Former NRA chief says appointing a financial monitor would be ‘putting a knife’ into the gun group

NEW YORK (AP) — The former head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, told a New York judge on Monday that the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the gun rights group’s finances would be “equivalent to putting a knife straight through the heart of the organization and twisting it.”

LaPierre’s forceful opposition to the oversight mechanism came on the final day of arguments in the second phase of a civil case that New York Attorney General Letitia James brought against the NRA.

A jury found LaPierre and another deputy liable for misspending millions of dollars in February, and James is seeking an independent monitor to oversee the powerful group’s finances and bar LaPierre, the organization’s mouthpiece for decades, from returning to the NRA.

In brief testimony Monday, LaPierre described the appointment of a monitor as an existential threat to the group because it would send a message to prospective members and donors that the NRA was “being surveilled by this attorney general in New York that they think has crossed a line.”

If the monitor is appointed, he said, “General James will have achieved her objective to fulfill that campaign promise of, in effect, dissolving the NRA for a lack of money and a lack of members.”

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