On Monday afternoon, a U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force attempted to apprehend a career felon, Terry Clark Hughes. Usually the Marshals get their man, even violent fugitives like Hughes. Unfortunately, on this day the 39-year-old Hughes saw them coming.
In the end, the career felon shot and killed four law enforcement officers attempting to take him into custody (again) for a felon in possession of firearms. He wounded at least four other officers before he was shot dead.
CHARLOTTE — Monday marked a dark day for Charlotte, as four officers died and four more were shot while they were working “to keep the city safe.”
The chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department confirmed an officer with the department and three members of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force were killed in a shootout Monday while serving a warrant in east Charlotte.
CMPD Officer Joshua Eyer was critically wounded earlier before he died at the hospital, the chief said. He leaves behind a wife and a 3-year-old son.
New video from a neighbor’s house shows the chaos of one side of the shootout. It shows one U.S. Marshal shot twice and at least two others firing from behind cover.
CHARLOTTE — The chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said they are not looking for any more suspects after four officers were killed and four more were shot in the line of duty on Monday.
US Army financial counselor admits to defrauding Gold Star families: DOJ
ByLeah Sarnoff
A former financial counselor for the United States Army pleaded guilty to defrauding the families of fallen servicemembers out of life insurance payments, the U.S. attorney’s office announced Tuesday.
Gold Star family members are the immediate beneficiaries of servicemembers who have died in active-duty military service and are entitled to a $100,000 payment and the servicemember’s life insurance of up to $400,000, according to the organization.
Caz Craffy, from Colts Neck, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to obtaining more than $9.9 million from several Gold Star families to invest in accounts managed by Craffy in his private capacity without the families’ authorization, according to prosecutors.
Craffy was a civilian employee of the U.S. Army, working as a financial counselor with the Casualty Assistance Office, but he was also a major in the U.S. Army Reserves, where he has been enlisted since 2003, prosecutors said.
From May 2018 to November 2022, the Gold Star family accounts suffered more than $3.7 million in losses and Craffy made more than $1.4 million in commissions, according to prosecutors.
“Those who target and steal from the families of fallen American servicemembers will be held accountable for their crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the press release.
“Nothing can undo the enormous loss that Gold Star families have suffered, but the Justice Department is committed to doing everything in our power to protect them from further harm,” Garland said.
On Tuesday, Craffy pleaded guilty to 10 counts, including six counts of wire fraud and one count each of securities fraud, making false statements in a loan application, committing acts affecting a personal financial interest and making false statements to a federal agency, according to the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office’s press release.
“Caz Craffy admitted today that he brazenly took advantage of his role as an Army financial counselor to prey upon families of our fallen service members, at their most vulnerable moment, using lies and deception,” U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said in the press release.
“These Gold Star families have laid the dearest sacrifice on the altar of freedom. And they deserve our utmost respect and compassion, as well as some small measure of financial security from a grateful nation,” Sellinger said.
Craffy entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner in Trenton, New Jersey and is scheduled for sentencing on Aug. 21.
Craffy’s plea agreement calls for a prison sentence of 8 to 10 years, according to prosecutors, and the restitution amount will be announced during his sentencing.
The second week of testimony in the New York trial of NRA, CEO Wayne LaPierre, Secretary and General Counsel John Frazer, and former Treasurer Woody Phillips wrapped up on Friday, January 19, 2024, and things are not looking good for the defendants. A fourth former executive, LaPierre’s former deputy Josh Powell, pled guilty days before the trial began.
Also, just days before the trial, LaPierre announced his resignation, effective at the end of January 2024, at an NRA Board of Directors meeting. Many spectators and even some participants have missed the delayed effect. He’s still technically in charge and, presumably, still having hislegal bills covered by NRA members’ money.
In his resignation announcement, LaPierre said he was stepping down for health reasons. He is reported to be suffering from the debilitating effects of chronic Lyme Disease, a tick-borne bacterial infection that can cause a variety of serious health problems. Having struggled with Lyme Disease myself and had people close to me affected by the chronic form of the infection, I won’t join in the chorus that has suggested the whole thing is some ruse on LaPierre’s part.
Lapierre’s Brain Is Shrinking!?
LaPierre has been in the courtroom every day during the two weeks of the trial. Still, his attorney has now submitted doctors’ notes asking the court for special accommodations for LaPierre during his upcoming testimony. The lawyer, supported by the doctors’ notes, says that, along with headaches, vision problems, and fatigue,
LaPierre is also suffering from cognitive issues related to the loss of cerebral mass. In other words, he’s saying LaPierre’s brain is shrinking, impacting his ability to think clearly and remember things. Because of this, the attorney is asking that the judge allow LaPierre and his lawyers to call timeouts during his upcoming testimony, possibly breaking it up over several days rather than trying to grind through one or two days of uninterrupted time on the stand.
The judge seems willing to accommodate LaPierre’s physical limitations and allow other witnesses to be called when and if LaPierre is incapacitated. This raises another important question about who’s running the NRA and why LaPierre remains officially in charge.
According to the letters from his doctors, LaPierre’s health has been in decline for several years.
His current condition was reported to NRA President Charles Cotton on January 3, 2024, two days before LaPierre announced his pending resignation. So why is LaPierre still holding the Executive Vice Presidency of the NRA?
If LaPierre is unable to testify for several hours consecutively due to his illness, and considering he is attending the trial in New York instead of being at his office at NRA headquarters, why didn’t he resign immediately on January 5? This was when the NRA Board was meeting, and they could have appointed a temporary replacement then rather than waiting for a month.
The NRA Bylaws say that in the case of a vacancy in the office of Executive Vice President, the Executive Director of General Operations is to fill the position until the Board meets to name a suitable replacement. LaPierre unceremoniously fired Joe DeBergalis, the ED of General Operations, shortly before Christmas, replacing him with Andrew Arulanandam. Arulanandam has been LaPierre’s top PR flack and spokesperson for several years. While his face is familiar to some members and the media, it would be a stretch to suggest he is qualified to run General Operations, and he’s certainly not qualified to be the CEO of the NRA.
During his testimony on Thursday and Friday, former Executive Director of NRA-ILA Chris Cox voiced a similar sentiment. Cox suggested that LaPierre demonstrated poor judgment in hiring, pointing to Josh Powell and Andrew Arulanandam as examples. Powell was LaPierre’s deputy who oversaw the collapse of the NRA’s controversial CarryGuard program and has already pled guilty in the New York trial. Arulanandam, who first worked under Cox in ILA before being moved over to NRA HQ by LaPierre, did not impress Cox while he was at ILA. Cox warned LaPierre that Arulanandam had “terrible” political judgment and was “lazy in core competencies.”
LaPierre ignored Cox’s warnings and kept Arulanandam on, promoting him to higher positions, eventually setting him up to take over as EVP and CEO upon LaPierre’s resignation.
This has laid the table for a bit of a battle within the NRA Board of Directors. It has been reported that Tom King, who has been one of LaPierre’s chief supporters on the Board and a close ally of NRA President Charles Cotton, has been calling fellow Directors to urge them to support a move to put Cotton in the EVP position.
Along with his duties as President, Cotton serves as the Chairman of the NRA’s Audit Committee, as I explained in a recent article, “Charles Cotton Must Never Be Allowed to Head the NRA!”. The Audit Committee is supposed to be the Association’s watchdog tasked with ensuring that the staff and vendors always operate within applicable laws and policies and conduct business in a manner that is above reproach.
Cotton served as vice chair of the committee for several years and then switched places with then-chairman David Coy. Between the two of them, they have been Chair and Vice Chair for the past 20-plus years, and they continue in those positions now, even though they’ve been President and Vice President of the Board for the past three years. Cotton and Coy were supposed to keep the NRA on track and away from even a whisper of corruption.
They failed spectacularly in that assignment and were rewarded for their failure by being elected to the offices of President and Vice President.
The best way for the NRA Board to demonstrate that they’ve learned nothing at all from the scandals and corruption that have plagued the NRA for the past 20 years and been publicly known for the past five years would be to hand the EVP position to Charles Cotton.
The trial continues on Monday with video testimony from former NRA President Carolyn Meadows. Ms. Meadows has been excused from testifying in person – or even via live video link – due to her own health issues, so her video deposition is being played.
It’s worth noting that Ms. Meadows’ health has been a limiting factor since she was first elected in 2019. She barely attended any Board meetings as President after she was elected, meaning that First Vice President Charles Cotton filled in for her for almost all of her two terms. He then served two terms as President himself, then orchestrated a Bylaws change to allow him to serve a third (effectively fifth) term as President.
In spite of her age and poor health concerns, Ms. Meadows has been nominated for reelection to the Board in the coming election…. She and another woman from Georgia were both added to the list of nominees after Phil Journey, Rocky Marshall, Dennis Fusaro, and I (Jeff Knox) were qualified by petition as nominees. Some speculate she and her friend were added to pad the field and make it even harder for any of the four reform candidates to be elected.
Ballots should be in the March issue of NRA magazines, which will hit mailboxes around mid-February, so please be sure to vote and encourage your NRA friends to vote. “Bullet voting,” i.e. voting for just the four Outsider Candidates for NRA Board, myself included, and no one else, gives us the best chance of winning seats, so please spread the word on that, too.
Is the NRA slowly dying? Newsweek says so! NRA Exec. Vice President Wayne LaPierre. (Photo: NRA)
In a recent article for Newsweek, journalist Kate Plummer argues that the National Rifle Association is “slowly dying.”
She points to the following to make her case:
Membership Decline: Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, predicted in 2013 a growth to 10 million members. However, as of a recent report, the membership has declined to about 4.3 million.
Financial Struggles: The NRA’s revenue dropped significantly, with a 52% decrease in overall revenue and a nearly 59% drop in membership dues since 2016. Membership dues in 2022 were down more than 40% from 2018.
Past Successes: The NRA had 230 legislative victories from 2003 to 2013.
Recent Failures: More recently, the NRA failed to secure major legislative changes in 2017 and 2018, even with Republican control in Washington.
Lawsuit by New York Attorney General: Letitia James filed a lawsuit alleging misappropriation of funds by top NRA officials, including LaPierre, for personal use.
Bankruptcy and Financial Mismanagement: The NRA faced a $64 million reduction in its balance sheet over three years, turning a surplus into a deficit.
Shift in Views: An NBC/WSJ poll showed 40% viewing the NRA negatively in 2018, a first-ever overall negative perception.
There are other headwinds for the organization, Plummer points out, including the rise of the Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety over the past decade.
Thanks to Bloomberg’s billions, Everytown has proven to be a force to reckon with. For example, it just outspent the NRA 10 to 1 in its own backyard, in the 2023 Virginia elections.
Has the NRA seen better days? No doubt about it. But is it “slowly dying” — doubtful.
Look, the elephant in the room is Wayne LaPierre. He has become a divisive figure due to the aforementioned allegations of financial mismanagement. It’s not only about what happened to the organization under his watch but also what he was personally doing with donor dollars.
LaPierre was, apparently, flying in private jets, buying lavish suits and receiving other “excess benefits” to the tune of $300,000. LaPierre has since made good, though. He cut a personal check to the organization to right his wrongs.
For some members this was enough. For many others, including key “whale” donors, it wasn’t. As a result, those who were still disgruntled flocked to other pro-gun outfits, including the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, and the Firearms Policy Coalition.
The truth is gun owners may have stopped donating to NRA due to LaPierre’s perceived shenanigans, but they haven’t stopped donating to the pro-gun cause. Nor have they stopped buying guns.
To Plummer’s credit, she acknowledges this in her article.
Plummer writes, “Forty-five percent of U.S. households owned at least one firearm in 2022, according to research compiled by Statista, the highest figure since 2011—and 8 percentage points higher than in 2013, the year LaPierre said the NRA was on track for ‘unprecedented’ growth.”
One can argue that the pro-gun movement has never been stronger. With approximately 72 million gun owners in this country, gun banners certainly have their work cut out for them.
Four million of those still belong to the NRA, as highlighted earlier. Four million dues-paying members is nothing to sneeze at. And it all but ensures the NRA will continue to have a role to play in the 2A battles to come, even if that’s in a diminished capacity for the time being.
It’s also worth pointing out that LaPierre, 74, is not going to be around forever. So, it’s reasonable to think that a change in leadership could rejuvenate America’s longest-standing civil rights organization,.
Whether it’s through internal reform or a renewed focus on its core mission, the NRA’s fate isn’t sealed yet. It’s a dynamic entity in a country where the debate over gun rights is far from settled. The story of the NRA, like the story of gun rights in America, is still being written, one chapter at a time.
