Josh Powell, the National Rifle Association official who has been presiding over steep and controversial budget cuts within the organization, has been removed from his post as executive director of general operations and given a “promotion” to a strategic role, according to an internal NRA email obtained by The Trace.

Powell was the subject of a Trace investigation that detailed his troubled history as a businessman before joining the NRA in 2016. He left behind a trail of defaulted debts, including 20 lawsuits for more than $400,000 from unpaid vendors.

Last week, The Trace revealed that in 2017, the NRA paid more than $100,000 of Powell’s personal expenses, including a housing allowance, on top of his regular salary of more than $550,000 — which experts described as lavish and out of the ordinary for the nonprofit world. Also last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the NRA has steered lucrative contracts to firms with ties to insiders, including a fund-raising consultant that hired Powell’s wife a few weeks before he signed a contract extension.

The revelations are at odds with the austerity campaign that Powell has been leading in recent months at the NRA, which faced a $55 million revenue drop in 2017. Multiple NRATV staffers were laid off last week, and the NRA even took the drastic step last month of eliminating free coffee and water coolers at its headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.

The moves are, in part, a response to a costly legal battle between the gun group and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, whose regulators have determined that the NRA’s Carry Guard liability insurance product ran afoul of state laws. In April, Cuomo urged insurance companies and banks doing business with the NRA to consider the “reputational” damage they could suffer from working with the group. The NRA responded with a First Amendment lawsuit.

The news about Powell went out to NRA staff on Monday, through an email written by Wayne LaPierre, the group’s executive vice president, who calls the New York lawsuit the NRA’s “Moment of Truth.” He goes on to say that Powell, who is not an attorney, will “support” the “legal team and the NRA in its campaign against the State of New York” as a “senior strategist.” He will also retain his duties as LaPierre’s chief of staff.

The new executive director of operations is Joe DeBergalis, a former NRA board member who has been working directly under Powell since late 2016.

Read the full memo below: