FIRST ON FOX: The House of Representatives’ top lawmaker on taxation is urging the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke the tax-exempt status of a nonprofit linked to former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
The Abrams-founded group, New Georgia Project, was recently fined $300,000 for violating state election laws in a ruling by the Georgia Ethics Commission.
House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., called it “the largest penalty in the Ethics Commission’s history and possibly the largest ethics fine ever issued in the United States” in his letter to IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause.
The commission unanimously charged the New Georgia Project with failing to disclose more than $4 million in campaign contributions and more than $3 million in expenditures while backing Abrams’ failed 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
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“As you know, under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3), organizations are strictly prohibited from participating in or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office,” Smith wrote.
“The IRS may revoke an organization’s tax-exempt status or assess excise taxes for certain types of violations if it determines the organization is noncompliant as it relates to political campaign intervention.”
Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013 to help boost voter registration efforts in the Peach State. However, she has not been involved with the group since 2017, and Smith pointed out that groups registered as 501(c)(3) nonprofits are prohibited from participating in or advocating for specific political candidates.
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The New Georgia Project’s affiliated group, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, is able to endorse candidates, but donations are not tax-exempt.
“The New Georgia Project’s intervention in the 2018 election cycle in support of Stacey Abrams and other candidates’ campaigns amounts to a clear violation of their tax-exempt status,” Smith wrote.
“The GSEC’s findings show that the New Georgia Project has participated in activities and events outside of the organization’s tax-exempt purpose and should therefore lose its tax-exempt status and be reclassified as an ‘action organization.’”
Smith conceded that such nonprofits are allowed “to engage in certain nonpartisan voter education activities that do not constitute prohibited political campaign activity, including public forums and publishing voter education guides,” but argued “it is clear that the New Georgia Project crossed the line into prohibited activity by intervening in the 2018 election cycle on behalf of Stacey Abrams and several other candidates.”
“I request that you use your authority to make this referral a priority and make certain the IRS moves quickly to examine and revoke the tax-exempt status of the New Georgia Project,” he wrote.
Fox News Digital reached out to the New Georgia Project and the IRS for comment but did not hear back by press time.
New Georgia Project attorney Aria Branch told NBC News at the time of the commission’s ruling, “While we remain disappointed that the federal court ruling on the constitutionality of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Act was overturned on entirely procedural grounds, we accept this outcome and are eager to turn the page on activities that took place more than five years ago.”
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