The Republican chairman of a special committee of the Georgia Senate that has been investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has introduced legislation that would expand the committee’s scope to include former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
“I think we ought to get to the bottom of these allegations,” Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, said Friday, explaining why he had introduced Senate Resolution 292 the day before.
Cowsert was referring to a settlement agreement in January between the Georgia Ethics Commission and groups founded by Abrams.
The New Georgia Project and a separate fundraising arm, the New Georgia Action Fund, agreed to pay $300,000 for failing to disclose $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in spending during the 2018 election cycle on behalf of Abrams’ unsuccessful bid for governor.
It was the largest fine ever assessed by the Ethics Commission.
Cowsert’s Special Committee on Investigations was created last year in the wake of Republican anger over Willis’ criminal case against President Donald Trump and others who helped his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Willis has refused the Cowsert committee’s summons to testify, fighting it in court.
If the Senate passes SR 292, the committee will have the authority to expand its inquiry to the Abrams-related groups and determine if “existing state laws, including those establishing processes related to campaign finance and the operation of nonprofit organizations, are inadequate.”
Cowsert said he plans to call Abrams to testify after the legislative session ends on April 4.
His committee has no punitive powers, but Cowsert said prosecutors would likely be watching its work.
“We need to learn what’s going on out there, what’s permitted, and see if those guardrails are sufficient or not,” he said.
Democrats say it’s just a political stunt.
Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II, D-Augusta, slammed his fellow Republicans, saying they took no action in the Trump case, which briefly ensnared the Senate’s top Republican.
In 2022, a Fulton County judge disqualified Willis from prosecuting Lt Gov. Burt Jones, then a state senator, because she had hosted a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race. The case was subsequently moved to a special prosecutor, who cleared Jones of wrongdoing last fall.
The GOP senators’ proposed investigation of Abrams is just “mud and dirt,” Harold Jones said. It’s a distraction from “real issues,” such as the housing crisis, he said.