Corruption. The dictionary defines it as “dishonest or illegal behavior, especially by powerful people.”
How else to explain the failures of both the Florida Senate and the Florida ethics commission to hold powerful National Rifle Association lobbyist and board member Marion Hammer accountable for not disclosing more than $1.7 million in arguably illegal payments she received from the NRA between 2007 and 2018?
The New York Attorney General’s Office figured out much of the NRA’s self-dealing scheme, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in unapproved payments to Hammer, and exposed it for everyone to see in a lawsuit last summer. And last week, even the tax-exempt NRA itself began to acknowledge the abuse of its funds by identifying in its annual 990 form for 2019 its chief executive – and key Hammer ally – Wayne LaPierre and other current and former executives as having used the NRA’s coffers like a personal piggybank.
So why didn’t two of Florida’s most powerful institutions catch on and enforce the law against Hammer? The apparent answer: endemic corruption.