NRA President pays six-figures to settle 2020 election interference lawsuit
Close Trump associate Bill Bachenberg paid to settle a case that shows his role in breaching multiple election systems after the 2020 presidential ballots were cast.
The President of the NRA just paid a monetary settlement to the Israeli-born right-wing computer expert to end a federal defamation and contract lawsuit.
This past week, NRA President and close Trump associate William “Bill” Bachenberg personally paid $500,000 to XR Vision Ltd. and Yaacov Apelbaum, its proprietor, who is a global cybersecurity expert. Bachenberg had hired Apelbaum to breach multiple 2020 county-level election systems unknowingly.
His attorney agreed to payment of the demand in the lawsuit in full for $500,000 in exchange for dismissal of Bachenberg.
It is a tremendous admission by the Pennsylvania Republican mastermind, Bill Bachenberg, that in 2020, he participated in breaching or financing election attacks in multiple states while he was part of the Trump campaign using a pair of lawyers as co-conspirators.
However, the gun rights leader’s lawyer failed to settle the case with all parties, leading to a new round of litigation in his desperate bid to include his currently criminally accused lawyer, Stephanie Lambert Jutilla, Esq., in the now-completed settlement.
It’s a settlement Bachenberg’s lawyer orchestrated that expressly did not include her or her law firm’s name in writing or any way.
“I would NEVER tell a client to wire $500,000 to close out a case without explicit settlement terms in writing,” says former MSNBC and Fox News guest, DC attorney Bradley Moss, Esq., who reviewed the proceedings. “Without it, you don’t know what you can ethically advise your client is the end result of the settlement!”
Apelbaum’s lawyers have moved for permanent dismissal of only Bachenberg from the case and to keep going against his counsel.
Florida-based attorneys for Lambert, his lawyer, have cross-moved for the inclusion of her and her law firm in the final dismissal of the case.
The botched settlement comes in a civil case that, two years ago, drew national attention when it inadvertently revealed the hidden connections between Republican partisan breaches of election systems in three states, featuring lawyer Sidney Powell.
Eventually, criminal investigators from Fulton County (remove this), Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis, who’d filed a wide-ranging racketeering indictment against Donald Trump and eighteen of his associates, came to use the Eastern Michigan lawsuit as a means of seeking more information about Powell’s associates and activities in Georgia.
In October 2023, Texas lawyer Powell appeared in an Atlanta courthouse to admit guilt and deliver a handwritten letter of apology for committing her crimes in Coffee County, Georgia, as part of her deal.
NRA President Bachenberg’s other lawyer during the 2020 election, Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors and other crimes.
It was 13 words long.
How did Bill Bachenberg become the NRA’s President, and how did he get sued for election interference?
Retired tech CEO Bill Bachenberg lives just outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he is a local whale in Republican politics.
He was also the Chair of Pennsylvania's fake electors for Donald Trump in 2020.
A well-placed source in southeastern Pennsylvania says Bachenberg is strongly considering forming an exploratory committee to challenge Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) in 2026.
As a close associate of the Trump family, he also personally financed the GOP's attack on the 2020 elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, which became the basis for years of false stolen election claims by the Republican Party.
This past December, Bill Bachenberg served as a legitimate elector in Pennsylvania for Donald Trump.
And on April 25th, 2025, he ascended to the position of President of the National Rifle Association.
Yaacov Apelbaum, who sued the now-NRA President, has extensive connections to Israel’s intelligence and technology communities. He is the first person to have copied a controversial hard drive from a computer owned by Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.
That hard drive created a multi-year political firestorm.
Apelbaum is also a blogger with an eponymous website and a contributor to The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing political website run by Jim Hoft, who settled a major 2020 election-related defamation case himself last year.
So it came to be that in July 2023, Yaacov Apelbaum sued Bachenberg and his Detroit-based lawyer, Stephanie Lambert Jutilla, in Michigan’s Eastern District Court for failure to pay for his services.
The now-NRA President had hired the cybersecurity expert to examine election equipment Lambert had procured as his agent from Michigan and Pennsylvania.
He also used Lambert as the conduit for sending funds for both hiring Apelbaum and attorney Sidney Powell’s activities, which led her to plead guilty to related felony state election interference charges in Georgia.
The Michigan lawyer is herself facing a criminal trial in Oakland County, Michigan, with a special prosecutor who indicted her in 2020 on allegations of illegally interfering in four different Michigan counties’ election systems.
Bachenberg asked Apelbaum to deliver his cyber-investigation conclusions in a Michigan airport lounge.
But when the Israeli-born computer expert’s findings found no tampering and did not confirm Bachenberg’s prior conclusions of election fraud, the man who ran the 2020 Trump campaign’s official sportsmen outreach group, allegedly decided to stiff Apelbaum.
Lambert also allegedly defamed Apelbaum over his work product.
Bachenberg paid to settle, but for whom did he settle?
Last month, the NRA President’s lawyers filed a motion to withdraw, saying their client had “ghosted” them, and within just a month of his new lawyers’ appearance, Bachenberg moved to settle the case for good.
However, there is a new dispute arising from Bill Bachenberg’s decision to settle.
In other words, the Israeli cybersecurity expert wants to continue the case against the NRA President’s lawyer because his new counsel did not expressly include his lawyer, Stephanie Lambert Jutilla, Esq., in the emails and draft orders settling his role in the dispute.
“There appear to be significant and legitimate disputes between the parties on whether the settlement applied only to Bachenberg or to all defendants,” says Moss, the attorney.
“I find it likely that the judge may request additional pleadings, before convening a hearing, and before the Order is executed.”
After a status conference held on the afternoon of June 23rd, Eastern District federal judge Hon. Robert J. White set a hearing for July 14th, 2025, at 2 pm in front of the court.
“It’s unusual not to include whether payment of a lawsuit’s settlement is deemed an admission of liability for the facts of the case,” says an experienced federal civil litigator in Florida who reviewed the documents. “It certainly leaves open room as to the defendant’s intention as to why they settled this suit this way.”
Apelbaum’s lawyers did not respond to multiple messages for comment on this story.
I am over the moon because of this content!!
First we get the Republicans truly involved in Trump’s first presidency and secondly when they were getting the this one finished, they found that he also cheated on the second presidency. I am just so excited!!!
thank you thank you thank you !!!!
‘good things come to those who wait’
He’s a real stand-up guy.