Tucked seven pages into the federal lawsuit filed by former National Rifle Association President Marion Hammer against the organization she served for more than 40 years is a bombshell allegation that a leading gun control group offered her millions of dollars to retire and step away from the Second Amendment cause.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee Division, is this paragraph on Page 7:
“In 2018, Plaintiff (Hammer) was contacted by an attorney representing the Brady gun control group. The group offered five million dollars ($5,000,000) to Plaintiff if she would retire and cease advancing the interests of the NRA and defending the Second Amendment.”
TGM reached out to the Brady Center for comment, but received no response.
However, there was a reaction from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which quickly called for an IRS investigation into the allegation. In a statement to the media Tuesday, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb declared, “This is not the kind of offer a tax exempt organization should be making under any circumstances. First and foremost, nobody’s First Amendment rights should ever be for sale, and secondly, the nature of this allegation almost appears as though the gun control group was offering Mrs. Hammer a bribe to walk away from an issue to which she had dedicated most of her adult life.”
In an email exchange with Hammer, who is now retired and living in Tallahassee, where she worked for years as a lobbyist and headed the Unified Sportsmen of Florida, the longtime gun rights advocate said she did not recall the attorney’s name.
“All I remember is that he told me that the Brady Campaign was willing to pay me 5 million dollars to simply walk away from NRA and the gun issue,” Hammer, now 86, explained. “I was SHOCKED. But I immediately said no. I was not then nor have I ever been for sale.”
She immediately reported the conversation to then-NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and another official, Chief of Staff Josh Powell.
“It seemed to me like they (Brady) were accustomed to buying people and I simply wasn’t for sale,” Hammer recalled. “I have no idea why they would make the offer to me.”
CCRKBA’s call for an IRS investigation, Gottlieb explained to TGM, was the right thing to do.
“A claim of this nature, especially in a federal lawsuit, absolutely deserves some investigation,” Gottlieb said in the CCRKBA statement. “While it appears no money ever exchanged hands, the idea such an offer was even made raises serious questions about what the gun control lobby does with its money, and whether this sort of thing is acceptable under tax exempt guidelines.”
CCRKBA’s statement was posted Tuesday at AmmoLand News by Editor-in-Chief Fredy Riehl.
In Hammer’s email, she noted how she would have “insisted it (the offer) be in writing so I could hold them to it…I still feel like laughing when I think about them being so bold with me.”
Hammer encouraged TGM to “keep pursuing this.”
Hammer, who continued to serve on the NRA Board of Directors and Executive Council for some two decades following her precedent-setting presidency—she was the association’s first female president—resigned from the board last fall in what has become a dispute over a consulting contract. This dispute resulted in the federal lawsuit alleging breach of contract and “fraudulent misrepresentation, conversion and violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practice Act.”
In his prepared statement to the media, CCRKBA’s Gottlieb said, “We have absolutely no interest in, nor are we taking any position on, Mrs. Hammer’s lawsuit. Our sole interest is in this apparent attempt by a wealthy gun prohibition lobbying organization to essentially silence one of the nation’s most respected and effective voices in support of Second Amendment rights.”
