Judge denies document request in Abrams ethics investigation
Source: Associated Press
Updated 5:19 pm CST, Friday, February 14, 2020
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge handed Democrat Stacey Abrams’ 2018 campaign for Georgia governor a victory in a legal skirmish Friday, denying a request from the state ethics commission for the campaign to hand over more records.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick said in a one-page order that she lacked jurisdiction to enforce a subpoena from the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. The commission was seeking all correspondence between Abrams' campaign and several outside groups, including some that register and mobilize voters.
The commission is investigating allegations that Abrams' campaign illegally coordinated with nonprofit organizations during the race, which she narrowly lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. The campaign has said there was no illegal coordination. It said it has already turned over 4,000 documents including financial records and said the commission doesn’t have evidence to support the allegations.
The judge’s order relied on a prior case in which courts lacked jurisdiction to enforce subpoenas from the commission during a preliminary investigation.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Judge-denies-document-request-in-Abrams-ethics-15057847.php
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Judge-denies-document-request-in-Abrams-ethics-15057847.php
Georgia probe highlights political problems with state ethics commissions
By Sue SturgisJune 5, 2019
The new head of Georgia's ethics commission has filed subpoenas demanding extensive financial, bank, and payroll records from the campaign of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and several left-leaning groups that registered and turned out voters — particularly minority voters.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently obtained the subpoenas, which were filed on April 26. That they were filed comes as no surprise: Four days after he started the job back in March, commission director David Emadi said he planned to seek records from Abrams' campaign. For its part, the Abrams' campaign criticized the approach, calling it a "political vendetta" and saying it would have taken immediate action to rectify any problems found in the normal post-election audits.
The actions by Emadi — a Republican who formerly served as a Douglas County prosecutor, and who contributed $600 to the 2018 campaign of Abrams' Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, now governor — have sparked questions about inappropriate partisanship at the agency, whose formal name is the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. For his part, Emadi has denied charges of partisanship and has said every 2018 gubernatorial candidate is "under active audit and investigation as is policy."
. . .
Emadi replaced former director Stefan Ritter, a Republican appointee who quit after staff members filed complaints claiming he watched pornography at work and failed to pursue complaints when they alerted him to potential problems with campaigns, including Abrams'. Instead, they said, he told them to let the candidates correct the errors.
More:
https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/06/georgia-probe-highlights-political-problems-state-ethics-commissions
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