Mensinger; the Internal Auditor, Mr. Medrano — are serious, independent, skilled people with a spine to stand up to power, as Ms. Rowling and her brave colleagues so clearly demonstrated as effective and undaunted whistleblowers. I was also impressed by the testimony of Mr. Bachenberg and Mr. Vaughan, two new board officers that I believe will be watchful for any backsliding on compliance with internal controls.

Is that a perfect record that gives the Court a hundred percent confidence? No. The NRA was slow to reform, despite warning signs as early as 2003. There remain leaders on key board committees who, while they do seem smart and earnest, are difficult to disentangle from their role as overseers while long-running and blatant violations of NRA policy and New York law was rampant at the highest levels of the organization and who were also intimately involved, in some cases, in ill-considered and wasteful efforts to avoid accountability, including the disastrous decision to pursue bankruptcy to avoid accountability rather than simply righting the ship as best they could.

Cohen's ready to implement what he sees as needed reforms on his own if need be, but would much prefer the NRA take those steps without an official court order. As Gutowski suggests, adopting these additional guardrails before Cohen has the chance to order these changes be made could be helpful in regaining the trust of active and lapsed members, but The Reload founder says it will be a marathon, not a sprint, to regrow the membership back to what it was just a few years ago. 

One of the best ways that NRA members can help is by running for the Board of Directors itself. Nominations are due on August 4th, and you can submit qualified NRA members to the board's Nominating Committee here. Reform candidates were pretty successful during this year's elections, but they could use some reinforcements going forward if the NRA is going to rebuild its reputation and its ability to serve as an effective protector and promoter of our Second Amendment rights.