EXCLUSIVE: The Republican National Committee has staffed up with new senior leadership to support President Trump’s agenda and work to elect Republican candidates "who will fight to Make America Great Again," Fox News Digital has learned. 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley brought on a slate of new senior staff at the GOP—all bringing campaign expertise stemming from several election cycles and experience in the private sector. 

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"After a historic victory in 2024, taking back the White House and securing majorities in both chambers of Congress, Republicans are just getting started delivering on promises made," Whatley told Fox News Digital. 

"As America enters the new golden age under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, I am thrilled to announce our extraordinary RNC team, who will work around the clock to support President Trump’s agenda and elect Republican candidates who will fight to Make America Great Again," he said. 

The RNC has brought on Mike Ambrosini to serve as chief of staff. Ambrosini previously served as the director of the RNC’s State Party Strategies. He also served in the first Trump administration and held roles in Congress, the private sector, and served as the executive director of the Michigan Republican Party. 

RNC officials told Fox News Digital that Ambrosini is "the perfect person to bring everyone to the table, navigate challenges, and implement a winning strategy." 

Whatley has also brought on Rob Secaur as the new RNC political director. Secaur served as deputy political director for the 2024 Trump campaign, after serving as an RNC regional political director. 

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To run messaging, Whatley tapped Zach Parkinson as RNC communications director. Parkinson served as the RNC’s research director and deputy communications director overseeing the GOP’s opposition research and rapid response efforts. 

Parkinson also provided research to the Trump 2024 campaign; served as deputy communications director for the Trump 2020 campaign; and worked in communications and research roles at the Trump White House from 2017 to 2019. 

Meanwhile, to run GOP finance, Mallory Gerndt has been elevated to finance director from her current role on the RNC finance team, where she has served since 2017. 

Gerndt was the deputy finance director for the RNC throughout the 2024 election cycle. 

RNC officials told Fox News Digital that Gerndt has a reputation for "setting and meeting fundraising goals to help deliver for President Trump’s America First agenda." 

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Whatley also announced Zach Imel as RNC data director. Imel served as director of external data & voter contact for Team Trump during the 2024 campaign. Previously, Imel oversaw RNC data efforts during the 2022 and 2020 cycles. 

Whatley also brought on Brent Brooks to serve as digital director. Brooks, according to GOP officials, has played "a key role" in raising millions of dollars and developing "VotePro," which the RNC billed as a "crucial app that empowered millions of Republican voters to get involved, take action, cast their ballots, and win in 2024." 

As for RNC efforts across the nation, Whatley has tapped Tom Smithfield to serve as State Party Strategies Director. 

Smithfield served as State Party Strategies deputy director during the 2024 cycle and as deputy national field director in 2022. Smithfield also served as deputy state director for Trump Victory in Pennsylvania in 2020 and for the Pennsylvania GOP in 2018. 

Whatley told Fox News Digital that as Trump "delivers on his promises," Republicans plan to also "look to the future." 

"The RNC will play a pivotal role," Whatley said. "Our team will continue to grow the party, get out the vote, secure our elections and keep on winning." 
 

A pair of voting advocacy groups founded by failed Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams were hit with a historic fine by the Georgia Ethics Commission for violating campaign finance laws to bolster Abram's 2018 election.  

"Today the State Ethics Commission entered into a consent agreement with the New Georgia Project and the New Georgia Project Action Fund for a total of $300,000," the Georgia State Ethics Commission posted in a statement on Wednesday. "This certainly represents the largest fine imposed in the history of Georgia's Ethics Commission, but it also appears to be the largest ethics fine ever imposed by any state ethics commission in the country related to an election and campaign finance case."

Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013 as part of an effort to register more minority voters and young voters. The organization was founded as a charity that can accept tax-deductible donations, while the New Georgia Project Action Fund worked as the organization's fundraising arm. 

The groups admitted to failing to disclose about $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenditures that were used during Abram's election efforts in 2018, according to the commission's consent order. The groups were hit with a total of 16 violations, including failing to register as a political committee and failure to disclose millions of dollars in political contributions.

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The groups were accused of carrying out similar activity in 2019, when they reportedly failed to disclose $646,000 in contributions and $174,000 while advocating for a ballot initiative. 

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"This represents the largest and most significant instance of an organization illegally influencing our statewide elections in Georgia that we have ever discovered, and I believe this sends a clear message to both the public and potential bad actors moving forward that we will hold you accountable," the ethics commission continued in its statement Wednesday. 

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Abrams stepped down from the group in 2017, with Sen. Raphael Warnock taking the reins as the New Georgia Project’s CEO from 2017 to 2019, the Associated Press reported. Warnock was elected as a U.S. senator from Georgia in 2020. 

A spokesperson for Warnock's Senate office told the AP that he was working "as a longtime champion for voting rights" and that he was not aware of campaign violations. The spokesperson added that "compliance decisions were not a part of that work." Fox News Digital also reached out to Warnock's office for additional comment but did not immediately receive a reply. 

Abrams ran for governor of Georgia in 2018 and 2022, but lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in both races. Abrams drew national attention after the 2018 race when she refused to concede to the Republican despite losing by 60,000 votes. 

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Amid the 2018 race, she touted the New Georgia Project on her X account, which was called Twitter at the time.

"When Abrams sees a problem, she doesn’t wait for someone else to step up – she does it herself. So when she saw that 800,000 people of color in Georgia weren't registered to vote, Abrams immediately set out to fix the problem & founded The New GA Project," she tweeted. 

The New Georgia Project said in a comment provided to Fox News Digital that they are "glad to finally put this matter behind us" so the group can "fully devote its time and attention to its efforts to civically engage and register black, brown, and young voters in Georgia."

"While we remain disappointed that the federal court ruling on the constitutionality of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Act was overturned on entirely procedural grounds, we accept this outcome and are eager to turn the page on activities that took place more than five years ago," the group continued. 

FIRST ON FOX: The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a conservative-leaning ethics watchdog, released a year-end round up of 2024's worst ethics violations committed by public officials that the group investigated this year.

The theme for this year's report was ethics violations tied to efforts to win elected office. The violations ranged from failures to disclose financial information and violations of federal contribution limits, to "blatant" Hatch Act violations and officials seemingly using campaign funds for their own personal pleasure. 

FACT is a nonprofit based in the nation's capital that was formed in 2014, and describes itself as "dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency in government and civic arenas." At the end of each year, the watchdog unveils its top ten worst violators.

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"It is important to note the alarming detail that there is not one particular ethics rule implicated among them, rather they cover a wide variety of fronts, including the laws enforced by the Office of Special Counsel, the Federal Election Commission, and the Office of Congressional Ethics," the 2024 report states. "It’s clear these top violators too often prioritize themselves over serving their constituents."

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One of the examples FACT cited involved Wisconsin Democratic member of Congress, Gwen Moore, whose political action committee under her control spent 94.8% of its funds on things like food and travel, such as catering, food delivery, restaurants, hotels, a resort in California's wine country and alcohol, according to the report. 

The report said that Moore's leadership PAC spent almost eight-times more on this than it did on its required purpose of supporting candidates.

Moore ultimately beat her GOP challenger in November by a wide margin, keeping her in control of the Milwaukee-area congressional district. The congresswoman's office did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

Two other violations from the report included Hatch Act violations. The Hatch Act is aimed at ensuring that the government functions in a nonpartisan manner and bars certain public officials from engaging in political activities while they are on duty. 

FACT's report charged President Joe Biden's Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Xavier Becerra, with sending "a blatant political email," two months before November's election, which was described in a media report at the time as "a sales pitch for Kamala Harris."

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The official email from HHS was sent to people who signed up to receive updates on the government's Medicare program, which means it could have reached up to 67.5 million recipients, according to FACT. While the email did not directly say "vote for Harris," it lauded Harris for casting a tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, noting that the move from Harris served to lower healthcare costs.

HHS did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

Other ethics violations included in FACT's round-up were several instances of misused or misrepresented campaign funds. 

The report highlighted outgoing Maryland Democratic Rep. David Trone, who earned backlash during this year's election cycle for allegedly funding his campaign with money earned through his Total Wine empire despite claiming he had stepped away from his family's wine business after being elected to Congress in 2018. Trone, who left the House to run for Maryland's open Senate seat this year – losing in the primary – failed to disclose his interest in numerous Total Wine franchises in the lead up to the election, the report alleged. 

Representatives for Trone did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

The report also claims that Rep.-elect Eugene Vindman, who recently took over Virginia's seventh congressional district with a win last month, received campaign contributions significantly exceeding those allowed under federal law. VoteVets PAC, a political action committee supporting left-leaning veterans running for Congress, was reportedly engaging in illegal campaign work for Vindman's campaign by acting as their press liaison.

Vindman's campaign manager did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

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Together, all of these examples and more lay out what FACT's Executive Director Kendra Arnold called "a preview" of what elected officials are like when nobody is looking. 

"We uncover and file complaints on all types of ethics violations, but this year the ones committed in the campaign stage unfortunately stood out," Arnold told Fox News Digital. "Of all the types of violations it could easily be argued that those committed to get into office are among the very worst."