Georgia lawmakers have turned up the heat on former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, issuing legal subpoenas compelling her to answer for what state investigators have called one of the most consequential campaign finance breaches in the state’s history.
The Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations has ordered Abrams to appear before the panel at the State Capitol in Atlanta at 10 a.m. Friday, alongside two of her closest professional associates.
Lauren Groh-Wargo, who serves as chief executive officer of Fair Fight Action and has functioned as a senior Abrams adviser, received a subpoena as well. So did Nsé Ufot, who previously held the top executive post at the New Georgia Project.
The New Georgia Project and its affiliated Action Fund sit at the center of the inquiry.
Abrams launched both organizations claiming they existed to drive up voter participation among non-white Georgians — a response, she argued without supporting evidence, to what she labeled “voter suppression” carried out by state Republicans.
State investigators found a different story buried in the organizations’ finances. The Georgia Ethics Commission determined that neither the New Georgia Project nor its Action Fund registered as independent campaign committees, as required by law.
Beyond the registration failures, investigators found that nearly $4.2 million in contributions went unreported, as did roughly $3.2 million in expenditures — money that flowed primarily in support of Abrams’ 2018 campaign for governor.
In January of last year, the Georgia Ethics Commission brought the hammer down, imposing a $300,000 fine on the organizations. The penalty set a record as the single largest campaign finance sanction in the commission’s history, and the groups admitted to 16 separate violations of state law.
The financial wreckage did not stop there. Fair Fight Action, yet another organization Abrams founded in 2018, accumulated its own trail of fiscal controversy.
That group used “voter suppression” as its rallying cry as well — directing its fire at voter ID laws, the removal of inactive voters from registration rolls, and Georgia’s “exact match” system, which flagged voter applications containing clerical discrepancies.
Between 2019 and 2020, Fair Fight Action sent $9.4 million to the law firm Lawrence & Bundy. The firm’s principal, Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, happened to be both a close personal friend of Abrams and the chairwoman of her campaign.
The lawsuit Lawrence & Bundy pursued against the state on Fair Fight’s behalf ended largely in failure. By the time the legal battle concluded, total fees in the litigation had surpassed $39 million between 2019 and 2021.
The financial bleeding continued well past the courtroom. By 2024, Fair Fight Action carried $2.5 million in debt against only $1.9 million in available cash.
Three-quarters of the organization’s staff lost their jobs as a result of the mounting shortfalls, driven in large part by years of heavy legal spending against both the state and election integrity groups.
The New Georgia Project itself did not survive. The organization shut its doors and formally dissolved in 2025 after its financial and legal troubles became insurmountable.
The Senate committee, which had previously spent two years investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, widened its reach to pull in the New Georgia Project matter after the Ethics Commission reached its settlement with the organizations.
Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, the committee’s vice chairman, outlined the scope of the panel’s intentions in direct terms.
“The people of Georgia deserve to know who was involved, what decisions were made and how millions of dollars flowed through organizations that admitted to violating our campaign finance laws,” Dolezal said.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones added his voice to the calls for accountability.
“No one is above the law in Georgia,” Jones said. “When organizations secretly spend millions to influence elections while evading disclosure requirements, it undermines confidence in our democratic process. The Senate will continue pursuing the truth and ensuring accountability, regardless of political party or influence.”
Committee Chairman Sen. Bill Cowsert laid out the committee’s mission plainly: “The integrity of our political process depends on the faithful enforcement of the law. The Ethics Commission uncovered what it described as one of the most significant campaign finance violations in state history. Our committee intends to determine who was responsible and whether additional reforms or enforcement mechanisms are necessary to protect the public trust and prevent this from ever happening again.”
Abrams pushed back publicly on the subpoena, calling the hearing “partisan” and “performative” and claiming it was designed to “intimidate and disarm voting rights advocates across Georgia and the nation.”
She stated she would appear, but only “on a mutually agreeable date.” Lawmakers say additional hearings and witness testimony are anticipated in the weeks ahead.
