Abrams’ nonprofit paid her close friend nearly $10m in legal fees – Georgia Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams’ voting rights nonprofit paid her close friend and campaign chair’s law firm nearly $10 million in legal fees to handle a largely unsuccessful voter suppression case in the state.
Politico did a deep-dive Monday reporting that Abrams’ campaign chair Allegra Lawrence-Hardy’s law firm made $9.4 million in 2019 and 2020 from the Democrat‘s group Fair Fight Action, with dollar amounts not yet available for 2021 and 2022.
Abrams’ nonprofit paid her close friend nearly $10m in legal fees
The report came on the heels of Fox News Channel finding that Fair Fight Action had paid thousands to the group’s director Andre Fields’ family and friends, who don’t appear to have political experience – with the organization now saying its launched an investigation.
After losing the gubernatorial race to 2018 to now Gov. Brian Kemp, Abrams is challenging him again, and so the group that heightened her national profile and brought in millions of dollars over voter suppression claims is under greater scrutiny.
Georgia Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams’ voting rights nonprofit paid her close friend and campaign chair’s law firm nearly $10 million in legal fees to handle a largely unsuccessful voter suppression case in the state
Politico did a deep-dive Monday reporting that Abrams’ campaign chair Allegra Lawrence-Hardy’s (right) law firm made $9.4 million in 2019 and 2020 from the Democrat’s group Fair Fight Action, with dollar amounts not yet available for 2021 and 2022.
Abrams launched Fair Fight Action after her narrow loss to Kemp in 2018, which she refused to concede due to reports of long lines, voters being delisted from the voter rolls, and other problems in predominantly black communities.
‘This year, more than 200 years into Georgia’s democratic experiment, the state failed its voters,’ Abrams said in 2018, ten days after the election. ‘You see, despite a record-high population in Georgia, more than a million citizens found their names stripped from the rolls by the secretary of state, including a 92-year-old civil rights activist who had cast her ballot in the same neighborhood since 1968.’
‘Tens of thousands hung in limbo, rejected due to human error and a system of suppression that had already proven its bias,’ she continued.
Her comments – which Republicans have pointed to when questioned about former President Donald Trump’s false claims of 2020 election fraud – helped Fair Fight Action bring in millions of dollars.
Politico reported that in 2019 and 2020, the group raised more than $61 million.
More than $25 million, the website said, went to legal fees.
And $9.4 million of those legal fees went to Lawrence & Bundy, where Lawrence-Hardy, who’s been friends with Abrams since college and chaired both her gubernatorial bids, is a partner.
Lawrence-Hardy wouldn’t tell Politico how much in total went from Fair Fight Action to Lawrence & Bundy, as public records don’t account for the last two years.
The expenditures were far higher than what are typically spent taking a voting rights case to federal court – leading to questions of whether there was overcharging.
The main case litigated was Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger, which started as a sweeping case about problematic voting practices in Georgia, but was winnowed down to just three claims – all of which a federal judge ruled against in September.
‘Although Georgia’s election system is not perfect,’ wrote Federal District Court Judge Steve C. Jones, ‘the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the [Voting Rights Act].’
Allies of Abrams said the it was fine her group entered a contract with the law firm of a close friend.
Xakota Espinoza, the communications director for Fair Fight Action, argued. that Lawrence-Hardy was hired for her expertise.
‘Fair Fight Action along with five other organizations had the honor of being represented by Allegra Lawrence-Hardy in her role as lead counsel for the plaintiffs, as well as by a number of esteemed lawyers at Lawrence & Bundy and the seven other firms involved in this case,’ Espinoza told Politico.
Norm Eisen, an Obama White House ethics adviser and consultant to the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee, dealing with former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, was asked by Fair Fight Action to respond to the Politico story.
He suggested that it wasn’t a surprise a voting rights lawyer would also be a chair of a prominent political campaign.
‘It happens all the time. It is the way our system is built, that the political leaders and the policy leaders are one in the same,’ he told Politico. ‘So this is not unique to Allegra.’
‘You can say the same thing about Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or, or Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy,’ he continued. ‘We not only countenance it, we embrace it; that is the American political, legal and ethical system.’
The group Public Citizen, which had a campaign finance and ethics expert quoted in the story saying it was a ‘conflict of interest,’ later walked that statement back saying ‘the contractual arrangement described in the story is normal and non-objectionable.’
Of course, Republicans were more likely to find the financial relationship between the nonprofit and the law firm untoward.
‘This is nuts. Fair Fight and Stacey Abrams’ orgs have had shady financial problems for YEARS. Anyone who has seen her oppo book knows that section is 200 pages long,’ tweeted Matt Whitlock, a former spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Whitlock said that Public Citizen ‘throwing their own employee under the bus for daring to criticize an Abrams org is WILD.’
