The ad agency once responsible for the National Rifle Association’s online streaming channel is now going after one of NRA TV’s former hosts — one-time KXAS-TV (NBC5) reporter-turned-unsuccessful Congressional candidate Grant Stinchfield.

Ackerman McQueen is already tied up in litigation with the NRA over numerous issues, including allegations of overbilling and fraud, as well as countless personal grievances. This new suit, filed Friday in Dallas federal court, is just one more court case involving the NRA, which has spent most of this year entangled in battles being waged at the courthouse, the New York attorney general’s office and in its own boardrooms.

The new filing claims that earlier this month Stinchfield made “false and disparaging” remarks about the NRA’s former public relations firm. Ackerman’s lawsuit alleges an affidavit signed by Stinchfield on Dec. 10 was meant to “hurt its standing and improve the National Rifle Association of America, Inc.’s standing in the eyes of the American public.”

The lawsuit doesn’t say how much Ackerman is seeking in damages, only that it exceeds $75,000.

Stinchfield, who left local TV news in 2012 to run against longtime Rep. Kenny Marchant, once hosted an eponymous show on NRA TV, described by The Atlantic as “part lifestyle channel, part gun-lobby orifice.” The affidavit claims Stinchfield was “the most-watched on-air personality on NRA TV.”

Backstage at NRA TV, which, at the time, was broadcasting Grant Stinchfield's show, which he used to film out of his Dallas home. (NRATV.com)

NRA TV was headquartered out of an office near Klyde Warren Park until June, when the NRA severed ties with Ackerman, which has an office in Dallas and spent decades honing the NRA’s image — and “long safeguarded the NRA’s secrets,” as The New York Times reported over the weekend.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s longtime chief executive, said the NRA canceled its streaming arm because “many members expressed concern about the messaging on NRA TV becoming too far removed from our core mission: defending the Second Amendment.” An Oct. 25 court filing went even further.

Court documents filed in Dallas alleged that as Ackerman’s “bills grew ever larger, NRA TV’s messaging strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist. One particularly damaging segment featured children’s cartoon characters adorned in Ku Klux Klan hoods.”

That was a segment hosted by Southlake’s Dana Loesch, who put Thomas the Tank Engine and friends in Klan outfits to mock the show’s “gender and ethnic diversity.” Loesch also served as the NRA’s spokesperson.

Stinchfield was best known for another of the channel’s most viral offerings: a 39-second ad released in February 2018. In the spot, the former KXAS reporter, wearing protective goggles and the NRA’s “Socialist Tears” T-shirt, took a sledgehammer to a television showing images from Saturday Night Live, CNN, and HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. Then came NRA TV’s tagline: “Our greatest weapon is truth.”

"Smashing a TV doesn’t prove any of those clips wrong,” GQ noted at the time. “It just means that its owner needs to go to Best Buy tomorrow.”

This new lawsuit involving Stinchfield is just one more salvo fired in what began as an ugly legal battle between two longtime partners who “have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins,” The New Yorker reported in April. The fight being waged by Dallas attorneys has only become more unpleasant with each passing month.

It began in April, when the NRA, which was paying Ackerman some $40 million a year, sued for access to business records, which would have included NRA TV. It also wanted to know how Oliver North, the retired Marine lieutenant colonel at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal, came to serve as an NRA TV host — and as the NRA’s president. As the struggle over the NRA’s reins intensified, pitting NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre against North, the two groups sued each other over alleged smears uttered in the press and in private.

In his affidavit, Stinchfield alleges that Ackerman was “intent upon transforming itself from an ad agency into a live television newsroom, and using the NRA to finance this goal.” He also alleged that the metrics used to “describe the performance and viewership of NRA TV ... were distorted and did not tell the whole story of how few actual live viewers we had.”

NRA TV anchor and reporter Grant Stinchfield checks his handgun after firing at DFW Gun Range in Dallas. (Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer)

The new lawsuit, filed by the Dallas law firm of Dorsey & Whitney, claims none of this is true, and that “AMc did not seek to expand NRA TV’s live programming with the intent of transforming AMc into a newsroom, much less with the intent of financing its metamorphosis using the NRA’s money.”

The lawsuit claims the NRA TV “footprint” — and its budget — was approved by LaPierre, with whom his longtime ad agency is now at war.

The affidavit was quoted by two news outlets earlier this month: Newsweek and The Daily Beast. But it doesn’t appear in any recent court filings, because, according to a spokesman for the NRA’s Dallas-based law firm Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, it hasn’t yet been filed. Instead, said Travis Carter, Brewer’s managing director of public affairs, it was sent to Ackerman’s lawyers.

A collage of shots from NRA TV as featured on the website of Ackerman McQueen, the advertising agency that has crafted the public image of the National Rifle Association for decades. (Screenshot of Ackerman McQueen website / Ackerman McQueen)

Ackerman alleges Brewer actually “published the affidavit directly to the press as part of the smear campaign against AMc. In fact, the recipients of the written statement used it to generate negative press about AMc just days after Defendant signed it.”

Stinchfield did not work for the NRA, as the streaming service was entirely an Ackerman operation.

But in a statement provided to The Dallas Morning News on Monday, William Brewer III, namesake at Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, said Stinchfield’s affidavit “validates many of the NRA’s claims and allegations against the agency. The NRA believes this filing underscores what, in the end, was driving Ackerman’s management of NRA TV — its own financial self-interest and desire to build a live TV platform on the backs of NRA members.”

Stinchfield declined comment when reached at his Dallas home Monday morning, citing the new lawsuit. Instead, he sent a brief statement.

“The fact that Ackerman is even responding to my affidavit with a lawsuit against me is more proof of why I am so sad for the company I was once happy to work for,” he said. “Though I am not employed by the NRA, I am a longtime member and I am proud to speak the truth on its behalf.”

That’s similar to the one he sent Newsweek last week, but it left out the last line: “Ackerman’s response to my affidavit makes it clear, nothing triggers like truth.”