Years before New York Attorney General Letitia James ever set her sights on the NRA & Wayne LaPierre, there was one voice on the inside sounding the alarm about corruption and financial mismanagement.
Recently leaked emails [embedded below] show that Retired Lt. Col. Robert K. Brown, founder of Soldier of Fortune magazine and a long-time member of the NRA Board of Directors at that time, raised serious concerns about the organization’s spending and governance from as early as 2011 through 2016. Brown’s warnings—often blunt and uncompromising—were largely ignored by NRA leadership.
Those failures would later give AG James the very ammunition she used to launch her legal assault, forcing Wayne LaPierre to resign in disgrace.
“The Brown Line Has Been Crossed”
In a fiery January 2011 email to NRA Publications Committee Chair Joe Allbaugh, Brown didn’t hold back:
“You totally refuse or fail, either due to incompetence or sucking up to Wayne and management, to address the basic issue… Why are we paying so much for so little?”
Brown pointed to years of massive payments—estimated between $5 million and $10 million—to the NRA’s longtime PR firm, Ackerman McQueen (“Ack Mac”), for providing only 10 to 15 pages of editorial copy per magazine issue.
“This is gross corruption and incompetence. When our members find out, they will be outraged.”
Frustrated by what he saw as stonewalling, Brown threatened to escalate:
“I have not wished to air NRA’s dirty laundry in public… but out of frustration, I am finally prepared to do so. If it is not resolved satisfactorily, I will hold a press conference at the National Press Club. The Brown line has been crossed.”
It was around this time that Brown began quietly reaching out to AmmoLand News, sharing what details he could while bound by his fiduciary obligations as a sitting NRA Board member. With help from Jeff Knox, AmmoLand News became the first outlet to cautiously report on the brewing scandal—long before it became national news. For daring to shine a light on corruption within the NRA, AmmoLand was branded a turncoat and traitor to the Second Amendment cause. The backlash was fierce: advertisers pulled their support, readers walked away, and the publication’s reputation took a hit among those not yet ready to hear the truth.
But AmmoLand News remained committed to exposing wrongdoing in defense of its core mission.
A Pattern of Wasteful Spending
Brown’s concerns didn’t stop in 2011. In a March 2016 exchange with NRA Board member Pete Brownell, Brown criticized the staggering costs of NRA publications:
$138,000 per month billed for First Freedom magazine despite only one article coming from Ack Mac.
$34 per copy of the Ring of Freedom magazine, which Brown, the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine, argued could have been produced in-house by NRA’s own publications department.
“This incredible amount is justified by Wayne and David Keene to ‘test new concepts.’ I would like to get specific on this issue. Precisely what ‘new concepts’ were tested?”
Ignored Warnings, Missed Opportunity
Other board members admitted in private emails that they were reluctant to challenge Ack Mac’s grip on NRA operations. One, now former Board member, Tom King, wrote:
“That seems exorbitant but what can be done? The Board will back the status quo because no one knows anything about publications.”
This inertia would have consequences. Instead of correcting course, NRA leadership allowed these financial arrangements to fester—leaving the organization vulnerable when Letitia James filed her lawsuit in 2020.
The Road to Collapse
Fast-forward to 2024: James’s lawsuit exposed many of the same issues Brown had flagged years earlier. The trial revealed LaPierre’s lavish spending on private jets, yachts, and luxury travel—all funded by NRA donors. In the end, LaPierre was forced to resign, ordered to pay $4.35 million in restitution, and banned from holding any fiduciary role at the NRA for 10 years.
Had Brown’s early warnings been heeded, the NRA might have avoided this public humiliation and legal battle entirely.
Why Should We Still Care About All This?
For readers, this is more than just a story about one organization’s missteps. It’s a reminder that transparency and accountability are essential in any group that claims to fight for our freedoms.
LtCol Brown tried to clean house from within. Instead of supporting him, NRA insiders circled the wagons and doubled down on questionable practices and sidelined the one BOD that had the balls to speak up. That decision didn’t just hurt the NRA—it cost our movement billions of dollars and weakened the fight for the Second Amendment nationwide.
If the NRA is to continue rebuild trust with its members, it must learn from this history: reward whistleblowers, confront corruption, and remember that its loyalty lies with gun owners, not self-serving cronies and insiders.
NRA Internal Emails on Ack Mac Payments
Leaked NRA Internal Emails on Ack Mac Payments – Redacted
Former NRA CFO Wilson “Woody” Phillips Ripped Us Off & Now Owes Back Millions
Former NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre Has Cost the Gun Rights Movement North Of A Billion Dollars
What a shame that Ltc Brown was unable to get the BOD off their asses and redeeming their duties. Kudos to the Col.
This corruption by the NRA leadership cost the 2A community years of goodwill along with a lot of money.
The ironic part of Letitia James’ lawsuit is that she tried to destroy the NRA but instead helped set it back on the right path and restore it.
76 NRA Board members with 42 different committees? Those 2 numbers alone speak volumes about what is currently wrong with the NRA. IT’S TOO DAMN BIG TO GET OUT OF IT’S OWN WAY!!! And NO, I DON’T BELIEVE A DAMN THING THAT COMES OUT OF BOB BARR’S MOUTH!!!
Neal Knox tried to tell everyone that the no bid contracts for printing and legal retainers needed to be stopped. His BOD position didn’t last long after that.
This all became somewhat apparent in the years following and became obvious the few years before they gave the boot to Wayne LaPierre and some others. I do believe the current NRA Administration is dedicated to cleaning up and they have through honest communications helped members to replace some of the Board Members also. Seems to me they are trying to be honest, transparent, and frugal now. The one thing they have done wrong in my opinion is hire a “compliance officer” who oversees an internal audit. That is OK in and of itself but they should have also hired… Read more »
We’ve all been singing in the choir of NRA corruption for decades to no avail. They’ve become government
Corruption in the NRA, say it isn’t so. /sarc
Until they clean out the old BODs, NRA will never get another cent from me. There are much better pro 2A orgs that are not full of Fudds.
This is the sort of thing that gave me cause to let my membership and credentials expire. It’s much like the Republicans saying they are the party of fiscal sanity and personal responsibility.
for things to have gotten as bad as they were, most of the board had to be getting money or bennies
“[S]haring what details he could while bound by his fiduciary obligations as a sitting NRA Board member…”
A board member’s fiduciary obligation is to the organization. He was legally and ethically bound to report the corruption to both law enforcement and to the membership, but did not.