A pair of voting advocacy groups founded by failed Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams were hit with a historic fine by the Georgia Ethics Commission for violating campaign finance laws to bolster Abram’s 2018 election.
“Today the State Ethics Commission entered into a consent agreement with the New Georgia Project and the New Georgia Project Action Fund for a total of $300,000,” the Georgia State Ethics Commission posted in a statement on Wednesday. “This certainly represents the largest fine imposed in the history of Georgia’s Ethics Commission, but it also appears to be the largest ethics fine ever imposed by any state ethics commission in the country related to an election and campaign finance case.”
Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013 as part of an effort to register more minority voters and young voters. The organization was founded as a charity that can accept tax-deductible donations, while the New Georgia Project Action Fund worked as the organization’s fundraising arm.
The groups admitted to failing to disclose about $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenditures that were used during Abram’s election efforts in 2018, according to the commission’s consent order. The groups were hit with a total of 16 violations, including failing to register as a political committee and failure to disclose millions of dollars in political contributions.
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The groups were accused of carrying out similar activity in 2019, when they reportedly failed to disclose $646,000 in contributions and $174,000 while advocating for a ballot initiative.
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“This represents the largest and most significant instance of an organization illegally influencing our statewide elections in Georgia that we have ever discovered, and I believe this sends a clear message to both the public and potential bad actors moving forward that we will hold you accountable,” the ethics commission continued in its statement Wednesday.
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Abrams stepped down from the group in 2017, with Sen. Raphael Warnock taking the reins as the New Georgia Project’s CEO from 2017 to 2019, the Associated Press reported. Warnock was elected as a U.S. senator from Georgia in 2020.
A spokesperson for Warnock’s Senate office told the AP that he was working “as a longtime champion for voting rights” and that he was not aware of campaign violations. The spokesperson added that “compliance decisions were not a part of that work.” Fox Digital also reached out to Warnock’s office for additional comment but did not immediately receive a reply.
Abrams ran for governor of Georgia in 2018 and 2022, but lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in both races. Abrams drew national attention after the 2018 race when she refused to concede to the Republican despite losing by 60,000 votes.
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Amid the 2018 race, she touted the New Georgia Project on her X account, which was called Twitter at the time.
“When Abrams sees a problem, she doesn’t wait for someone else to step up – she does it herself. So when she saw that 800,000 people of color in Georgia weren’t registered to vote, Abrams immediately set out to fix the problem & founded The New GA Project,” she tweeted.
The New Georgia Project said in a comment provided to Fox News Digital that they are “glad to finally put this matter behind us” so the group can “fully devote its time and attention to its efforts to civically engage and register black, brown, and young voters in Georgia.”
“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,” the group continued.
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