A Georgia family stole roughly $140 million from about three hundred of their own neighbors, church friends, and small-business owners, used better than half a million of the loot to buy access to the state Republican Party, and the politicians they bankrolled have not given any of it back. That is the whole story. It is also the oldest story in American politics.
Edwin Brant Frost IV, the 69-year-old patriarch, pleaded guilty in May to wire fraud and faces up to twenty years when he is sentenced in October. Prosecutors say he marketed returns as high as eighteen percent on supposed short-term bridge loans and pocketed the proceeds for a $230,000 Maine vacation home, $140,000 in jewelry, a $20,800 Patek Philippe, more than $2 million on credit-card bills, and at least $570,000 in political contributions. The contributions ran from a Coweta County state legislator all the way up to Donald Trump’s own political committees.
The Frosts were not some fly-by-night crew working a phone bank out of a strip mall. They were the family. Edwin Brant Frost V chaired the powerful Coweta County Republican Party and had been a vice chair of the state GOP. A daughter worked the party’s charitable arm and appeared on television talking about election integrity. Frost IV himself told a prayer meeting that God told him, “I’m going to clean house, and I’m going to use a broom named Trump.” That was the family that ran the room in Georgia Republican politics — and the room’s money ran through First Liberty Building & Loan, a brick office in Newnan that is shuttered now.
This is the pew-and-portfolio family, and the racket is as old as American fraud. Jim Bakker sold “lifetime partnerships” from a TV pulpit in 1989, kept $3.4 million of the faithful’s money, and went to federal prison on twenty-four counts of mail and wire fraud. The pitch was God. The product was the savings. The Frost pitch was the “patriot economy.” The product was the savings of conservative Christian retirees who heard Frost V on Erick Erickson’s syndicated radio show, on the late Charlie Kirk’s podcast, and on John Fredericks’ streaming show, telling audiences to get in touch “if you want to participate in the patriot economy and get Wall Street returns for Main Street investors.” Wall Street returns. For Main Street investors. From a family that ran prayer meetings. The collar changes; the math does not.
When the scheme unraveled, the patriarch copped a plea and the son got hit with a $500,000 fine and was barred from the securities business by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. Raffensperger returned the donations. Governor Brian Kemp returned them. Almost no one else did. A former state party chair, Rusty Paul, told a reporter that the Frosts’ exit “removes a thorn from the body Republican.” That is the leadership the party has managed: a sigh of relief that the loudest grifter in the room is finally leaving it.
The victims were the people the Frosts and the party spent decades claiming to represent. James McMaster, 94, lost about $1.3 million. He still answers the phone when a Republican candidate’s caller dials, and what he tells the caller is to come back when the politicians have returned the funds. Lisa Jimenez, a former Republican from the small town of Jackson southeast of Atlanta, has registered as an independent and is openly considering voting Democratic for the first time in her life. She has billboards ready along I-75 with the names of every politician who kept the money. The party’s own operatives are saying it out loud. Alex Johnson, who chairs the Georgia Republican Assembly, put it this way: “It makes Republicans look corrupt. It still looks bad, and it didn’t contribute to party unity.”
Georgia’s Secretary of State has clawed back millions for victims, but tens of millions remain missing. The criminal case is moving. The political case is not.
Three hundred lost their savings. The party kept the loot. They will vote in November.