npr story “While we do receive some contributions from foreign individuals and entities, those contributions are made directly to the NRA for lawful purposes,” NRA’s General Counsel John C. Frazer wrote to Wyden in a letter obtained by NPR. “Our review of our records has found no foreign donations in connection with a United States election, either directly or through a conduit.”
But money is fungible
*While the NRA claims it does not receive foreign money for election purposes, the movement of its money between accounts could make it difficult, if not impossible, to track how the money is spent since it is not isolated or sequestered.
The NRA has a variety of accounts, and the NRA Political Victory Fund is their official political action committee and must report all of its spending to the Federal Election Commission.
It also has other accounts that require less transparency, and do not report spending to the FEC — and in those funds, the NRA told Wyden, they “receive funds from foreign persons only for purposes not connected to elections, as permitted by federal law.”
However, the NRA acknowledges that money moves between those accounts: “transfers between accounts are made as permitted by law,” the NRA’s general counsel wrote.*
In other words, the NRA is not using foreign money for political campaigns, apart from the fact that they cannot tell what the source of the money in this here account actually is. But it smells a little like Tide.
I think Josh Marshall wrote an opinion piece a while back saying that everyone who tried to work with Trump invariably came away from the experience diminished and humiliated. His oozed spreads to everyone in his vicinity. Of course we see this in the way he’s treated his Cabinet and advisers, just to name an obvious example. He’s also managed to slime most of the Republicans in Congress and the majority of American evangelicals, not that either group was pristine beforehand. And now, I hope the Trump Slime will envelop the NRA, gun manufacturers, and pro-gun politicians of all stripes, bind them together in a dense concretion, and take them all to the bottom of the abyss.
Are they otherwise free, so long as they don’t mention particular candidates or elections? Educational materials, perhaps, or essays on the philosophical foundations of ballistic ideology?
(Surprised they haven’t offered the notion that the 2nd Amendment be interpreted as compelling the government to supply militia weapons to all citizens. Now, there’s a vigorous experiment in social Darwinism!)
All of the money they got from Russian oligarchs was spent on funding their youth firearms training program. It was the fees that they charged families for youth training classes that was spent on electing a Russian patsy.
