The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA by Tim Mak

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA by Tim Mak 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.

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buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. This is one of the hot books that everyone's talking about. It's just hot off the shelf. It just came out November 2nd. The book is titled Misfire, Inside the Downfall of the NRA by Tim Mack. And he's joining us today to talk about his amazing book. He is the National Public Radio's Washington investigative correspondent and was one of NPR's lead reporters on the Mueller investigation and the full Trump impeachment, or the first Trump impeachment, that is. How many

were there? Three or four? I don't know. Something like that. While reporting for the Daily Beast in 2017, he broke the story of Russian 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. Welcome to the show, Tim. How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me, Chris. Dude, that's amazing.

I didn't know you broke the story on Maria Butina. That was amazing when that came out. Yeah, it's been a long, wild ride since then. That was something that I picked up in kind of 2016, 2017 time frame. Yeah, man, she fell off the earth, didn't she? She like, I don't know, on a gulag in Siberia or something? No, she's

actually, she's run for office in Russia, and I think she's in the legislature now. Probably, yeah. Oh, I wonder who she supports. Anyway, let's run for office in Russia, and I think she's in the legislature now. Probably, yeah. I wonder who she supports. Anyway, let's see. So give us your plug so people can find you on the interwebs and learn more about you. Sure.

So I've got this book, like you mentioned, Misfire Inside the Downfall of the NRA. You can find it online. If you want to pick your local retailer for books or Amazon or whatever else, you should be able to find it. There you go. The NRA has just been such a black box. There's not much known about the NRA except for what they wanted to put out there in press releases, in their press conferences and things like that. I really wanted to pull back the curtain and show something about the characters and the personalities and the people involved in this organization. That was something that really fascinated me,

was researching, doing interviews, and writing about these people, of which very little is known. Yeah, yeah. Definitely a secretive organization up until late, and it seems like everything is just splitting right open for them. So give us the overall arcing of your book and basically the encompass of it, if you would, from a bird's eye view. Sure.

So the book really extends mainly across the last 10 years or so. It looks at the NRA's history from Sandy Hook to present, approximately. There are, of course, places that go a little further back than that. But it basically looks at the main characters in the NRA and follows them across the last 10 or 15 years. It carries the NRA from a period when they were doing really well during the Obama years through Sandy Hook. And that's a pivotal moment for the NRA to Donald Trump's election and later on through to its financial troubles and ultimately its bankruptcy and a lawsuit filed by the Newark Attorney General to dissolve the organization. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

Anyway, it's been interesting. So you how does the book start out? Because I heard in one of your interviews a story about how you acquired some documents. Were you writing the book at that time or was was this a proponent for writing the book? What got you down that pathway? And I loved hearing the story, too. Yeah, so I've been working on this book really since around 2017 or so. Oh, wow.

So it's been four and a half, five years almost. Working on it for a long time, the NRA and people inside of the NRA's environment aren't typically very friendly with the traffic. That's not typical. And so trying to work my way in and develop sources and get some of these documents that we ended up finding, that was a really difficult prospect. But there was a big moment in 2020 during the worst of the pandemic when a source said that they'd be interested in showing me some documents. Now I didn't have a car, there was no public transit, no Ubers. So I ended up renting a moped and driving for what seemed like hours and hours to a

place, a parking lot where a source pulls up and the window rolls down and they walk away from the car while saying the documents are in the passenger seat. So I reach in, pull the documents out and put them in my backpack and I moped. And those documents turn out to be these amazing secret documents that form up a lot of the backbone of the book and a lot of the subsequent reporting. The NRA is just such a mystery organization, or at least has been in the past. And it allowed me to give color. The documents were hundreds and hundreds of pages of secret depositions that have never been seen by the public. Senior officials in the National Rifle Association talked about who was in the room, what they said, what happened behind the scenes as the NRA began its decline, and how that all occurred. It was an amazing set of documentary evidence.

And it was something that just happened after developing some trust with the source. That's amazing, man. I can see it now when you do all the President's Men scene where you remember the deep throat in the basement of the water gate or something or wherever they were they're meeting in the darkness only this time you have a moped so that's really cool that'll look great on film i'm not sure if it will make it into a film yeah but it was a fun experience i'm sure reporting can be fun but like a lot of it is about developing rapport with your sources and convincing them that you're going to tell their stories

in a fair and accurate way. And that was something that was a real challenge, right? Because the NRA has not been friendly to the press, has not really been an open book in the past. And that's why I was so fascinated to do this project to begin with. Yeah. It's really come out lately that this Wayne LaPierre guy, him and his wife have been using it as like a slush

fund and you had some really explosive reporting that came out of the book that you've been touring on talking about some of these the i think it was the sandy hook conversation and tapes that you get a hold of where they're just number one they're being really dismissive of their people that give them money at the nra um calling them I think it was like trailer something or whatever. They just look off on camera or whatever. They'll be wandering around. Or how to deal with it. Touch on that, if you would, a little bit.

Sure. So this was actually after Columbine in 1999. The Columbine tragedy was when it kicked off, unfortunately, a series, the modern era of school shootings. And it happened on April 20th, 1999. As it happened, the NRA had scheduled its annual convention in Denver, not far away, just a week and a half later. And so the day after, all these NRA officials and executives and lobbyists, lawyers, strategists, all scramble under this call to try to figure out what they're going to do with the organization. How are they going to deal with this crisis? Because they've got this conference coming up, and it's really a lot of people consider it an affront to the community to hold the convention

right after this terrible tragedy. And so you hear a number of things. One of the things, like you mentioned, is you hear the NRA disparaging some of its own members. You hear them worrying about the kind of members that are going to show up in Denver after that convention. You hear them disparage them, these members, as idiots and hillbillies and nuts and fruitcakes. It's all on tape. And this is how some of the NRA's executives

refer to their own members. Wow. It's just shocking to hear. Meanwhile, they're buying like $10,000 suits and just having a good old time. Yeah, it's all kind of segues one to the next. Another thing that you hear on the tapes is you hear them try to strategize about what their playbook should be after the shooting. And you hear them consider a kind of softer tone,

a softer approach. You hear them consider a million dollar victim's fund, for example, or canceling their convention. But as time goes on and these wheels are in motion, they land on this idea that any sort of concession at all will be as if they were admitting responsibility. And this is something that they carry with them for years to come. Through Sandy Hook and through Virginia Tech, through Sandy Hook, through Parkland, this becomes the NRA's playbook over time. But what's so amazing about these tapes, this two and a half hours of these strategists talking from Wayne LaPierre, who's the head of the organization then and now, to its top lobbyists, to its advertising people, to its advisors.

All of them just trying to figure out how to handle this terrible situation that's unfolded in Colorado and then landing on kind of a no compromise position, which they've held ever since. Yeah. I've seen the video. There's the only good guy who is the only, I forget the quote, the only good guy with a gun is the only bad. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. This is why you wrote the book. No, it's true. And it's become so, they've politically become so entrenched. What started the downfall of the NRA in your mind?

They did this illegal contribution, and I think Maria, what's her face, was involved in that, the $100 million or something that they, it wasn't $100 million they contributed to Trump. It was wonky and weird. There was that redheaded gal, I think, too, from Russia who had infiltrated a bunch of politicians and people in the NRA. And then Ollie North seems like when he resigned, he was really trying to take out the NRA. And I've often wondered how much he's been working in the background to take that down. He seemed to be the one who was calling out them using it as a slush fund for all their rich wares and living high on the hog. Yeah. So Oliver North was brought into the NRA in around 2018, 2019

to kind of help them fundraise their way out of a financial crisis. So just to put it in context, in 2018, the NRA is in such a serious financial contraction that it almost can't make payroll. And this is a serious problem for any organization. So Wayne LaPierre, who's the head of the organization, reaches out to his old friend Oliver North and asks Oliver North to come on as the president of the organization. And Oliver North agrees and says, yeah, I'll do that.

But as he gets on, he realizes there are some real problems with the NRA and starts to wonder where all this money is going towards and demands an internal audit of the organization. This causes a lot of friction with Wayne LaPierre, who's the head of the NRA. And this all culminates in a climactic scene in the book in which they confront each other at Indianapolis Hotel Suite in April of 2019. And basically, Wayne LaPierre pushes Oliver North out of the presidency of the NRA. That's vividly described in the book in one of the chapters.

Wow. And I think Oliver North threatens out and basically exposes him? Yeah. So very publicly, Oliver North resigns. And this raises all sorts of questions about what's been happening inside the organization. And a lot of reporting, including mine, has been done in the subsequent years,. And a lot of reporting, including mine, has been done in the subsequent years, over the last couple of years, to describe what was happening inside the organization, inside the NRA. And we're talking things like millions of dollars in private jets, lavish meals, exotic vacations to the Bahamas and Lake Como in Italy. We're talking about, you mentioned this earlier, six figures in Italian suits from Zegna, the Italian menswear place on Rodeo Drive. It's a real expose of what happened

behind the scenes at the NRA. Yeah. And you get into his wife, Susan, and some of the shenanigans they're up to doing all their different stuff involved with Trump and different things. These people sound like the most sociopathic narcissistic ever. Susan LaPierre is such an interesting character to me because very little has been written about her in the past. And so it's very interesting to learn who she was as a human. So she heads up this elite world of million dollar plus donors to the NRA. And she's someone who is super controlling and demanding of

her staff. And she's a hidden hand in the NRA, right? She's someone who has a lot of sway over her husband, who runs the NRA, Wayne LaPierre. She's considered by some to be the first lady of the NRA. And definitely, though she doesn't get paid to work at the NRA, gets all sorts of perks that would make even high-powered corporate executives blush. Things like private cars or private jets. And uses the NRA's non-profit money

I might add, in order to expand her lifestyle. Wow. These guys are just having fun being one of the crap on there, calling the people that give them money. They're not that large of a organization, are they? They're like 5 million or something? About 4.9 million at the last count.

And even then, I think, don't they fluff those numbers a little bit? I don't remember. I think I read something there. They might be. So some of their members sign on year after year. One-year memberships, three-year memberships, five-year memberships, things like that. But you can also get what's called a lifetime membership and you pay a one-time fee for that. But there's not really a way to unsubscribe. If you buy a lifetime membership,

you're on the rolls. And it's not clear that they take people off once they pass away. It's more than lifetime. Lifetime and beyond membership in a lot of ways. But yeah, so they say they have 4.9 million members. The thing is, it's not merely the numbers. 4.9 million people in the United States, as compared to the total population of the U.S., you think, okay, not that many people. A couple of things. There are a lot of people who are not NRA members who identify with the NRA.

If you take an NRA training class, for example, they have tons of gun safety and training classes, you might identify as a member of the NRA. And there are many more who aren't technically members, but still would say that they support the NRA's goals. And when you talk to lawmakers about why they're worried about the NRA, they're not so much worried about money. Money is important, of course, but they're worried about the NRA. They're not so much worried about money. Money is important, of course. But they're worried about getting their phone lines totally jammed up, their inboxes totally flooded.

They're worried about getting yelled at town halls. And one of the things the NRA has been really effective in doing is mobilizing its members to do that, to put the pressure on lawmakers. And lawmakers are terrified of crossing the NRA for that reason. Wow. Five million member group runs the country. That's 350 million you have to deal with. Do you talk about in the book, there was that whole wing, Dana Loesch, and there was a whole

video arm wing that had gotten, I think it was set up by a third party. Do you go through that in the book and talk about that whole episode? Yes. What that is, it was called NRA TV. It was something that the NRA spent tens of millions of dollars. It pissed off a lot of people, including at the NRA, because it wasn't just a gun. They weren't just doing shows about guns. They were doing shows about all sorts of things, including race and crime and immigration and

things like that, that a lot of people at the NRA thought, this isn't a part of our core competency. It's not the reason why members have joined the NRA and so on and so forth. But it was part of the NRA's push to become not just a Second Amendment organization, but a cultural organization. And this is something that they really develop into over the last decade. They want to frame themselves as not just a gun organization, but a group that's standing between the government and the taking of your freedoms. That's the way they framed it. But by doing that, they really get ahead of their membership and it costs them a ton of money and contributes ultimately to their financial crisis. Oh, really? Good. Good. That was so toxic, what they were doing with social media and that arm

of the wing. You'd see the videos and you'd just be like, oh my God, this is out of control. And I remember one of the people wrote on one of my videos or comments recently, they wrote, and it was pro-gun, they wrote, the Bill of Rights is more important than the Constitution because of the Second Amendment. And you're like, do you understand that the Bill of Rights cannot exist without the Constitution? it's built upon the constitution it can't be more important and so the misinformation out there the people you know and really they use a lot of these different things just to bring out that's really all this is it's like when betsy devos's national center for uh center for national policy uses abortion they don't really care about it they

just use it to bring out the vote. They know it pulls out the votes. And I think the NRA does the same thing with guns. The NRA has really had a kind of big tug of war internally for many years. They've got the lobbyists in the organization who typically have been a little bit more moderate, who are interested in legislative compromise, who have to go to lawmakers and explain their position all the time. And then there's the fundraising arm and the membership arm, which is incentivized to pull the organization in a different way, more extreme way, because they've always found that fear sells.

In the Obama era, the NRA really did try to push this idea that Obama's coming after your guns, that he's going to restrict gun rights in some way. And that really helped with fundraising, that really helped with membership. And this is the time when the NRA gets all this misconduct and all of this financial misspending that happens inside the organization. This is where a lot of it begins. And it's very effective during the Obama years when they're able to sell that fear.

And they use a lot of this money to try to elect and help elect Donald Trump. In fact, the NRA spends more money supporting Donald Trump's election bid in 2016 than even the Trump super PAC. More than 30 million dollars. Yeah. Substantial amount of money. Yeah. The real irony is that although the NRA really wanted the the election of Donald Trump and its members really wanted the election of Donald Trump and its members really wanted the election of Donald Trump, that once Donald Trump is actually in office, membership declines, fundraising falls off a cliff. And there's no strategy within the NRA to deal with that. And so in that financial contraction, we talked earlier about Oliver North, that's where all these problems begin to come about. Oliver North gets brought on to deal with that problem, starts asking questions about, hey, where's all this money going? And it leads to this dramatic confrontation that's blowing up in the public and leading to where we are now. you had members revolting, people on the board of directors protesting the direction of the

organization. Multiple congressional investigations were launched into the NRA and the New York Attorney General. Now, the NRA was originally founded in New York, so the New York Attorney General has jurisdiction over the NRA as a nonprofit. So the New York Attorney General launched an investigation about two years ago and found after an 18 month investigation that the NRA had had committed tens of millions dollars, tens of millions of dollars worth of illegal spending and misconduct. And so the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the NRA in its entirety. And it's a real mortal challenge to the NRA and its future. Would you be a better country if this the NRA goes down? What would your bet be if you were a betting man? I don't know if you are or not, but if you're a betting man, do you think they're going to

survive it? I think they tried to move to Texas and that got shot down by a judge. So they tried to declare bankruptcy in order to move to Texas. So if you declare bankruptcy, you get all these protections under the law to reorganize, emerge from bankruptcy. And they tried to use this as a way to move to Texas and get away from their responsibilities in New York. But the bankruptcy judge basically said, no, I don't think that this is a filing being made in good faith. And I'm going to reject this attempt to file for bankruptcy. So now they're back in court with the New York Attorney General. Wow. If you're a betting man, do you think they're going to serve up? I'm not to reject this attempt to file for bankruptcy. Because now they're back in court with the New York Attorney General. Wow.

If you're a betting man, do you think they're going to serve up? I'm not quite a betting man. I'm not ready to put it all on red. But look, it's a serious... You can do black if you want. Any observer of the current situation has to admit that there is a serious possibility that a judge will say that the NRA needs to be shut down. And with that being the case, it would be an incredible outcome for the future of our gun politics in the country. It would be great. You can have any other sort of weapon, even just buying alcohol or weed or anything else,

and everything has got to be. I'm not for taking away people's guns. I'm not for banning guns like maybe New Zealand or Australiaia but definitely limiting some of the guns you don't need to need like a tank okay you don't need a nuclear weapon you don't need a i don't know an f-50 or whatever the hell they're called the tank guns and stuff like that come on man and i always love how my friends that love guns are like we'll have to take the government on i think wasn't it biden who said have you seen that we have drones and stuff like you're not going to win a war with this government not at all that was great when we all had muskets and i don't know we're a colony

of a few hundred people or something but now but yeah it's interesting and i'm glad you documented this because the story is amazing the stories are amazing anything else you want to touch on the book that we could tease out to readers to get them to pick it up? Yeah, so the book starts with this scene at Wayne LaPierre's wedding in the late 90s. And it's an important scene because I really think that the NRA finds itself in the financial and legal trouble that it finds itself today because of personality issues with Wayne. He's the head of this powerful and controversial organization, but he's incredibly conflict-averse. He's someone who's deeply anxious. And I kind of show that with an anecdote from the late 90s at his wedding.

The wedding ceremony time comes and passes, and he's not there. Wow. He doesn't want to get married. And he's been telling his friends Wow. He doesn't want to get married. And he's been telling his friends all week he doesn't want to get married. And his best man's outside with him and puts a $100 bill on the dashboard of the car and says, hey, I don't think you should get married either.

When we can get out of here right now, if you want, I'll drive you. But he goes through with it. He goes in, he gets harangued into the ceremony by his bride and there's this there's this totally weird ceremony that happens all these nra luminaries are in the audience watching this incredibly awkward ceremony transpire yeah he won't make eye contact with his bride. He's looking up, he's looking down, he's looking around. But he goes through with it. And this is a lesson for all sorts of people in the NRA over the years.

And like I said, I think it's emblematic of his character in a lot of ways. That people have learned, powerful people in and around the NRA have learned, that if you push Wyn Lapierre around hard enough, he's eventually going to say yes to whatever it is. And that's why so many of these contracts, these sweetheart deals for NRA vendors end up happening. And golden parachutes for former senior executives who leave the organization get paid incredible sums of money to do almost nothing. That's why they happen as well. It's a real pattern inside the organization. Yeah.

I forget who the Russian's name was. The red hair gal? She got repatriated back. Maria Bettina is such a really interesting character in this book. Maria Bettina is someone who spent years networking with NRA officials and getting them to basically open all these doors for her, whether it's money for her travel or for conferences or networking and introducing her to people. The NRA got so easily played by someone who ended up getting charged and convicted of conspiring to be an unregistered Russian agent and who went to jail and was ultimately deported. It's an astonishing story. She had a very flirtatious demeanor.

And it's something that a lot of people who knew her over time repeatedly talked about. Yeah. And it seemed like a lot of the guys were like, Hey, we're around this cute gal. I figured something was up. That was my assumption. Yeah. This is really interesting. Are they still in trouble with, uh, are they still getting sued by the video arm, the TV arm? Yeah. There, there, there's still ongoing litigation between the NRA and its longtime advertising firm, which has for many decades been really who they depended on for advice and strategy and crisis communications and things like that. And that divorce has been incredibly nasty. It's been one of those breakups that has had a lot of serious effects for the NRA.

Yeah. It seems like they just, it's been amazing how they just fell so hard. And for a while there, I was just like, yeah, this is awesome. Some of their stuff was just so toxic. When people listen to the tapes that you released with your book, listening to people just callously, these are people that got slaughtered and died and just like cattle. And they're just so callous and cold to it. They're just talking about it like it was nothing. And you're just

sitting there going, my God, people died. These were human beings. And all they're worried about is their money and their little organization. Yeah. Those tapes that you were, that we're talking about earlier about Columbine is so instructive about the way the nra ends up handling itself not just after columbine but for many years to come you see it hear them and you see them developing their playbook for mass shootings from columbine onwards and it's amazing to hear how they end up talking about people and strategizing. Yeah, it's just extraordinary. Anything more you want to tease out in the book, Tim, before? I'd love for folks to, if they're interested in kind of the behind the scenes look of the NRA,

these wild characters and who they are, from Wayne LaPierre and his wife, Susan, to Oliver North and all sorts of figures in between to pick up the book. There you go. You get into the money too, all the money he spent. sorts of figures in between to pick up the book. There you go. You get into the money, too, all the money he spent. Definitely. Were you able to dig up all that? Millions of dollars in private debts. Holy crap. The lavish meals, details about their vacations, the mansion that Wayne and Susan wanted to buy in Texas.

Oh, that's right. All sorts of things in there, including also the weird cast of characters and people with felony convictions and embezzlement allegations all around Wayne LaPierre and the senior levels of the NRA. There you go. Buy his book and send it to all your NRA friends. I don't know if they can read, but oops, what did I say? I'm just teasing. I lost the NRA crowd.

That's okay. We lost it years ago. Anyway, Tim, thanks for being on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you very much for coming by. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. There you guys go. Order up the book. You can go get it wherever fine books are sold, but only go to where those fine books are sold. Don't go in those bookstore alleyways because

they're dirty and there's needles and sometimes there's ruffians in there. Ruffians? What is it? The 1800s the 1800s anyway guys pick it up misfire inside the downfall of the nra by tim mack you'll want to pick that baby up and be the first one to read it and let's see audio kindle book and hardcover also go to youtube.com for just chris foss you can see the video version this go to goodreads.com for just chris foss all the groups on facebook linkedin twitter instagram all those places those crazy kids are playing. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. And we'll see you guys next time.