Lawyers collected millions while secretly acting as NRA fronts for Supreme Court amicus briefs: report

According to a comprehensive report for Politico, as the Donald Trump administration with the help of Senate Republicans was ramrodding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh through his Supreme Court hearings, the top leadership of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were holding meetings at a Westin Hotel where they agreed to allocate funds to back a series of lawsuits they hoped would make it to the court as well as lining up and paying attorneys who would submit friend of the court briefs to boost their chances.

As reporter Will Van Sant wrote, the NRA for decades has been spending millions of dollars in fees and grants to lawyers who would make their case for them without the attorneys divulging who was paying them for their time and efforts.

In many cases, those arguments made their way to the now-conservative majority court.

Case in point, the report notes that gun rights attorney David T. Hardy has been the recipient of the NRA's largesse to the tune of "more than $750,000 since 2002, though the full amount may be higher (the filings detail only a portion of recent grants)," Van Sant wrote before reporting, "A former NRA official familiar with the arrangement who was given anonymity in order to speak candidly, said that in addition to the grants, Hardy was long paid sums directly from the budget of NRA boss Wayne LaPierre, who was the best man at Hardy’s 1982 wedding."

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According to the report, Hardy "did not disclose the financial support he has long-received from the NRA," with Van Sant adding, "Hardy’s connection to the NRA is not unique."

"An examination of the 49 pro-NRA amicus briefs filed in Bruen, along with court and IRS filings, shows that over the last two decades, the NRA has given financial support to at least 12 of the groups and individuals who lobbied the court on its behalf," he wrote. "Only one of those 12 briefs disclosed the connection, meaning that neither the justices nor the public were told that 11 of these ostensibly independent voices owed their livelihoods in part to the NRA, the interest group behind the case."

According to the report, Hardy's arguments were well-represented in Justice Clarence Thomas's majority Bruen opinion.

That, in turn, has led to questions about the ethics of hiding the funding for briefs designed to manipulate the opinions of the court's nine justices.

According to Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, "Reasonable people would question whether justices should be accepting these briefs."

"The amicus engine has a brake — at least in theory. Supreme Court rules require amicus filers to disclose whether any other entity — and especially parties in a case or their attorneys — have made a 'monetary contribution' to the 'preparation or submission' of a brief," the report states. "The 2007 rule, which requires disclosure when funds have been channeled to the amicus filer or its attorneys, was prompted by concerns that litigants were silently financing favorable briefs."

You can read much more here.