Here's what Wayne LaPierre's wife thought Trump owed her after NRA played key role in his election

The NRA faces an existential crisis of its leader's own making in a financial scandal that could land him in jail, although his wife's exorbitant spending helped drive some of those possibly criminal excesses.

Susan LaPierre luxuriated in her status as wife of longtime NRA boss Wayne LaPierre, according to the new book "Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA," by NPR journalist Tim Mak, and excerpts published by Rolling Stone show she leveraged that influence in hopes of landing a plum diplomatic appointment -- only to face disappointment.

"At the pinnacle of the National Rifle Association's power, around the inauguration of President Donald Trump, it was good to be Susan LaPierre, the wife of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre." Mak wrote. "The NRA had spent over $30 million in support of Trump's candidacy, more than even the leading pro-Trump super PAC. Susan felt that the NRA had been instrumental in getting Trump elected president, and thus not only did Trump owe the NRA; she thought that by extension Trump owed her."

"She believed then, and has continued to insist for years, that she was up for an appointment by the Trump administration to be ambassador to Slovenia," Mak added. "She got an assignment to the National Park Foundation board instead."

The couple met when Susan was working for an NRA vendor in the 1990s, and she helped transform her husband from "Mr. Rumpled Suit," as one gun lobbyist described Wayne, into a sharp dresser with a taste for mansions and expensive jets -- expenditures the New York attorney general's office is probing for potential criminal violations.

"Wayne did not discover money's alluring glow on his own," Mak wrote. "Susan pushed and prodded him all the way. She wasn't the only one, but she was the only one who lived with him. Both were motivated to keep up with the lifestyles of those around them, and they surrounded themselves with millionaires and billionaires in the gun-owning community."