Friends With Benefits: Stacey Abrams Funneled $20 Million to Her Lawyer

A nonprofit founded by Georgia Democratic politician Stacey Abrams to protect voting rights paid more than $20 million to a lawyer who is a close friend and helped set up two of her private businesses, according to tax and state incorporation filings and other records obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

Abrams’ Fair Fight Action redirected the tax-exempt donations and government grants to Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, her former campaign chair between 2019 and 2023. Most of the funds covered legal expenses charged by the boutique law firm Lawrence-Hardy co-founded, for a failed race-bias lawsuit filed against Abram’s Republican opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, after she lost to him in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election.

In its articles of incorporation, Fair Fight Action Inc. states that “The Corporation will not be operated for the pecuniary gain or profit of any individual.” They also said no revenues will be “distributed” to any individual except when “authorized to pay reasonable compensation for services rendered.”

The nonprofit’s payout to her friend’s law firm, which averaged more than $4 million each year over those five years, raised eyebrows and conflict-of-interest concerns among ethics watchdogs briefed by RCI.

“Twenty million in fees is outrageous,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center. “It may be an IRS violation for waste of nonprofit assets, as well as self-dealing and other ethical and legal breaches.”

“At a minimum hiring her friend as lead attorney presents a glaring conflict of interest, because Abrams’ close association with both the Fair Fight case and her friend provided an opportunity to enrich her friend through the nonprofit’s litigation.”

He and other legal experts say the costs to litigate the case were extravagant compared with other voting-rights cases fought in federal court. The state of Georgia paid less than $6 million total to its law firms defending the state in the case.

The unusually high legal bills helped drive Fair Fight Action more than $2.5 million into debt last year, forcing the group to lay off the majority of its staff.

College Friends 

Abrams’ and Lawrence-Hardy’s friendship dates back to their days as students at Spelman College. They have also set up businesses together, state records reveal.

Although there is no evidence that Abrams benefited directly from the fees paid to Lawrence-Hardy’s law firm, Abrams holds an ownership interest in at least two Atlanta-based companies that were incorporated by Lawrence-Hardy. Lawrence-Hardy and Abrams have also shared the same office suite in Atlanta for several years. 

Neither Lawrence-Hardy nor Abrams responded to requests for comment.

In her 2022 book, “Level Up: Rise Above The Hidden Forces Holding Your Business Back,” Abrams acknowledged Lawrence-Hardy as someone who has supported her business ventures. “Sustaining the pursuit of a business ambition demands all manner of investment – definitely financial capital, but less often lauded, copious amounts of patience, forbearance and forgiveness,” Abrams wrote. “I appreciate these coming in abundance from those named and unnamed, including … Allegra Lawrence-Hardy.”

The IRS declined to comment on whether it is investigating Fair Fight Action. It has received multiple complaints in the past which outline the blurry lines between Abrams’ connection to nonprofits that appeared to advance her political career. In 2019, the agency received a complaint about the nonprofit from the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) over allegations that Fair Fight was using money raised to advance voting rights to support Abrams’ political ambitions, including paying some of her travel expenses, running $100,000 in Facebook ads featuring Abrams, and supporting a “Stacey Abrams Fundraiser.” The IRS did not say if or how this case was resolved.

Along with the Georgia Senate, the IRS is actively investigating another nonprofit started by Abrams, the New Georgia Project, which failed to report millions of dollars in contributions and spending tied to Abrams’ first gubernatorial bid in 2018. Abrams also lost to Kemp in a 2022 rematch.

The lucrative Fair Fight deal for her friend adds to ethical concerns over Abrams, who has a checkered financial background and yet has amassed millions of dollars in wealth working mostly in the public and nonprofit sectors, as RCI has reported previously. Abrams has presidential ambitions and aims to become the first black female U.S. president by 2040.

Political Allies

Lawrence-Hardy chaired her campaign in both the 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial elections, which means she was litigating the voting-rights case while running her second campaign. Kristen Wilder, Lawrence-Hardy’s longtime chief of staff,  previously worked as the senior political manager at Fair Fight Action. Wilder also worked on Abrams’ gubernatorial campaign.

Abrams headed Fair Fight in 2018 when it hired Lawrence-Hardy’s firm as lead counsel in the case, Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger. The suit claimed that the Georgia secretary of state’s office denied minorities the right to vote. The litigation promoted Abrams’ allegations that she was “robbed” of victory by Kemp, whom she claimed had “disenfranchised” blacks through discriminatory voting rules. During the trial, Lawrence-Hardy argued, “This is a modern-day Jim Crow.” The lawsuit would help turn Abrams into a national political figure and celebrity, a symbol of resistance to President Trump and a leader of the emerging Black Lives Matter movement.

But in September 2022, a federal court disagreed, dismissing the case and ordering Fair Fight to pay more than $231,000 in court costs and legal fees.

The lawsuit was always a long shot. To succeed, Fair Fight had to prove intentional discrimination in the state’s election laws and practices. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones – an Obama appointee – ruled that Fair Fight failed to provide “direct evidence of a voter who was unable to vote” because of the state’s allegedly racist election laws.

Nevertheless, tax records show that Lawrence-Hardy’s firm earned a steady stream of fees. In 2019, her Atlanta-based firm, Lawrence & Bundy LLC, billed Fair Fight $3.1 million, according to IRS filings. In 2020, when the nonprofit’s revenues peaked at $51 million, the firm billed the nonprofit its largest fee amount – $6.4 million – for “legal services.” In 2022, her firm was paid an additional $5 million, after receiving $4.4 million in fees from Fair Fight in 2021, despite the case shrinking as Judge Jones dismissed large sections of the lawsuit. According to a 2023 IRS return filed by Fair Fight Action, the latest available document, Lawrence & Bundy LLC received more than $1.3 million in legal fees that year, despite the election lawsuit being dismissed the previous year. Lawrence-Hardy is a founding partner of Lawrence & Bundy LLC.

All told over those five years, Lawrence-Hardy and her firm received $20.2 million largely for their work on a single, losing election-integrity lawsuit against the state of Georgia, which critics called “frivolous” and designed to try to explain away Abrams’ back-to-back gubernatorial election losses in 2018 and 2022.

Abrams was not only involved in retaining Lawrence-Hardy but also helped fundraise for the case until December 2021, when she stepped down from Fair Fight’s board to announce her second bid for governor. As Fair Fight’s CEO, Abrams was paid an annual salary of $80,000.

Cozy Office Space

Lawrence & Bundy LLC, whose website lists 15 attorneys, was founded by Lawrence-Hardy in 2016. Its Atlanta offices are located at 1180 W. Peachtree St. NW, Suite 1650. This is the location where Fair Fight sent the $20.2 million, according to IRS documents. It is the same address for two businesses that are at least partially owned by Abrams.

According to Georgia state incorporation records, one of the entities, Davis Hall LLC, was registered in February 2011 by Lawrence & Bundy LLC; while the other, Hall Davis LLC, was registered in January 2021 by the same agent – Lawrence & Bundy LLC. Both entities are listed by Abrams in her 2022 Georgia state financial disclosure statement as business entities in which she holds an ownership interest of 5% or more. It is not clear what the businesses do. Abrams and Lawrence & Bundy declined to say.

A third enterprise owned by Abrams, Sage Works LLC, lists the same business address as the other companies – 1180 W. Peachtree St. NW, Suite 1650, which is the address for Lawrence & Bundy LLC.

Abrams founded Sage Works LLC as a consulting firm “providing advice to governmental and nonprofit clients on operations,” according to her disclosures. Records show she was paid $62,000 in taxpayer money as a consultant on an Atlanta urban redevelopment project, which raised red flags because she was a state lawmaker at the time.

“These businesses raise more suspicion that Abrams used her nonprofit [Fair Fight] to enrich her friends and herself,” Kamenar said, “which is a clear conflict of interest.”

Lawrence-Hardy is an active member of the Georgia bar in “good standing” with no disciplinary history. She is currently listed as co-managing partner at a larger Atlanta-based firm, Krevolin Horst LLC, where she specializes in “high-profile/high stakes litigation.” She is still featured throughout the Lawrence & Bundy website. 

Fair Fight said it hired Lawrence-Hardy because of her expertise in election law, both at the state and federal levels, along with her experience litigating prior Democratic candidate recounts.

Lawrence-Hardy maintained that the lawsuit was always about the voters, not the money. Voting rights is a cause dear to her, according to her website bio, though she did not choose to take the case pro bono as she has other cases.

It remains unclear why the lawsuit incurred such a high cost.

At the time, Lawrence-Hardy said the case required large resources. She led a team of almost three dozen lawyers, including some from outside her firm. During the trial, she said she deposed a “staggering number” of witnesses in the case: “We had more than 3,000 voters or would-be voters submit declarations, 50 witnesses and hundreds who gave depositions.” 

Yet despite several years of billing Fair Fight, Lawrence-Hardy found no evidence of voter discrimination, according to the court. Nonetheless, Lawrence-Hardy on her website lists the case among her biggest professional accomplishments, arguing she initially “defeated defendants’ motion for summary judgment.”

The IRS filings do not break down the legal expenses charged in the case. Neither Lawrence-Hardy nor Fair Fight would share billing records to understand the exact nature of the work conducted during the drawn-out legal battle. They also would not reveal the hourly rate charged by Lawrence-Hardy’s firm. Legal fees are normally billed on an hourly basis and appear in a line-by-line accounting on statements to clients.

Now operating in the red, Fair Fight is not happy that the Trump administration is cutting federal spending for left-leaning non-governmental organizations. Earlier this year, the embattled organization protested Trump’s freezing of tens of millions of dollars in federal election-security grants.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.