Founded by Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, one voting rights group has found itself under severe fire in the wake of news coming to light that it issued a payment of close to $10 million out to a high-end law firm where one of the main partners just so happens to be her campaign manager.
Known as Fair Fight Action, which failed in its multi-million dollar case where it aggressively accused Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger — who succeeded Brian Kemp via an election back in 2018 — and the State Elections Board of discriminatory and suppressive election practices, handed over a massive sum to the law firm Lawrence & Bundy in 2019 and 2020. One of the partners within the firm, Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, just so happened to be the chair for both her current gubernatorial campaign and the 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
“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,” expressed Politico.
“It is a very clear conflict of interest because with that kind of close link to the litigation and her friend that provides an opportunity where the friend gets particularly enriched from this litigation,” expressed Craig Holman of Public Citizen.
Fair Fight Action was originally founded by Abrams in the wake of failing to take the 2018 election win against the GOP’s Brian Kemp — who at the time was working as the Secretary of State — and then making the claim that multiple thousands of voters had been intentionally disenfranchised. Back at the end of last year, Raffensberger expressed, “Ms. Abrams still refuses to acknowledge she lost.”
“Fair Fight Action ought to explain why this lawsuit cost so much,” expressed one professor of legal ethics out of Washington University, Kathleen Clark. “I think there are significant questions about this choice of firm and just why this lawsuit was so much more expensive. And there may be perfectly valid, innocent explanations to both of those questions. But I don’t know what they are.”
“It is essential that non-government organizations, that charitable organizations be run so they actually further their stated purposes,” they went on. “It’s important that we have assurances that it is pursuing its stated goals, rather than feathering someone’s nest.”
The first lawsuit put in place over twenty wild claims that were quickly kicked out by Judge Steve Jones in order to focus on a group of three main issues. “I call it the incredible shrinking lawsuit,” claimed Chris Carr, the attorney General of Georgia.
“It started off with allegations of tens of thousands of votes that were suppressed across the state of Georgia in the 2018 Election,” he highlighted. “We’re down to seven individuals who didn’t vote. … That is not what they brought. That’s not what their press conferences have been about. That’s not what their fundraising emails have been about. It was about a watershed landmark voter suppression case. That’s what they took to the American people, not just Georgians, they made this a national campaign. We literally went from 20-some claims to three, and three that don’t go to the heart of affirmatively prohibiting Georgians from voting.”
