Brian Kemp settles suit over bad loan
ATLANTA — Days before he was sworn into office, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp quietly settled a lawsuit filed by a well-connected financier who claimed the Republican owed him $500,000 on an investment in a struggling agriculture firm.
Court documents show a consent order between Kemp, Hart AgStrong and businessman Rick Phillips was signed Jan. 8 and filed in Gwinnett County Superior Court Jan. 11, shortly before Kemp’s inauguration.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and attorneys for the parties declined comment.
“This case was administratively dismissed,” said Ryan Mahoney, a Kemp adviser. “The filing speaks for itself.”
Phillips claimed in the 2017 lawsuit that Kemp failed to repay the loan he negotiated and guaranteed for Hart AgStrong, a seed processor based in northeast Georgia that struggled financially after an ill-fated expansion into Kentucky.
The lawsuit factored prominently into Kemp’s campaign for governor, as Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Democrat Stacey Abrams both seized on it to raise concerns about his financial viability and his business background.
A separate lawsuit targeting Kemp filed by other investors was settled for roughly $200,000 last year, but Phillips continued to press his case — and was not shy about criticizing Kemp during the campaign.
“I expected him to keep his word, and he didn’t,” Phillips said in an earlier interview. “That speaks volumes about Brian.”
Financial records show that Kemp invested $750,000 in the company a decade ago and guaranteed $10 million in loans to AgStrong — about twice the net worth he reported in state disclosures.
Documents show two loans, totaling $600,000, were due in late December. Others begin to mature this year.
Aides to Kemp have said AgStrong’s property and equipment back most of those loans, and that Kemp was not the only investor who promised to pay if the company could not.
He said he wanted to “invest early in a company that was creating jobs and economic opportunity” and he’s confident the company will recover and repay the loans.
The new plant was pitched to farmers in Kentucky as a lucrative way to diversify their crops using a portion of their land to grow plants not usually cultivated in the steamier Southern climate.