Wayne LaPierre's lawyer says AG 'wanted to decapitate' the NRA with civil trial

The New York Attorney General’s Office compared Wayne LaPierre and other current and former National Rifle Association executives to children caught stealing from a cookie jar Thursday during closing arguments in its civil corruption trial.

The defendants denied, deflected and minimized their alleged misuse of millions of dollars in NRA funds, the way a guilty child does, Monica Connell, an attorney with the New York State Attorney General’s Office, told jurors.

“They’re going to try to get you to think about anything except what happened to those cookies,” she said. “They’re going to blame anyone else but themselves.”

In her final remarks, Connell told jurors that the issue at hand, corruption, was much more serious than her cookie analogy. She urged the jury to hold the defendants accountable, even if their attorneys outlined steps they may have taken to address or correct violations.

“Saying you’re sorry now,” she said, “doesn’t mean you didn’t take the cookies.”

Earlier Thursday, attorneys for the NRA, LaPierre and two other defendants urged jurors to scrutinize thecase against them, claiming the trial was brought on by a campaign pledge to destroy the gun rights group.

During his closing arguments, LaPierre’s attorney, P. Kent Correll, said New York Attorney General Letitia James set out years ago to dissolve the NRA and sued LaPierre as part of that goal.

Correll mentioned remarks James made years ago, when she was a candidate for attorney general, suggesting the NRA was akin to a “terrorist organization” and saying she would open an investigation if she was elected.

“She wanted to decapitate the organization, and that was for political reasons,” Correll said.

James filedher lawsuit in 2020, alleging that