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First Liberty-connected PAC is accused of illegally influencing elections in ethics complaint • Georgia Recorder [1]
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Date: 2025-07-30
A conservative political action committee associated with the family at the heart of the ongoing First Liberty Building & Loan scandal illegally influenced elections to the tune of more than $220,000, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by the Georgia State Ethics Commission.
The ethics complaint alleges that the Georgia Republican Assembly PAC failed to register as an independent committee before making expenditures to affect the outcome of recent elections. The complaint also alleges the PAC failed to file 24 required disclosure reports between Dec. 31, 2021 and June 30.
The complaint also lists three dozen expenditures made around that time frame totaling more than $220,000. The allegedly improper expenses include payments to entities like consultants, printing shops, doorknockers and canvassers.
“The ethics complaint filed today represent our initial charges against the Georgia Republican Assembly – PAC,” said ethics commission Executive Director David Emadi in a statement. “Our investigation remains ongoing and additional charges may be coming at a future date, but we intend to aggressively pursue all violations of Georgia law committed by the GRA which illegally influenced elections in 2022 and 2024.”
The PAC’s articles of organization, filed with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office in 2017, list former Cobb GOP chairman Jason Shepherd as registered agent and Brant Frost V as organizer.
In a phone call, Shepherd said he broke ties with the Georgia Republican Assembly in 2021.
Frost is the son of Brant Frost IV, who was implicated in an alleged Ponzi scheme in which Frost IV allegedly bilked evangelical conservative investors out of millions of dollars to spend on jewelry, a vacation home and other luxury goods. First Liberty and the Frosts also allegedly made more than $1 million in donations to political candidates and causes with scammed money, and the Georgia Republican Assembly PAC was a major recipient.
Politicians had returned more than $130,000 of the donations as of Monday, according to the court-appointed receiver tasked with trying to recoup victims’ money.
In an email, Nathaniel Darnell, president of the Georgia Republican Assembly, emphasized that his organization is a separate legal entity from the GRA PAC.
“As we have mentioned before, the Georgia Republican Assembly PAC was a completely separate legal and financial organization from the regular Georgia Republican Assembly. Only the Frost family had control and oversight of the PAC. About ten years ago, the then-GRA Board had granted Brant Frost V a license to use the name. When the Frosts publicly resigned from the GRA last month, Brant Frost V sent us a message saying that he was planning on shutting it down at the conclusion of June, which he did. We have also messaged him telling him to cease and desist the use of the name in the PAC’s LLC.”
The GRA has come under the spotlight for political infighting, and a number of members, including Frost IV and his son as well as four other Frosts were among the dozens who publicly signed a document last month resigning from the GRA.
Shepherd said it is a common tactic for political organizations to keep their PACs separate from the main body to prevent legal issues that could spring up surrounding political donations, but he suggested the Georgia Republican Assembly has skirted that rule, including by featuring the PAC on the main GRA website and discussing PAC business during regular GRA meetings.
“It’s the same thing with the National Rifle Association, they have a separate PAC that if there’s ever an issue like what the GRA PAC is facing right now, if they’ve potentially missed filings or filed things wrong, where they could potentially be fined, that the main organization is not bearing the brunt of this,” he said. “But it was clear from the get-go that the GRA PAC was affiliated, it was sanctioned, it was approved, it was promoted by the Georgia Republican Assembly itself as the political financing arm of the organization.”
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[1] Url:
https://georgiarecorder.com/2025/07/30/first-liberty-connected-pac-is-accused-of-illegally-influencing-elections-in-ethics-complaint/
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