The National Rifle Association’s second-in-command resigned Wednesday, just a day after the organization shut down NRA TV.
Chris Cox, the head of the NRA’s political arm the NRA-ILA, resigned Wednesday after he was suspended for participating in an attempted extortion plot against NRA chief Wayne LaPierre, The Washington Post reported.
LaPierre announced Cox’s resignation in an email to members Wednesday.
Cox was suspended after it was reported that he was in on former NRA President Oliver North’s attempt to extort LaPierre into stepping down amid a scandal over the group’s spending and its legal battle with longtime advertising agency Ackerman McQueen, which operated the group’s NRA TV channel.
Cox has denied that he was part of the attempted coup against LaPierre.
Cox earned about $1.1 million per year from the group, according to The Post.
NRA TV also shut down:
Cox’s resignation came just one day after the NRA cut ties with Ackerman McQueen and NRA TV and sent hosts like Dana Loesch packing, The New York Times reported.
“The NRA regrets that a longstanding, formerly productive relationship comes to an end in this fashion,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam wrote in a letter Tuesday to Ackerman McQueen official Revan McQueen.
Ackerman McQueen accused the NRA of “delinquent payments” owed to the firm.
“For Ackerman McQueen, it is time to move on to a new chapter without the chaos that has enveloped the NRA,” the company said.
The NRA is having a bad year:
“The gun group has struggled to right its finances; faced investigations in Congress and by the New York attorney general; and witnessed a leadership struggle that pitted Oliver North, until recently the N.R.A.’s president, against Mr. LaPierre,” The New York Times reported. “The move comes amid a flurry of lawsuits between the N.R.A. and Ackerman, and increasing acrimony that surfaced after two prominent N.R.A. board members first criticized NRATV in an article in The Times in March. The separation had become inevitable: The two sides said last month that they were ending their partnership of more than three decades.”
