Since June 2025, Frontline Policy Council lobbyist and general counsel Chelsea Thompson has been fined more than $4,000 by the Georgia Ethics Commission for committing 16 violations of Georgia lobbying laws, government documents show.
Frontline Policy Council is an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group that began as a project of Focus on the Family’s Family Policy Alliance but became an independent organization in 2021.
The most recent consent agreement approved by the Georgia Ethics Commission on April 3 found Thompson “did engage in direct lobbying twelve times when she testified in committee meetings supporting specific legislation” without being appropriately registered as a lobbyist in 2024.1 The agreement, which resulted in a $3,400 fine, also found that Thompson failed to file one statutorily required lobbying disclosure statement on time that year. In June 2025, the commission concluded that Thompson had failed to file three disclosure reports that year and imposed an $825 fine.2
Public comments during the March 30 Georgia Ethics Commission meeting revealed that the commission received another set of complaints against Thompson and Frontline in February.3 The complaint, filed by a group of “Georgia citizens,” alleges former state legislator Lauren Daniel improperly lobbied on behalf of Frontline just after leaving elected office in January 2025. The complaint further accuses the group of failing to report gifts to legislators valued at more than $17,000 and urges the secretary of state to investigate the group’s solicitation and business practices.
The mounting accusations come as five lobbyists submitted registrations to work on behalf of Frontline Policy Council and Frontline Policy Action in 2026.4 Previous reporting by the Southern Poverty Law Center exposed Frontline’s anti-LGBTQ+ agenda and connections to state leaders. In a 2022 blog post about LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Frontline President Cole Muzio accused LGBTQ+ people of “grooming” kids. He wrote: “Let me be clear: yes, there is absolutely an agenda to groom our children to identify outside of God’s design for their gender and sexuality. In recent years, we have seen an all-out push — and we are bombarded with it this month — to impose this unnatural agenda upon us.”5
Since then, Hatewatch has reported, the group has focused on lobbying the state government to adopt anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Muzio has characterized transgender identity as “the left’s ultimate attempt to shake their fist at God” and repeated anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscientific claims that equate transgender identity with mental illness. In 2025, he wrote that “there’s a special place in hell” for an Episcopal bishop who preached about mercy toward immigrants and transgender people.
In an email at the end of 2025, Muzio indicated a focus on passing legislation to restrict gender-affirming healthcare in 2026. “We know the facts,” Muzio wrote. “Boys cannot become girls. ‘Gender affirming care’ is really for-profit-gender-destruction.”6
Frontline lobbying
In 2024, Hatewatch reported that Frontline hired Thompson as general counsel in 2023 to “[provide] the Body of Christ with legal … insights,” draft legislation and help lobby policymakers.
At the end of 2024, accusations emerged that Thompson was lobbying without properly registering with the state’s ethics commission and that Muzio had previously engaged in questionable lobbying activities.7 In May 2025, Thompson denied the allegations amid a second round of claims that the group had violated campaign finance and disclosure laws, telling the Georgia Recorder, “This is a non-issue stemming from site technical issues.”8
According to Atlanta radio news station WABE, in November 2024, Muzio “said he will be glad to register as a lobbyist if the ethics commission tells him to, but he’s planning on spending less time at the Capitol.”9
On June 12, 2025, Thompson agreed to the $825 fine for violating Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA) section 21-5-73(b), requiring lobbyists to file regular disclosure reports, on three separate occasions that year.10
Muzio’s case has not appeared on any public ethics commission agenda since the allegations against him emerged in 2024, but emails shared with Hatewatch show that Muzio’s activities were still under scrutiny by commission staff in September 2025 and March 2026.11
Frontline Policy Council did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
‘Repeat offenders’
On March 30, the ethics commission adopted a second consent agreement with Thompson in less than a year. According to the agreement, “the Commission, on information and belief, has evidence that compensation received for any lobbying activity in this complaint would have exceeded” the $250 threshold that would have required Thompson to register as a lobbyist in 2024.12
Although the agreement notes Thompson “believes evidence on this prong is arguable,” she “does not contest this element in favor of resolving this complaint” and agreed to a fine of more than $3,100 for violating OCGA 21-5-71(a)(1) “twelve times during the 2024 legislative session.”13 The consent agreement also concludes that Thompson violated OCGA 21-5-73(d) by filing her June 2025 lobbying disclosure report “outside of statutory timelines.”14
During the public comment period near the end of the commission meeting, a speaker named Peter Bailey questioned commissioners about the process for filing complaints and how the commission handles “repeat offenders,” referring to lobbyists or groups who face repeated ethics complaints or are subject to multiple consent agreements.
In his comments, Bailey noted that Thompson was on the commission’s March 30 consent agenda and appeared in another complaint shared with Bailey by an unnamed lawmaker. During the exchange with Bailey, ethics commission Executive Director David Emadi confirmed the commission received the complaint against current and former Frontline staff, including Thompson, saying, “We already have it,” in a video of the meeting posted to the commission’s YouTube channel.15
A copy of the lengthy complaint reviewed by Hatewatch details eight allegations against the group and its leaders. According to the complaint, former state Rep. Daniel lobbied on behalf of Frontline during the 2025 legislative session despite a statutory one-year ban on lobbying by former lawmakers following the end of their public service.16
The complaint also alleges that Thompson and Daniel failed to report gifts with an estimated value of more than $17,000 in the form of “custom engraved Bibles” to all 236 Georgia state legislators in 2025.17
The complaint also questions whom Frontline’s lobbyists are registered to represent, pointing out that in 2025 filings, Thompson amended the name of the organization she represented “from ‘Frontline Policy Council’ (as her client was listed in her original 2025 lobbying registration application filed on November 21, 2024) to ‘Frontline Policy Action/Frontline Policy Council’ (per an email request made on January 10, 2025).”18
In January, Frontline’s lobbyists continued the practice. According to public records, five lobbyists filed registrations to work on behalf of Frontline, but in each case, the lobbyists are registered as representatives of “Frontline Policy Action/Frontline Policy Council,” despite being two different entities organized under different sections of the federal Internal Revenue Code.19
The Georgia Ethics Commission did not return Hatewatch’s request for information about the legality of a lobbyist registering to represent two organizations on the same registration form. The complaint requests that the commission “open a complaint, use authorities under OCGA § 21-5-6 to fully investigate, and impose remedies.”20
New lobbyists
In an April 3 email to supporters, Muzio noted that in 2026, the group “registered more lobbyists than ever before.”21
Kelbie Murphy, one of the newest lobbyists for the combined “Frontline Policy Action/Frontline Policy Council” entity, gained national notoriety in September 2025 when she posted a TikTok video in which she suggested “cancel[ling]”22 two college textbook authors after reading a passage from the book International Public Relations: Negotiating Culture, Identity, and Power and appearing to confuse a definition of the violent, racist and antisemitic beliefs of Aryan Nations called “Christian Identity” with a slight against the Christian religion. Murphy registered as a lobbyist for FPA/FPC in January.23
In the video, Murphy reads a section of a textbook that references various usages of the term “identity” including “corporate, sexual, digital, public, racial, national, brand, and even Christian (a U.S.-based white supremacist group).”24
“As a Christian, if you’re reading this, and you’re not a Christian and you’re not in college, I am not a white supremacist, so can we cancel these authors or are we going to cancel me?” Kelbie asks in the video.25
The video was shared by anti-LGBTQ+ extremist Chaya Raichik’s @LibsofTikTok account on social media and viewed more than 2 million times since September 2025.26 Kelbie was featured on Fox News in October 202527 and in a December 2025 report about “radical” college courses for the conservative outlet.28
In October 2025 Kelbie said, “The way it was worded, it listed several marginalized groups, but then only called Christians to be white supremacists. … But the scariest thing is that the book was written in 2007.”29 According to Fox, Kelbie continued, “This has been shared for almost 20 years, and it was never questioned,” adding, “I think American academia needs a definite reevaluation, especially in our textbooks, as we can see from my prime example.”30
As the SPLC has documented, Christian Identity (CID) is “an antisemitic, racist theology that gained a foothold during the Civil Rights Era and reached a prominent position within the racist right by the 1980s. ‘Christian’ in name only, CID doctrine claims that white people, not Jewish individuals, are the true Israelites favored by God in the Bible.”
Image at top: Photo illustration by the SPLC.
Citations
1 Consent Order in the matter of Chelsea Thompson before the State Ethics Commission. Case No. 24-0124-C.
2 Consent Order in the matter of Chelsea Thompson before the State Ethics Commission. Case No. 25-0029-C.
3 Confidential source information.
4 Lobbying Registrations: Client, Frontline Policy Action/Frontline Policy Council. Georgia Ethics Commission.
5 Cole Muzio, “Let’s Talk about ‘Grooming,’” Frontline Policy, June 8, 2022.
6 Cole Muzio, “Georgia’s Evil Policy,” December 5, 2025.
7 Ross Williams, “Legislative Policy Watchdog Challenges Georgia Conservative Nonprofit Over Lobbyist Filing Dispute,” WABE, November 25, 2024.
8 Ross Williams, “Another Ethics Complaint Filed Against Conservative Lobbying Group With Influence at Georgia Capitol,” Georgia Recorder, May 6, 2025.
9 Ross Williams, “Legislative Policy Watchdog Challenges Georgia Conservative Nonprofit Over Lobbyist Filing Dispute,” WABE, November 25, 2024.
10 Consent order in the matter of Chelsea Thompson before the State Ethics Commission. Case No. 25-0029-C.
11 Confidential source information.
12 Consent order in the matter of Chelsea Thompson before the State Ethics Commission. Case No. 24-0124-C.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Georgia Ethics Commission. April 30, 2026. YouTube video.
16 Complaint by Concerned Citizens in Georgia.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Lobbying Registrations: Client, Frontline Policy Action/Frontline Policy Council. Georgia Ethics Commission.
20 Complaint by Concerned Citizens in Georgia.
21 “Good Friday and Update,” email message, April 3, 2026.
22 Kelbie Murphy, TikTok, September 2025.
23 Kelbie Murphy lobbyist profile, Georgia State Ethics Commission website.
24 Kelbie Murphy, TikTok, September 2025.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Preston Mizell, “Christian Student Exposes Pricey College Textbook Calling Her a ‘White Supremacist,’” Fox News, October 16, 2025.
28 Andrew Mark Miller, “Most Radical Courses, Curriculum That Received Federal Funding in 2025,” Fox News, December 26, 2025.
29 Preston Mizell, “Christian Student Exposes Pricey College Textbook Calling Her a ‘White Supremacist,’” Fox News, October 16, 2025.
30 Ibid.
