When investigative reporter Alan Berlow donated “a dollar here and a dollar there” to the National Rifle Association, he was curious where the money would go. To his surprise, some of it did not wind up in the organization’s coffers, as he believed its website promised, but rather in the account of its political action committee: the NRA Political Victory Fund.

Soliciting money for a PAC without making specific disclosures is illegal, according to various legal experts. In the process of his reporting, Berlow discovered that the NRA was apparently running afoul of all kinds of political-solicitation and campaign-spending laws. Among other things, the organization appears to have failed to report nearly $33 million in political expenditures between 2008 and 2013.

Now the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed formal complaints with both the IRS and the Federal Election Commission, asking them to audit the NRA. The move comes less than two months after Berlow’s story was published on Yahoo News.

[Photo: Flickr user Dominik Meissner]

Mike Spies
Mike has produced numerous high-impact investigative projects focusing on the gun lobby, including a series that revealed widespread self-dealing at the National Rifle Association and an in-depth exploration of the gun industry’s role in the suicide crisis. A finalist for The Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award, the series led to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s lawsuit seeking to dissolve the NRA and her office’s ongoing attempts to hold its leadership accountable. Spies has also earned a New York Press Club Award for continuing coverage, and in 2017 was recognized as a finalist for the Livingston Award. His bylines have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, POLITICO magazine, Rolling Stone, and ProPublica, where he worked as a reporter focusing on democracy issues and the federal government.