Mystery: Did Stacey Abrams financial group fund temp agency that staffed Fulton Co. elections?

Conflicting tales have emerged about whether or not a personnel group that had workers on the frontlines of Fulton County’s contentious absentee poll scanning course of was funded by a microfinance firm linked to Georgia Democratic super-activist Stacey Abrams, as state data seem to doc a financial association between the 2 considerations in some unspecified time in the future.

Documentation from Fulton County exhibits that Fulton in late 2019 sought to contract with Atlanta-based Happy Faces Personnel Group “to provide temporary staffing services for Registration and Elections for approximately 340 positions, effective January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020.”

Notes from an investigator commissioned by the Georgia Secretary of State’s workplace confirms the presence of a number of staff from Happy Faces at Fulton County’s absentee poll processing middle at State Farm Arena in the course of the Nov. 3 election. 

Documentation obtained by Just the News, in the meantime, indicated that Happy Faces could have been financially related to a agency cofounded by Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democratic activist hailed as instrumental in organizing Donald Trump’s defeat in her state’s 2020 presidential contest. 

Documentation from the Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority, dated 2017, identifies NowAccount Network Corporation because the “secured party” for Happy Faces. A “secured party” below the Georgia Code is “a person in whose favor a security interest is created or provided for under a security agreement,” in addition to, amongst different definitions, a “consignor.” 

Abrams identifies herself on her web site as one of many cofounders in 2010 of NowAccount, which she recognized as “a company that provides a payment system to small businesses, improving their cash flow so they can grow and thrive.”

Abrams didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark. As late as 2018, Abrams nonetheless had a financial stake in NowAccount. On a financial disclosure kind that yr she was listed as a “senior vice president” of the group, although her gubernatorial marketing campaign claimed that designation was an error and that she was not an worker there. 

Conflicting accounts

Happy Faces and NowAccount gave coflicting solutions to questions relating to the involvement of the 2 companies. 

In a telephone interview, Happy Faces CEO Michael Hairston mentioned his firm has by no means had any financial involvement with NowAccount. Happy Faces has contracted with Georgia for election providers since 1996.

Hairston mentioned Happy Faces thought-about utilizing NowAccount for financing in 2017, the yr the Georgia state financing assertion was filed. But he claimed the financial phrases had been in the end unfavorable. “When we looked at the cost, we were like, ‘There’s no point in doing this,'” he mentioned. 

He was unable to clarify why the 2017 documentation confirmed NowAccount as a secured social gathering. “I don’t know how they have things listed,” he mentioned. “But we’ve never used them.” 

Reached for remark through e-mail, Ashley Moore — listed because the contact for NowAccount on the Georgia authorities doc — responded by indicating that the financial agency could have been concerned with Happy Faces not directly prior to now. 

“NowAccount no longer has a relationship with Happy Faces,” she mentioned. She didn’t reply to repeated requests for clarification on what that relationship constituted. 

Asked about Moore’s remarks, Hairston once more denied utilizing NowAccount, stating that Moore’s indication of a previous “relationship” could have been referring to the transient interval when Happy Faces thought-about utilizing them. 

“We had them as an option,” he mentioned. “There were three or four options we signed up for, but we never went with [NowAccount].” 

Court officers cannot clarify doc submitting 

Neither the Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority nor the Dekalb County Superior Court — the place the doc seems to have originated — may clarify the presence of the apparently faulty doc within the state’s recordsdata. 

“[A]ll records are filed in the County Clerks office,” a consultant of the GSCCCA informed Just the News. “We simply display the records that are sent to us once they are filed.”

Dana Patterson, a spokeswoman for DeKalb County Clerk of Superior Court Debra DeBerry — whose identify is on the NowAccount/Happy Faces doc — gave an identical reply. 

“We are required to file a document presented in proper form, not content,” she mentioned.

A bombshell November report by Carter Jones — who was commissioned by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s workplace to watch the election in Fulton County — recognized quite a few obvious points with election staff allegedly dispatched from Happy Faces. 

In one occasion, Jones was apprised of a dialog allegedly between what he claimed was two obvious Happy Faces staff wherein one reportedly mentioned: “I’m ready to fuck shit up.”

“What is Happy Faces doing to vet the people who they are sending to make sure that they are not sending in people who do actually want to ‘f*ck sh*t up?'” Jones wrote within the report. 

Elsewhere, staff had been reportedly required to “reorganize” a sequence of provisional scans, one thing that officers blamed partially on “Happy Faces reinforcement staff.”