NRA National Rifle Association

“The National Rifle Association appears to have illegally coordinated its political advertising with Republican candidates in at least three recent high-profile Senate races, according to Federal Communications Commission records. In Senate races in Missouri and Montana in 2018, and North Carolina in 2016, the gun group’s advertising blitzes on behalf of GOP candidates Josh Hawley, Matt Rosendale, and Richard Burr were authorized by the very same media consultancy that the candidates themselves used — an apparent violation of laws designed to prevent independent groups from synchronizing their efforts with political campaigns.

In December, The Trace and Mother Jones reported on a similar pattern of coordination between the NRA and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, Trump and the NRA hired affiliates of the same company — National Media Research, Planning and Placement — to direct their ad spending. Employees of that firm, operating under different corporate identities, placed ads for both Trump and the NRA on television stations across the country, with the apparent goal of reinforcing each other’s message.

Representatives of National Media, operating under the name Red Eagle Media, also bought ads on behalf of the NRA in support of some of the group’s preferred Senate candidates, and simultaneously bought ads for those Senate candidates while acting as a supposedly separate entity called American Media & Advocacy Group (AMAG). In at least 10 instances across the Missouri, Montana, and North Carolina races, FCC records show that ad purchases for both the NRA and the Senate campaigns were authorized by National Media’s chief financial officer, Jon Ferrell.

In the Missouri race, in which state Attorney General Josh Hawley unseated Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill, the NRA flooded local TV stations with ads supportive of Hawley in the month before the election. On the CBS affiliate KOAM, which serves the southwest part of the state, the NRA paid for almost 70 ads that aired during the first half of October.

FCC records show that those ads were purchased on the NRA’s behalf by Red Eagle Media — which, according to corporate records, is just an “assumed or fictitious name” used by National Media.Just the day before, KOAM had received an order for ads from the Hawley campaign. The paperwork accompanying that order shows that the spots were purchased on Hawley’s behalf by AMAG, which has been described by its lawyer as a National Media affiliate. The paperwork is signed by Ferrell, with a handwritten addendum: “agent for Josh Hawley for Senate.”

The ads that Ferrell placed for the NRA closely align with the list of ads he authorized for the campaign. On October 5, for example, on KOAM’s morning show, an NRA ad about the Senate race ran at 6:39 a.m., and a Hawley campaign ad ran five minutes later. During “Wheel of Fortune,” a Hawley ad ran at 6:42 p.m., and an NRA ad supporting Hawley followed at 6:59.

A similar pattern played out in Montana, where Democratic Senator Jon Tester beat back a challenge from State Auditor Matt Rosendale, despite more than $500,000 in NRA spending on Rosendale’s behalf. Records show that Ferrell signed off on a Red Eagle order for NRA ads backing Rosendale on KULR, an NBC affiliate in Billings, on September 4th. One week later, on September 11, AMAG purchased a slate of ads on the same station on behalf of the Rosendale campaign. The paperwork is signed by Ferrell. As in the Missouri race, he added a handwritten addendum making clear that he was acting on the campaign’s behalf: “Jon Ferrell, agent for Matt Rosendale for Montana.” Those ads ran during many of the same shows that the NRA ads did, including airings of the talk show “Ellen.”

Back in 2016, when North Carolina Republican Richard Burr prevailed against Democratic challenger Deborah Ross, Burr employed National Media outright while the NRA used Red Eagle. As in the other races, Ferrell signed off on purchases for both sides. FCC paperwork filed by WECT, the NBC affiliate in Wilmington, shows Ferrell signing off on purchases for the Burr campaign on October 12, 24, and 27 and November 2 as an “agent for Richard Burr Committee.” At the same time, he authorized Red Eagle purchases on behalf of the NRA on September 19 and October 21.

National Media and Ferrell did not respond to requests for comment; neither did representatives for Hawley, Rosendale, or Burr. AMAG does not appear to have any employees or contacts independent of National Media.

The NRA’s use of National Media and its affiliates to coordinate with the Trump and Hawley campaigns is currently the focus of two complaints before the FEC by the Campaign Legal Center and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Although federal law prohibits such coordination, it’s rarely enforced as a practical matter. The FEC, which oversees elections, has been deadlocked along partisan lines for a decade. (FEC enforcement matters are confidential until resolved; it’s unclear if the NRA has formally responded to the complaints.)

The Trace identified at least four current or former National Media employees, including CFO Jon Ferrell, who are named in FCC filings as representatives of both the Trump campaign and the NRA during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential election.

The form filed with the Cleveland station on behalf of the NRA by Red Eagle in September 2016 lists a person named Kristy Kovatch as a point of contact. (An identical form that Red Eagle filed for the NRA with WCPO in Cincinnati also lists Kovatch.) Kovatch is a senior buyer for National Media, specializing in “television media buying for political candidates, issue/advocacy groups and public affairs clients.” According to her bio on the company’s web site, she’s been with the firm for 20 years.

Throughout the fall of 2016, Kovatch was also involved in ad purchases for Trump. Just three days before she was named in records as the contact for Red Eagle in Cleveland and Cincinnati, she appeared in the same role on an AMAG advertising request sheet filed for the Trump campaign with an NBC Telemundo station in Miami. FCC documents also list her as the AMAG buyer or contact for various other Florida stations.

Another National Media employee, Ben Angle, was identified in the 2018 bookInside Campaigns: Elections Through the Eyes of Political Professionals as an architect of Trump’s airwave strategy. “In mid-September,” the book says, “Angle and his boss were summoned to Trump Tower and told their firm would be placing all of the Trump campaign’s television advertising during the last seven weeks of the campaign.”

A fourth staffer whose name appears on both NRA and Trump campaign documents, Caroline Kowalski, left National Media in 2017. Her title was “media specialist,” according to her LinkedIn page. Within the span of one week in late October and early November 2016, she was listed as the Red Eagle contact for an NRA ad purchase in Cape Coral, Florida, and as the AMAG contact for a Trump campaign placement at a CBS station in Philadelphia.”

The Mystery Firm That Became the NRA’s Top Election Consultant – POLITICO Mike Spies July 13, 2018 “Heading into the 2014 midterm elections, polls showed the Republican Party had an opportunity to retake control of the Senate. Such a change would severely limit President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda during his final two years in office, an outcome that was especially attractive to the National Rifle Association. In the wake of devastating events like the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the president had become an aggressive promoter of new gun regulations.

To get its message out, the NRA turned to an unknown consulting firm, Starboard Strategic, paying it $19 million. More than a third of that money was invested in must-win Senate seats in Colorado, North Carolina and Arkansas — three of the most expensive in the country — paying for a host of television, radio and internet ads.”  Before 2013, Starboard Strategic had never appeared in Federal Election Commission reports. Someone curious about the firm would have found a skeletal website that listed no staff, clients, address, phone number or previous work. There was just some generic branding language (“Good advertising and good ground operations start with good strategy”) and a basic email address: info@starboardstrategicinc.com.

Well-established and well-connected, OnMessage is as transparent as Starboard is opaque. What the Federal Election Commission and the public do not know is that the two entities appear to be functionally one and the same.

In 2014, among OnMessage’s most prominent clients were three Republican challengers vying for Senate seats in the same races where the NRA would pay Starboard some of its biggest outlays of the cycle: Thom Tillis, in North Carolina; Cory Gardner, in Colorado; and Tom Cotton, in Arkansas. All of these candidates would defeat Democratic incumbents, cementing the result for which GOP leaders and the NRA had mobilized: a Republican majority in the upper chamber to match the one in the House. Each challenger paid OnMessage $5 million to $8 million, far more than they paid any other vendors.

In 2016, the NRA’s federal election payments to Starboard ballooned to $40 million, a massive portion of the gun rights group’s total independent spending for the year, which came to almost $53 million. That cycle, when Johnson was defending his Wisconsin Senate seat for the first time, his campaign paid OnMessage almost $4 million. The payments stopped in August. Just over two months later, the NRA aided in the reelection effort, and tapped Starboard for nearly $200,000 in advertising.

The sum the NRA paid to Starboard in 2016 was split between the group’s Political Victory Fund and its Institute for Legislative Action. The transactions paid by the ILA accounted for roughly $23.4 million. Unlike the Victory Fund, a freestanding organization affiliated with the gun group, the ILA is a component of the NRA’s nonprofit corporation, which means its financial records are subject to oversight by the Internal Revenue Service. In the NRA’s tax filings, it is required to disclose its top five independent contractors for any given year, and that includes contractors retained by its divisions, such as the ILA. In 2016, Starboard was not included on the list, even though, based on what it received from ILA, it would have ranked as the NRA’s second highest-earning contractor.

On January 20, 2017, the day of Trump’s inauguration, Brad Todd wrote a blog post on OnMessage’s website. “When no other outside group on the Republican side of the aisle believed in this race, the NRA made its biggest investment in any Presidential election,” he wrote. “They went in early and they went in big.” Todd added, “OnMessage Inc. was proud to partner with the NRA and produce their ads in this election.”

A month later, OnMessage received a Reed Award for an NRA spot it had created the previous year. The category was “Best Ad For Independent Expenditure Campaign — Presidential,” and the winning entry features a woman in bed who is awoken by a burglar. In one hand she grips a phone, and with the other she opens a gun safe, which suddenly disappears before her eyes. “Don’t let Hillary leave you protected with nothing but a phone,” a narrator warns. Currently, the ad can be viewed on OnMessage’s website, by clicking the tab labeled “Our Work.”

Conservative Legal Interests Funneled $2.7 Million To NRA, Freedom Partners Around Gorsuch Fight – MapLight Andrew Perez |January 07, 2019

The Trump adviser, Leonard Leo, is the executive vice president at the Federalist Society, the influential conservative lawyers network in Washington, D.C. Leo has served as Trump’s judicial adviser and successfully shepherded both Gorsuch and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh through their confirmations.

America Engaged, a Virginia nonprofit formed in 2016, is the latest dark money organization to spring up in the Federalist Society’s orbit since Trump was elected. Tax documents obtained by MapLight show Leo is the group’s president. While America Engaged has received scant attention, records show it donated $950,000 to the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action in 2017, as well as $700,000 to Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the “secret bank” for billionaire libertarian activist Charles Koch.

The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action announced in March 2017 that it would spend at least $1 million on television ads pressuring conservative Democrats to support Gorsuch. Freedom Partners released an online video touting Gorsuch’s qualifications and urging the Senate to confirm him. Concerned Veterans for America, another organization in the Koch network, made more than 500,000 phone calls and distributed direct mail in support of Gorsuch, according to the Washington Post.

In the past few years, Leo has been tied to the BH Group, a Virginia LLC that donated $1 million in anonymous cash to the Trump inaugural committee. Leo is also the president of the BH Fund, a nonprofit that was granted influence over academic matters at George Mason University’s law school as part of a large, anonymous donation to the school. The BH Fund donated $2.3 million to America Engaged in 2017, accounting for all but $100 of the money America Engaged raised.

The driving force for Trump’s two high court confirmations was the Judicial Crisis Network, a dark money organization that Leo effectively controls, according to the Daily Beast. JCN claims it spent $10 million to promote Gorsuch. The network contributed $1 million to the NRA between July 2016 and June 2017.

“It’s striking to see the abrupt change in course Leo seems to have taken when Trump was elected,” said Robert Maguire, the research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington who was the first to discover Leo’s role in driving anonymous money to the Trump inaugural committee.”

The head of Florida’s school safety commission is reportedly feeding the NRA nonpublic information about the Parkland mass shooting The commission recently recommended arming teachers, a policy favored by the NRA Media Matters December 19, 2018  TIMOTHY JOHNSON “National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch purported to share nonpublic information about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to bolster her argument that teachers should be armed. Loesch, who made the claim on her non-NRA affiliated radio show, said that she was given the information by Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who chairs a Republican-appointed school safety commission created after the February 14 mass shooting in Parkland, FL.

The commission recently released a draft report that recommends arming teachers who receive training and undergo a background check. This finding is contrary to analyses by experts that conclude arming teachers would actually increase danger to teachers and students. A final report from the commission will be sent to Florida’s governor and state legislature by January 1.”

G. Kline Preston IV-Lawyer linking NRA and Russia helped lead Marsha Blackburn campaigns, documents show Kline Preston said he helped head Blackburn’s re-election efforts—while bringing NRA and Russian officials together. CASEY MICHELJUN 8, 2018 “But as documents obtained by ThinkProgress reveal, Blackburn was far closer to Preston than has previously been reported. Preston not only listed himself as the “Campaign Finance Chairman” for Blackburn, but additionally worked for years as the president of Marsha Blackburn for Congress, Inc.

According to information now removed from his website, Preston says he served as president for Marsha Blackburn for Congress, Inc. through at least 2014, with official documents showing the work beginning in 2003. During the same time period, he also introduced Alexander Torshin, a now-sanctioned Russian official accused of mafia ties and massive money laundering in Europe, to then-NRA President David Keene. For good measure, documents filed show that Marsha Blackburn for Congress, Inc., also listed Blackburn’s husband as the registered agent, and listed Blackburn’s address as its own.”