Three NRA board members offered their resignation on Thursday, alleging NRA leadership had "stonewalled" them in efforts to investigate accusations of financial impropriety.
Sean Maloney, Esther Schneider, and Timothy Knight announced they would leave the board in a letter to their fellow board members. The group said their faith in the NRA's leadership had been "shattered." The board members said they felt they had exhausted other avenues to investigate the claims of wrongdoing that have been made public over the last several months and resigning was the only option left.
"Over the past several months, there have been numerous, highly-publicized allegations of impropriety leveled against the Association and certain members of its executive leadership team," the three said in their letter. "In exercising our oversight responsibilities as Board Members, we have sought information and requested certain actions be taken with respect to these allegations, only to be rebuffed at every turn."
"We had expected — or at least hoped — that the executive leadership team would recognize the seriousness of these allegations and work with us in a constructive and transparent manner to address our concerns and minimize any further harm to the Association," they continued. "Instead, we have been stonewalled, accused of disloyalty, stripped of committee assignments and denied effective counsel necessary to properly discharge our responsibilities as Board members."
Marion Hammer, fellow NRA board member and former president who is now paid by the group to lobby in Florida, said there was a different explanation for the group's departure. Hammer claimed the group was part of an alleged effort by former NRA president Oliver North to blackmail and remove NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre from his position. She told the Washington Post the board members "made a treacherous attempt to overthrow leadership and lost, now they're unhappy nobody trusts them and doesn't want them on committees where they can continue to disrupt the organization."
Maloney, Schneifer, and Knight all publicly complained about current NRA president Carolyn Meadows's decision to strip them of their committee assignments. They also joined with board member Lt. Col. Robert K. Brown to request an independent audit of the group's finances as well as an outside investigation.
Meadows said the group will now move forward without the three board members.
"The NRA accepts these resignations," she said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. "We look forward to working with our new board members in furthering our noble mission of protecting our Second Amendment rights on behalf of our millions of members."
Maloney said he expected NRA leadership to say, as they have in the past, that board members have access to information about the group's finances and other private information should they want to review it. However, he claimed that he and the other resigning board members were rebuffed when they requested information—though he did not disclose what specific information was requested.
"I know what their response is going to be: 'they could get all the information they wanted,'" Maloney told the Free Beacon. "That's not true because we've asked for stuff. We haven't gotten it. I asked for something and the board attorney told me he won't give me anything in writing, call him."
He said the group hoped their resignations would cause "other board members take a look at what's going on."
"The people who know me know how much I love the NRA and how much I love the Second Amendment and would fight to protect that," he said. "And this wasn't done easy."
Maloney said it would have been "unimaginable" to him as recently as a month ago that he would resign his position. He said Oliver North's willingness to repeat in court claims made during the leadership fight spurned him to request the same actions North had before being ousted as president.
"Oliver North, as the president of the NRA, he had knowledge that I don't have," he said. "He saw what was going on and he requested that this be done. And then, you know, we know about his demise at the Annual Meeting. Then I read his response to the lawsuit, his counterclaim, making the same statements and I'm thinking 'you know what, he just made those statements under penalty of perjury if he's lying.' And just because Oliver North went away at the annual meeting, doesn't mean that the information he felt that we needed as board members went away also. And that's why I made that request."
When he didn't receive the response he wanted, that's when he felt his resignation became necessary.
"That was probably the straw that kind of broke the back when we were just told 'no, you don't get them,'" Maloney said.
The NRA's next board meeting will be held in Anchorage, Alaska in September. It's not immediately clear if or how the board members would be replaced before then.
Gun control supporters cheered the resignations as a sign of a weakened NRA.
"One by one, the NRA is purging any and all leaders who oppose CEO Wayne Wayne LaPierre," the gun control group Brady tweeted. "Now is the time for gun safety activists to seize the moment and take back our country from the grip of the corporate gun lobby. #GunReformNow"
Marion Hammer had a different reaction. "Don't let the door hit you in the back on your way out," she told the three board members in a text message to the Post.