Georgia Senate approves investigation of Democrat Stacey Abrams as Trump targets her

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This article was published 27/03/2025 (226 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Republican-dominated state Senate is going forward with an investigation of Stacey Abrams, a move that comes as President Donald Trump has made a target of the two-time Democratic nominee for Georgia governor.

Republican State Sen. Bill Cowsert of Athens said Thursday that he and other Republicans want to further examine recent ethics findings that voter participation group New Georgia Project improperly coordinated with Abrams’ 2018 campaign for governor.

“We have developed somewhat of a problem these days with dark money in politics, with secret money being used to fund campaigns,” Cowsert said. “The whole purpose of our campaign finance laws is to put sunshine on the issues.”

They also want to probe claims by new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin that $2 billion was improperly given to a coalition of groups trying to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Abrams worked with one of the groups until the end of last year, but Trump and other Republicans have made Abrams the face of their criticism of $20 billion in grants awarded by former President Joe Biden’s administration, with Trump calling out Abrams in a recent joint address to Congress.

Senators voted 33-21 along party lines to approve the inquiry.

The same Georgia committee has been pursuing a thus-far fruitless investigation of another Trump enemy, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

“We have already spent precious time investigating people for headlines and clicks, while providing taxpayers with little benefit,” said state Sen. Jason Esteves, an Atlanta Democrat.

Abrams has said that Republicans are targeting her because she’s been politically effective.

The former state House minority leader, Abrams vaulted to national Democratic stardom when she came close to defeating Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2018. She parlayed voting rights after that election into a national platform and even consideration as Biden’s running mate in 2020, but lost a 2022 governor’s race rematch to Kemp by a broader margin.

The resolution means the GOP-led Senate can conduct meetings scrutinizing a second high-profile Democrat as Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and several members of the investigatory committee consider running for office in 2026.

Armed with subpoena power, the committee has been trying to force Willis to testify about whether she did anything wrong in her investigation and prosecution of Trump and others. However, its efforts thus far have disclosed little that wasn’t already known about Willis and her hiring of special prosecutor Nathan Wade, with whom she had a romantic relationship, to lead the prosecution against Trump and others.

Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013 to register more nonwhite and young voters in Georgia and to urge them to turn out. She stepped down in 2017 and said she had no role with the group thereafter.

In January, the New Georgia Project and its affiliated New Georgia Project Action Fund admitted that they broke Georgia’s campaign finance law by failing to register as an independent campaign committee and failing to disclose contributions and spending. The Ethics Commission fined the groups $300,000, the largest ethics fine in state history, mostly for violations that supported Abrams’ 2018 run for governor.

The group has been in turmoil, laying off workers, some of whom said they were fired because they were trying to form a union.

On Feb. 12, the Trump-appointed Zeldin called for the return of $2 billion granted to Power Forward Communities in April 2024, part of $20 billion that Zeldin claimed was improperly granted by Biden’s administration.

Abrams was senior counsel to Rewiring America until December. That’s one of the groups that made up the Power Forward Communities coalition. Abrams wasn’t paid by Power Forward Communities, spokesperson Joshua Karp has said.

One of the other nonprofits that got $7 billion of the $20 billion has sued the EPA, accusing it of improperly freezing a legally awarded grant.

Climate United Fund, a coalition of three nonprofit groups, demanded access to a Citibank account it received through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program created in 2022 by the Inflation Reduction Act and more commonly known as the green bank.

In a related action, the Coalition for Green Capital, a separate group that received $5 billion from the Biden-era program, sued Citibank, alleging breach of contract over the refusal to disburse the grant funds.