David Emandi, the newly minted state ethics commission director in Georgia, announced almost immediately upon taking office that he’d be issuing subpoenas to investigate bank records from former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ 2018 race.
Abrams’ ex-campaign manager is crying foul.
“The new ethics chief — a Kemp donor and former Republican Party leader — is using his power to threaten and lob baseless partisan accusations at the former Abrams campaign when they should be focused on real problems like the unethical ties between the governor’s office and voting machine lobbyists instead,” Lauren Groh-Wargo told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Emandi intends to probe the campaign’s financial records, as well as those of the PACs that supported it.
“In the relatively near future, I expect we will make the decision (whether) to go forward with prosecution on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
Emandi, who donated to Abrams’ opponent Brian Kemp’s successful gubernatorial campaign, is being accused of partisanship, since all of the candidates he mentioned investigating (alongside Abrams) are also Democrats. His commission reportedly claims to have also audited the filings of Republican gubernatorial candidates as well, but found no irregularities.
