| Net Worth: | $20 Million |
| Salary: | $985 Thousand |
Wayne LaPierre net worth and salary: Wayne LaPierre is an American author and gun rights advocate who has a net worth of $20 million. As the executive vice president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre earns an annual salary of $985,000 according to the organization’s most recent Form 990 filing. He also typically earns a bonus of around $150,000. Between 2014 and 2015 he earned $5,110,985 from the NRA thanks largely to a $3.7 million retirement plan distribution. He also allegedly has a $17 million post-employment contract with the organization.
The NRA’s annual revenue is around $400 million. Annual contributions are round $100 million. The NRA pays around $33 million per year in salary and wages to employees and in recent years has lost $15 – 45 million per year on its operations. Around 56 people at the NRA earn more than $100,000 per year.
Surprisingly, Wayne is periodically not the highest paid person. In various years, that honor has gone to executive director of general operations, Kayne B. Robinson who earns a little more than $1 million in base salary.
Wayne LaPierre was born in Schenectady, New York in November 1949. He is best known for being the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, a position he has held since 1991. LaPierre is a known critic of gun control policies and is also the CEO of the NRA and an author. He has served on the board of directors for the American Association of Political Consultants, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the American Conservative Union. LaPierre joined the NRA in 1977. He has authored the books Guns, Crime, and Freedom, Shooting Straight: Telling the Truth About Guns in America, Guns, Freedom, and Terrorism, The Global War on Your Guns, The Essential Second Amendment Guide, and America Disarmed: Inside the U.N. and Obama’s Scheme to Destroy the Second Amendment.
Alleged Financial Improprieties: On August 6, 2020, New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the NRA amid allegations that the organization violated non-profit laws by allegedly diverting tens of millions of dollars to executives, relatives of executives and other close associates. The lawsuit alleged that Wayne LaPierre and three top executives “instituted a culture of self-dealing, mismanagement and negligent oversight”.
Notable among the allegations:
– LaPierre reportedly used $3.6 million in NRA money over two years on unneeded travel expenses.
– He allegedly used NRA funds to pay for private jet flights for himself and family members. Some of the flights he was on, some he was not. For example, he reportedly used NRA funds to pay for 8 round trip flights to the Bahamas, costing the organization $500,000.
– LaPierre used NRA funds to ferry his family members around the country on private jets. For example, in 2017 he allegedly used NRA funds to pay for a jet to fly 500 miles off course to pick up his niece’s daughter in Nebraska on the way to an event in Dallas.
– He allegedly gave himself a $17 million post-employment contract without getting approval from the NRA’s board of directors.
– He reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of the NRA’s money on his own wardrobe expenses, including spending $39,000 in ONE DAY alone shopping in Beverly Hills.