Georgia Gubernatorial Candidate Stacey Abrams Paid Close Friend & Campaign Chair $10M To Fight Failed Voting Rights Case
Stacey Abrams reportedly paid her close friend-turned-campaign chair upwards of $10 million to pursue a mostly unsuccessful voter rights case in Georgia, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Abrams, who is currently running for Georgia governor again after losing the gubernatorial race in 2018, allegedly paid Allegra Lawrence-Hardy's law firm a total of $9.4 million between 2019 and 2020 via her anti-voter suppression organization Fair Fight Action.
The 48-year-old candidate and voter rights activist first launched Fair Fight Action after losing the 2018 election to current Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
“This year, more than 200 years into Georgia's democratic experiment, the state failed its voters,” Abrams claimed roughly 10 days after losing.
“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,” she continued.
“Tens of thousands hung in limbo, rejected due to human error and a system of suppression that had already proven its bias.”
According to Politico, Fair Fight Action paid Lawrence-Hardy’s law firm, Lawrence & Bundy, $9.4 million to handle the lawsuit, which was later named Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger.
While Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger began as a lawsuit focused on a series of allegedly problematic voting practices throughout the state during the 2018 gubernatorial election, the case was subsequently reduced to just three claims – all of which were rejected by a federal judge in September.
“Although Georgia's election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the [Voting Rights Act],” Federal District Court Judge Steve C. Jones wrote in his ruling.
Before the failed lawsuit, Fair Fight Action raised upwards of $61 million. According to the organization, $25 million of that went to legal fees, with $9.4 million going specifically to Lawrence-Hardy’s firm.
Norm Eisen, a former ethics adviser under President Barack Obama who now works as a consultant to the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee, argued that there is nothing wrong with Abrams paying her own campaign chair to represent her organization in legal matters.
“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,” Eisen 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 added. “We not only countenance it, we embrace it; that is the American political, legal and ethical system.”
Despite Abrams and Lawrence-Hardy’s political-turned-legal relationship not being deemed a “conflict of interest,” it is expected that Abrams paid her close friend and campaign chair more than $9.4 million to represent Fair Fight Action because, as of now, the legal fees for 2021 and 2022 are not yet available.
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