By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
At 86, lobbyist and grandma Marion Hammer remains ready to rumble – this time against her once steadfast ally, the National Rifle Association.
Hammer, a former NRA president and female face of the NRA, sued the beleaguered gun rights group earlier this month, alleging her longtime cash cow unlawfully breached the 10-year $220,000-a-year consulting contract she signed in 2018 with the NRA’s now-disgraced former boss Wayne LaPierre. Hammer is also seeking cash damages for fraud and the continued unauthorized use of her name, image and likeness.
Hammer has said the deal was LaPierre’s way of funding Hammer’s retirement because, as an independent contractor and not an employee, she was never included in the NRA’s retirement plan. The NRA approved the plan in 2018.
The complaint doesn’t specify how much she wants the NRA to pay her, but her alleged contract losses alone total more than $1 million. She also contends, without offering any proof, that she accepted the NRA’s contract even though an attorney with the gun control group Brady United offered her $5 million that year “if she would retire and cease advancing the interests of the NRA and defending the Second Amendment.”
Hammer did not name the Brady attorney who allegedly made the offer. Brady’s press person did not respond to a Florida Bulldog request for comment Wednesday.
“Marion Hammer has given her entire working life to the NRA. Time and again, she was called upon to fearlessly defend the NRA and Second Amendment rights, while enduring the wrath of NRA opponents and vigilantes who repeatedly tried to intimidate her and force her disassociation from the NRA and its mission,” says the 20-page complaint filed on her behalf by Leon County attorney Richard Coates.
“Now, after giving the fruits of her life’s labor to the NRA, she has been abandoned by the very association she so fearlessly defended. Instead of honoring its commitments to her, the NRA has turned its back upon its namesake Woman of Distinction, breached its final contract with her and attempted to smear her impeccable reputation.”
The NRA is “actively seeking” to not only remove Hammer from her unpaid seat on the NRA’s Executive Council, but to kick her out of the group “as if she never existed,” the complaint says.
Hammer’s lawsuit, to which the NRA has yet to respond, is pending in federal court in Tallahassee, where she resides.
NRA LOBBYIST HAMMER A POWERFUL INFLUENCE
Since the early 1980s, Hammer has been widely seen out front during the NRA’s fight to both expand gun rights while simultaneously parrying any attempts at gun control. More often than not, she was on the winning side of disputes.
As NRA lobbyist in Florida, she persuaded Florida lawmakers to enact her unique ideas for new pro-gun laws that later spread across the country. Her most notable initiatives are Florida’s 1987 concealed carry law and 2005’s Stand Your Ground law. Her proudest achievement, she’s said, was the creation of the NRA’s Eddie Eagle gun safety program for children.
But as Florida Bulldog reported in April 2024, Hammer has said she was unceremoniously “dumped” that month by the New York-based NRA, just two months after a jury there found that the nonprofit NRA had failed to properly administer charitable funds and violated state laws protecting whistleblowers.
“Since the date of the telephone call, the NRA has withheld lawfully due payments to Ms. Hammer, leaving her with only social security as income,” the suit says. “Even worse, in an effort to manufacture an excuse to avoid its obligations, the NRA now claims to be reviewing the contract (again) to see whether an excess benefit was given. This so-called review, however, is retrospective and will never cure the NRA’s breach or restore the damages which Plaintiff has suffered.”
The New York Attorney General’s Office brought its lawsuit against the NRA in 2020. In 2022, NRA general counsel and corporate secretary John Frazer testified that Hammer actually received three income streams from the NRA. The biggest was the 10-year contract. He said she also received another $50,000 from an annual consulting contract with the NRA-Institute for Legislative Action and a chunk of another $260,000 a year in grants to Unified Sportsmen of Florida (USF), a nonprofit affiliate of the NRA where Hammer is the longtime executive director. [Other documentation states that $260,000 figure is actually $216,000.]
Hammer’s annual salary via USF is listed on the group’s federal tax return for 2023 and before as $110,000. If all that is indeed gone, she’s taking a $380,000-a-year hit.
HAMMER’S DEAL WITH EX-NRA CEO LAPIERRE
NRA CEO and executive vice president LaPierre, who retired abruptly during jury selection early last year, and former NRA chief financial officer Wilson Phillips were found liable for financial misconduct. LaPierre, 75, was ordered to pay the NRA $4.35 million and Phillips $2 million. The NRA itself and chief-of-staff Joshua Powell were found liable for making false statements on the NRA’s regulatory filings. Powell settled for $100,000 before the trial began.
The NRA was ordered to enact more than a dozen governance reforms such as changing how board members are elected and requiring the full board to elect members of the audit committee, previously filled by LaPierre loyalists who the AG’s office said “failed to exercise proper oversight of the organization’s finances.”
Hammer’s lawsuit against the NRA says she “endured death threats’’ for her association with the NRA before she decided in 2022 to step down from continued lobbying efforts in Florida “unrelated to the contract.”
Hammer also alleges the NRA defrauded her in March 2023 when an NRA employee came to here home and asked her to make a tax-deductible donation to the Women’s Leadership Forum, a part of the NRA Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. Her complaint says he handed over three checks to the employee in the amounts of $2,500, $1500 and $1,000.
But the $1,000 check properly was deposited in the NRA Foundation’s account. The $2,500 check went into the NRA’s bank account, and the $1,500 check, the complaint says, was “discarded” and the NRA has refused to tell her what happened to it. The NRA is a 501(c)(4) organization and donations to it are not tax deductible.
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