Danny Hakim and Christopher Mele

North said he would not be renominated in a letter that was read on his behalf at the group’s annual convention, where he and insurgents in the organization had sought to oust Wayne LaPierre, the group’s longtime chief executive.

The power struggle was likely to be resolved at the group’s board meeting Monday.

Behind it is a widening crisis involving a legal battle between the NRA and its most influential contractor, Ackerman McQueen, amid renewed threats from regulators in New York, where the NRA is chartered, to investigate the group’s tax-exempt status. With contributions lagging, the NRA is also facing an increasingly well-financed gun control movement, motivated by a string of mass shootings.

In the statement that was read to group members, North said he believed a committee should be created to review the NRA’s finances. There is a “clear crisis” and “it needs to be dealt with” if the NRA is to survive, he said.

North, who was recently installed as president, was the central figure in the Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair and remains a hero to many on the right. His announcement caught high-ranking members of the organization off guard, as well as members.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” one member asked a reporter Saturday, outside a ballroom where the group was holding a meeting of its membership.

But LaPierre appeared to be fully in control of the group at the meeting, receiving healthy applause from the members during a speech that was heavily critical of two leading New York politicians that have been thorns in his group’s side: Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Attorney General Letitia James.

“He and his supporters will stop at nothing to advance his personal political agenda,” LaPierre said of Cuomo.

On Wednesday, North had asked LaPierre to resign. On Thursday, LaPierre, in a letter to the NRA’s board, accused North of threatening to leak damaging information about him and other NRA executives unless he stepped down.

“Yesterday evening, I was forced to confront one of those defining choices — styled, in the parlance of extortionists — as an offer I couldn’t refuse,” LaPierre wrote. “I refused it.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/us/oliver-north-nra.html" id="46300863-c51d-3c0c-a33f-e7faaeb5e13c">The New York Times</a>.

INDIANAPOLIS — The president of the National Rifle Association, Oliver North, announced Saturday that he would not serve a second term as the gun rights group faces some of its worst turmoil in years and grapples with an internal battle for its future.

North Says No 2nd Term as NRA Chief

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Danny Hakim and Christopher Mele

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North Says No 2nd Term as NRA Chief