NRA exec sheltered on borrowed yacht after mass shootings

DALLAS (AP) — After school shootings that left dozens dead in recent years, National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre said the resulting outrage put him in such danger that he sought shelter aboard a borrowed 108-foot (32.92-meter) yacht.

During a deposition, the head of the powerful gun-rights group’s acknowledged sailing in The Bahamas with his family as a “security retreat” in the summers following a 2012 school shootings in Connecticut and a 2018 massacre in Florida.

“I was basically under presidential threat without presidential security in terms of the number of threats I was getting,” LaPierre said, according to a transcript of the deposition filed in court over the weekend. “And this was the one place that I hope could feel safe, where I remember getting there going, ‘Thank God I’m safe, nobody can get me here.’”

The testimony emerged in a federal bankruptcy trail over whether the NRA should be allowed to incorporate in Texas instead of New York, where a state lawsuit is trying to put it out of business. LaPierre is scheduled to take the witness stand in the case, which is being conducted virtually before a court in Dallas, this week.

The NRA declared bankruptcy in January, months after New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, sued seeking the group’s dissolution over claims that top executives illegally diverted tens of millions of dollars for lavish personal trips, no-show contracts for associates and other questionable expenditures.

In the deposition, LaPierre said he did not pay to use Hollywood producer Stanton McKenzie's yacht, which came with a cook, a motor boat and a pair of Sea-Doo personal watercraft. He said he did not think using the vessel, dubbed Illusions, violated the NRA's conflict-of-interest policy because the summer sailing trips were for...