MANHATTAN (CN) — An expert witness for the National Rifle Association lambasted the New York attorney general on Thursday for requesting a court-appointed monitor to supervise the group’s ongoing compliance efforts.
“A monitor in this situation is crazy, unprecedented,” Daniel Kurtz, a nonprofit governance expert for the NRA, testified Thursday. “I’ve never seen anything like this happen.”
Now a corporate lawyer, Kurtz ran the New York attorney general’s charities bureau in the early 1980s. He testified against his former employer Thursday when he accused the state of targeting the NRA for political reasons and asking for unreasonable relief.
“I see New York State both persecuting and prosecuting the NRA,” Kurtz said of this case, acknowledging the NRA is “politically unpopular” in New York.
Kurtz claimed the state failed to prove that the NRA caused enough public harm to warrant a monitor, which the attorney general states would “provide oversight and evaluation of the NRA’s remediation of the NRA’s legal violations and compliance program.”
The attorney general wants the monitor to serve a single three-year term. But Kurtz said he’s worried that, if the state gets its way, employees and members would leave the NRA in droves.
“This is not an appropriate situation for the appointment of a monitor,” he said.
Kurtz didn’t always think this way, however. In 2020, he told City & State New York that “the case speaks for itself” and chided the NRA for claiming that the state’s action against it was politically motivated.
“That’s essentially just a distraction,” Kurtz said at the time. “Motive is essentially irrelevant.”
His testimony was part of the NRA’s defense case in the second phase of its trial against the attorney general. Last week, state attorneys detailed why the NRA can’t be trusted to handle its compliance issues without court intervention, eliciting testimony from board members and executives to show that the nonprofit’s internal efforts are not enough.
Freshly elected board member Phillip Journey told the court that without a monitor, he thinks the NRA would “tank in less than a year.”
To counter this testimony, the NRA used its defense case this week to outline how the group is now on the right track and how an independent monitor could stunt that progress.
NRA lawyers questioned Robert Mensinger, the NRA’s chief compliance officer — a brand new position aimed at fixing many of the issues brought forth by these proceedings. Mensinger insisted his efforts, which include whistleblower education and a new reporting policy, have already steered the NRA towards a more transparent future.
He shared similar concerns to Kurtz when it came to the independent monitor.
“It harms us. It sends a message to all of our donors, our members, our employees, that everything we’ve done is a failure, is ineffective,” Mensinger said Wednesday. “Our momentum is there going forward, this is just going to take us back.”
Unlike the first phase of the trial, when a Manhattan jury found that the NRA failed to stop its executives from spending donor cash on gaudy personal expenses, this phase is a bench trial. New York Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen alone will determine the injunctive consequences the NRA will face for its violations of state nonprofit law.
Throughout the defense case this week, Cohen has appeared skeptical the NRA has done enough to address its whistleblower and compliance issues. He’s repeatedly asked witnesses, including Kurtz, whether he should be concerned that the NRA only seems to address these problems under the threat of litigation and on the eve of trial.
The attorney general pointed out how the NRA appointed a former whistleblower to its audit committee just a week before this trial. Last week, the NRA sent out a compliance work plan the night before its lawyers tried to use it in court as evidence of its course correction.
When pressed about this trend, Kurtz said: “I think the important thing is that it’s been done.”
In addition to appointing an independent monitor, the attorney general is seeking a lifetime ban on Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s disgraced longtime chief executive who was found to have spent more than $5 million of donor cash on designer suits, luxury trips and other personal expenses.
Now 74, LaPierre resigned due to health concerns just days before the first phase of the trial started in January.