In a sweeping rebuke of the National Rifle Association, the nation’s most prominent gun rights group, a Manhattan jury ruled on Friday that N.R.A. leaders had engaged in a pattern of financial misconduct and corruption.
The jury, after a week of deliberations, found that the group’s former leader, Wayne LaPierre, had used N.R.A. funds to pay for personal expenses, including vacations, luxury flights for his relatives and rides on superyachts. Jurors found that he misspent $5.4 million, some of which he has repaid.
The trial, in the courtroom of Justice Joel M. Cohen of State Supreme Court stemmed from a lawsuit brought in 2020 by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. The N.R.A., which was chartered as a nonprofit group in New York in 1871, has been plagued by financial trouble and internal conflict in recent years.
Lawyers for Ms. James, a Democrat, presented evidence at trial that Mr. LaPierre had misspent millions of dollars on an array of inappropriate expenses, some of which bordered on the bizarre, such as the use of helicopters to avoid traffic during trips to NASCAR races. Other expense reports showed Mr. LaPierre seeking reimbursement for mosquito treatment and landscaping at his house.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Danny Hakim contributed reporting.