Posted on 09/01/2026 4:37:49 PM PDT by GrootheWanderer
James McMaster, 94 years old, lost about $1.3 million in the collapse of First Liberty Building & Loan, the Georgia investment firm built by a family of Republican power brokers. He recently got a call to contribute to a GOP campaign.
“I said, ‘OK, let me tell you. Here’s where I’m at,’” McMaster said. “‘When you get all the politicians that have received funds from them and get them to return them, then maybe we can talk.’”
The saga of First Liberty and the Frost family that ran it—and were long among the Georgia GOP’s most influential names—haunts the midterms. As investigations continue, politicians face pressure to return donations from the defunct company. The sentencing of founder and patriarch Edwin Brant Frost IV is scheduled for October.
First Liberty courted investors through conservative outlets such as Erick Erickson’s syndicated radio show and the late Charlie Kirk’s podcast. In 2024, the patriarch’s son, Edwin Brant Frost V, known as “five,” told a John Fredericks streaming-show audience to get in touch, “if you want to participate in the patriot economy and get Wall Street returns for Main Street investors.” In April, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia charged Frost IV, now 69, with orchestrating a yearslong scheme to defraud about 300 investors with promises of sizable returns.
Prosecutors said Frost IV used money raised in part for more than $5 million in “personal and sometimes extravagant expenditures,” including $230,000 to rent a Maine vacation home, $140,000 in jewelry, $20,800 for a Patek Philippe watch, $2 million-plus on credit-card bills and more than $570,000 on political contributions.
Alex Johnson, chairman of the Georgia Republican Assembly, a conservative activist group the Frosts once helped lead, said the scheme burned, for the most part, conservative Christian families and businesses.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
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Beware! Here’s what we’ve got in this country:
Dishonest Democrats.
Dishonest Republicans.
Honest Republicans.
Note that there are no honest Democrats.
“94 years old, lost about $1.3 million...”
I imagine it might be tough to make back $1.3 million as you are rolling into your 95th birthday.
China routinely executes fraudsters like this. I think we should too.
After reading 4 reports by the current court receiver these guys apparently:
1) had horrible loan documentation
2) had at least 60 loans in default
3) were dependent on loans to real estate LLCs that are now in bankruptcy, defaulted loans, & foreclosures
When the financing ends on a ponzi operation it goes belly up. The good news is the receiver has acquired over $4,000,000 in assets and is making headway on others.
Leave it to the neo-leftist Wall Street Journal to make the story primarily about “Republicans” rather than about the financial scheme.
WSJ=NYT.
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