A new $10 million legal scandal has rocked Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial campaign just as early voters have started heading to the polls for early voting in the 2022 midterm election.
Abrams tried unsuccessfully to defeat Brian Kemp in the 2018 election — a loss which she has never conceded.
In the two years after, Abrams’ political foundation, Fair Fight Action, spent millions on a single lawsuit related to the election loss.
During that time, Abrams paid nearly $10 million to her friend and campaign chair’s small “boutique law firm.” The law firm employs less than two dozen lawyers.
They lost the lawsuit.
“Although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the [Voting Rights Act],” the judge ruled.
Abrams’ campaign chair still managed to cash in.
According to a bombshell report by Politico —
The voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams spent more than $25 million over two years on legal fees, mostly on a single case, with the largest amount going to the self-described boutique law firm of the candidate’s campaign chairwoman.
Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Abrams’ close friend who chaired her gubernatorial campaign both in 2018 and her current bid to unseat Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, is one of two named partners in Lawrence & Bundy, a small firm of fewer than two dozen attorneys.
The firm received $9.4 million from Abrams’ group, Fair Fight Action, in 2019 and 2020, the last years for which federal tax filings are available. Lawrence-Hardy declined to comment on how much her firm has collected from Fair Fight Action in 2021 and 2022 — years in which Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger, for which Lawrence-Hardy was lead counsel, had most of its courtroom activity.
Fair Fight Action has maintained that the suit — which ended last month when a federal judge ruled against the group on all three remaining claims — served an important role in drawing attention to voting inequities. But some outside the group questioned both the level of expenditures devoted to a single, largely unsuccessful legal action and the fact that such a large payout went to the firm of Abrams’ close friend and campaign chair. Those concerns were heightened by the fact that Abrams’ national campaign against voter suppression galvanized the Democratic Party, many of whose top donors helped fill its coffers.
Polls indicate that the race between Abrams and Kemp is tight, and voters are already flocking to the polls.
According to TownHall, Georgia has already set an early voting record — despite recent election security laws passed by Kemp, which Democrats falsely claimed was “Jim Crow 2.0.”
You can't make this up.
CNN host describes Georgia voting law as "restrictive" as their own chyron describes "Record Early Voter Turnout in Georgia." pic.twitter.com/08j4mar9WJ
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 19, 2022
[Video] Brian Kemp slams Stacey Abrams in explosive debate
The Horn editorial team