ATLANTA — The Georgia Ethics Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to fine two advocacy groups founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams and led by Raphael Warnock , voters later elected him to the U.S. Senate.

The committee found that the New Georgia Project and its affiliated New Georgia Project Action Fund illegally provided election work to Abrams and others but failed to disclose their campaign contributions and expenditures.

Commission Director David Emadi said the organization's current leadership admitted to 16 instances of illegal activity in a consent decree and will pay a $300,000 fine, the largest in state history.

The committee found that these entities raised $4.2 million and spent $3.2 million to support Abrams and other candidates during the 2018 election cycle.

David Fox, an attorney with the New Georgia Project and Action Fund, said his clients “understand and respect the commission’s position on the facts and the law.

"This matter involves an incident that occurred more than five years ago and the respondent is eager to put this matter behind him," Fox told commissioners via video.

Ethics officials ruled the groups erred by failing to register as independent campaign committees before accepting campaign contributions and failing to register as independent campaign committees before Abrams narrowly lost the gubernatorial race that year to Republican Brian Kemp. Submit campaign finance reports on contributions and expenditures.

The groups repeated the same illegal activity in 2019 when they campaigned to expand public transit in suburban Gwinnett County but failed to disclose $646,000 in donations and a $174,000 voter referendum to join the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority expenditures. The referendum failed.

Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013 to register more nonwhite and young voters in Georgia and urge them to vote. The project is a charity and can accept tax-deductible donations. The New Georgia Project Action Fund is a nonprofit social welfare organization that can directly support candidates, but donations are not tax deductible. Typically, neither group has to disclose donors. Emadi said the groups may now file campaign finance disclosures for the period in question.

Abrams resigned in 2017 and said she has no further roles in the organizations since. Warnock, a close ally of Abrams and a Baptist pastor, is listed as CEO of New Georgia Project in company filings from 2017, 2018 and 2019.

"I'm not prepared to say he was directly involved in this," Emadi said. "I personally have found no evidence of that."

Michael Brewer, a spokesman for Warnock's Senate office, said Warnock has a "longstanding commitment to voting rights" and knew nothing about the violations. "Compliance decisions are not part of the job," Brewer wrote in an email.

The complaint was filed in 2019 and has withstood multiple court challenges and a review of emails in an attempt to prove the groups improperly coordinated with Abrams' 2018 campaign. Wednesday's consent order contained no such findings, but Emadi said a separate complaint alleging illegal coordination remains under investigation.

Lawyers for the New Georgia Project have previously argued that the groups are acting like other nonprofits and that Republicans, including Emadi, who donated to Kemp, are using their committee majorities to engage in a partisan witch hunt to harm Abrams’ political viability.

Abrams lost the 2022 gubernatorial race to Kemp by a much wider margin than he did in 2018, but ethics issues have been rarely discussed.

The commission fined another group, Gente4Abrams, $50,000 in 2020 for failing to register and file a report on $240,000 it helped Abrams in the 2018 Democratic primary, the committee found. . The group, which registered after the commission's ruling, reported spending an additional $685,000 on Abrams' behalf in the 2018 election.

Ethics Commissioner Rick Thompson, the commission's former top employee, praised the commission's staff and said he hoped state law would impose criminal penalties, not just civil penalties.

"I believe conduct like this should be a crime because secret money can have a significant impact on an election," Thompson said. "Organizations that try to keep election spending secret are disgraceful and harmful to our elections and voters."