Pro-Stacey Abrams groups fined $300,000 after admitting they broke Georgia campaign finance law

ATLANTA — The Georgia Ethics Commission voted unanimously on Wednesday to fine two advocacy groups that were founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams and led by Raphael Warnock before voters elected him to the U.S. Senate.

The commission found that the New Georgia Project and its affiliated New Georgia Project Action Fund illegally did election work for Abrams and others without disclosing their campaign contributions and spending.

The groups' current leadership admitted 16 instances of illegal activity in a consent decree and will pay a $300,000 fine, the largest in state history according to the commission's director, David Emadi.

The commission found that the entities raised $4.2 million and spent $3.2 million to support Abrams and other candidates in the 2018 election cycle.

David Fox, a lawyer for the New Georgia Project and the action fund, said his clients "understand and respect the commission's positions on the facts and the law.

''The matter relates to events from more than five years ago, and respondents are eager to put the matter behind them," Fox told commissioners by video.

Where ethics officials ruled the groups went wrong was failing to register as an independent campaign committee before taking contributions for electioneering, and failing to file campaign finance reports of contributions and spending before Abrams narrowly lost the governor's race to Republican Brian Kemp that year.

The groups repeated the same illegal activity in 2019 when they campaigned to extend public transportation in suburban Gwinnett County, failing to disclose $646,000 in contributions and $174,000 in spending for a voter referendum to join the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. The referendum lost.

Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013 to register more nonwhite and young voters in Georgia and to urge them to turn out. The project is a charity that can accept tax-deductible donations. The New Georgia Project Action Fund is a nonprofit social welfare organization that can directly endorse candidates, although donations aren't tax deductible. Neither group normally has to disclose donors. Emadi said the groups are likely to now file campaign finance disclosures for the period in question.

Abrams stepped down in 2017 and said she had no role with the groups thereafter. Warnock, a close Abrams ally and Baptist minister, was listed as the New Georgia Project's CEO on corporate filings in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

''I'm not prepared to say he had direct involvement in this,'' Emadi said. ''I didn't personally find evidence of that.''

Michael Brewer, a spokesperson for Warnock's Senate office, said Warnock was working ''as a longtime champion for voting rights'' and didn't know anything about violations. "Compliance decisions were not a part of that work,'' Brewer wrote in an email.

The complaint was filed in 2019 and survived multiple court challenges, accessing emails in an effort to prove the groups improperly coordinated with Abrams' 2018 campaign. Wednesday's consent decree contains no such findings, but Emadi said a separate complaint alleging illegal coordination remains under investigation.

Lawyers for the New Georgia Project previously argued that the groups acted like other nonprofits and that Republicans including Emadi, who had donated to Kemp, were using their majority on the commission in a partisan witch hunt to damage Abrams' political viability.

Abrams lost the 2022 governor's race to Kemp by a much larger margin than in 2018, but the ethics case was little discussed.

The commission fined another group, Gente4Abrams, $50,000 in 2020 for failing to register and file reports on $240,000 it spent to help Abrams in the 2018 Democratic primary, the commission found. The group registered after the commission ruling, reporting it spent an additional $685,000 for Abrams in the 2018 general election.

Ethics Commissioner Rick Thompson, who was formerly the commission's top employee, lauded commission staff and said he wished criminal penalties and not just civil ones were available under state law.

''I think actions like this should be criminal because of the significant impact secret money can have on elections,'' Thompson said. ''Organizations attempting to keep their election spending secret is shameful and does a disservice to our elections and voters."