In partnership with The Trace, The New Yorker published a report revealing documents and accounts of former NRA staffers which raise questions about statements Wayne LaPierre made under oath.

“In 2020, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, sued to dissolve the N.R.A. for a pattern of self-dealing that included LaPierre’s alleged acceptance of lavish gifts from contractors. Under questioning about the yacht trip, LaPierre did not disclose the wedding. Instead, he testified under oath that he used the boat that summer because his life was in imminent danger. He said that trip—the first of six annual summer voyages on the yacht in the Bahamas, from 2013 to 2018—was a ‘security retreat’ and the only way he could be safe after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. LaPierre explained that he was under ‘Presidential threat without Presidential security’ and that the boat ‘was offered’ as a refuge. When he finally got to the yacht, he recalled thinking, ‘Thank God I’m safe, nobody can get me here.’

Internal N.R.A. documents, other records, and interviews with former staffers suggest that LaPierre repeatedly made misleading and possibly false statements under oath about the yacht and his niece. LaPierre testified that Sterner, whom he hired at the N.R.A., was an integral employee in the organization, but former colleagues, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, say she did little work.”