Why Travis Tritt’s claim about Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s finances and Dominion is False

After Donald Trump was indicted in Georgia for efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, country singer Travis Tritt defended the former president in an attack on Georgia’s governor.

When Republican Gov. Brian Kemp reiterated on social media that the 2020 election in Georgia was “not stolen,” Tritt, a Georgia native, responded by accusing Kemp of using the state’s election system for his own personal gain.

“I have confidential sources in Georgia who’ve told me that Brian Kemp was over $7 million in debt when he was elected as Georgia’s governor in 2018. In 2019, Kemp cut a deal with the state of Georgia to select Dominion Voting Systems to provide its new statewide voting system beginning in 2020,” Tritt posted on Truth Social. “My sources tell me that Kemp has never been in debt since that deal was done. Connect the dots.”

As a statewide politician, Kemp has been required for years to publicly disclose his finances — including his assets and liabilities.

This claim has been widely shared on X, formerly Twitter. But Tritt mischaracterizes Kemp’s finances and ignores that Kemp’s successor, not Kemp, oversaw Dominion’s selection as Georgia’s voting equipment manufacturer. Tritt did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.

Kemp served as Georgia’s secretary of state for eight years before running for governor in 2018 and narrowly defeating Democrat Stacey Abrams. Kemp was reelected governor in 2022.

Kemp’s personal finances

All candidates for public office in Georgia must file annual personal financial disclosure reports, and campaign finance reports, with the state’s Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. Candidates for statewide positions must disclose additional information about their personal finances before elections.

In 2017, Kemp reported about $11.5 million in assets and about $6.3 million in liabilities, giving him a net worth of $5.2 million, according to his disclosure report.

So, Tritt’s claim that Kemp was “over $7 million in debt” is inaccurate.

If Kemp’s liabilities had outweighed his assets, he would have reported a negative net worth, signaling he was in debt.

The bulk of Kemp’s liabilities in 2017 came from about $4 million in real estate mortgages and $2.2 million in “notes payable to others.” This consisted of $1 million for farm equipment and $1.2 million in loans to Hart AgStrong, a struggling agricultural company Kemp partly owned. (State inspectors discovered in 2011 discrepancies in AgStrong’s inventory and five years later, two fires broke out at the company.)

Kemp’s disclosure report also shows he had guaranteed $9 million more in loans to AgStrong — about twice his net worth — in the event the company defaulted. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that AgStrong’s equipment and property covered most of these loans as collateral, and Kemp was not the only investor who promised to pay if the company couldn’t.

Kemp’s investments in AgStrong spurred trouble for him during the 2018 gubernatorial race. Local businessman Rick Phillips sued Kemp in 2017, claiming he had failed to repay a $500,000 loan. Kemp settled the lawsuit days before he took office in January 2019. AgStrong was sold to Perdue AgriBusiness months later for an undisclosed price.

By 2021, the next year the state required Kemp to file extensive personal financial disclosures, Kemp had divested from AgStrong and paid off most of his liabilities. He reported more than $8.7 million in assets and $180,000 owed for real estate mortgages, making his net worth just under $8.6 million.

But there’s no record that Kemp cleared his debts through a deal with Dominion Voting Systems. The voting equipment company is not mentioned in Kemp’s financial disclosure reports and the vendor selection process that resulted in Dominion’s hiring was overseen by Kemp’s successor in the secretary of state office, not Kemp.

Georgia doesn’t require statewide officials, such as Kemp, to report assets or liabilities during nonelection years, so Kemp’s personal financial disclosure reports for 2018, 2019 and 2020 do not include this information. A Kemp spokesperson declined to comment for this fact-check, but pointed us to Kemp’s public financial disclosures.

Georgia’s switch to Dominion Voting Systems

Beginning in 2017, critics of Georgia’s voting machines launched a legal challenge that raised concerns about Georgia’s election integrity. The concerns prompted state officials to start working to replace its outdated direct-recording electronic, or DRE, voting machines.

In 2018, as secretary of state, Kemp formed a committee to evaluate alternative voting machine options and make recommendations to the Georgia General Assembly. The committee recommended no specific voting equipment vendors.

The next year, lawmakers approved House Bill 316, which required the state to move to electronic ballot-marking devices that print a paper record. Kemp, then in his first year as governor, signed the bill into law.

Brad Raffensperger, who succeeded Kemp as secretary of state, started in March 2019 the search for a new vendor for the state’s voting equipment. About four months later, after multiple companies submitted bids and were evaluated by government officials, Raffensperger announced Dominion Voting Systems would be the new vendor.

Georgia paid Dominion $138 million to supply the state with 30,000 new voting machines before the March 2020 primary election. This contract also covered installation and maintenance costs.

A Dominion spokesperson told PolitiFact that any claims about a business or financial relationship between the company and Kemp are “completely false.”

Mike Hassinger, Raffensperger’s spokesperson, said Kemp had “zero role” in selecting Dominion as the new vendor. The secretary of state’s office developed the scoring rubric used to evaluate the voting machine companies’ proposals.

“There are a lot of crazy conspiracy theories that ‘go viral’ because they contain a nugget of truth coupled with wild exaggerations. Tritt’s statement is not even that, but merely a sad lie created from whole cloth by a celebrity unburdened by facts,” Hassinger said.

Our ruling

Tritt claimed “Brian Kemp was over $7 million in debt when he was elected as Georgia’s governor in 2018. In 2019, Kemp cut a deal with the state of Georgia to select Dominion Voting Systems to provide its new statewide voting system beginning in 2020. … Kemp has never been in debt since.”

There are no public records detailing Kemp’s assets and liabilities in 2018, per Georgia law. The year before, Kemp reported $6.3 million in liabilities, which was mostly from real estate mortgages. But he also reported about $11.5 million in assets. Since Kemp’s assets outweighed his liabilities that year, he was not “in debt.”

In 2021, Kemp paid off most of his liabilities.

Still, Kemp was not involved in selecting Dominion as Georgia’s new voting machine vendor. As the state’s top election official, Raffensperger led that process.

We rate this claim False.