The Democrat fundraising machine, ActBlue, was reportedly warned by a law firm working for the platform in early 2025 that it possibly misled congressional leaders regarding its vetting of foreign donations, according to the New York Times.
The newspaper on Thursday noted its article was based on internal legal memos, emails, resignation letters, Slack messages, and interviews with current and former employees of the Democrat National Committee’s donor platform, adding the fundraising group is facing investigations as the November midterm elections approach.
The outlet said:
The firm concluded that ActBlue’s chief executive had given a potentially misleading response to congressional Republican investigators in a 2023 letter explaining how the organization vetted donations to ensure that they were not illegally coming from foreign citizens.
The letter from the chief executive, Regina Wallace-Jones, said ActBlue carried out “multilayered” screenings of contributions that helped “root out” those from overseas. In fact, the law firm found, some of the steps she had described were not always followed.
The firm, Covington & Burling, said the issue presents “substantial risk” for the fundraising platform, and the Times article noted “One memo raised the specter of a criminal investigation if prosecutors believed that ActBlue had tried to conceal facts about its efforts to prevent foreign contributions.”
In a social media post Thursday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) shared the Times report, writing, “This ActBlue investigation is among the biggest bombshell campaign finance corruption and actual foreign election interference stories in American politics. And it was all so publicly obvious, with many urging the media to look into this, but until recently, the media refused to cover it.”
In early March of 2025 while Republican lawmakers were probing ActBlue as a potential money-laundering operation, it was facing “internal chaos” with several senior officials reportedly leaving, according to Breitbart News.
That same month, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) alleged that former President Joe Biden’s (D) administration covered up “hundreds” of suspicious activity reports for ActBlue. His comments came as his Oversight Committee was investigating the platform over potential fraud, according to Breitbart News.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) at the time also called for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate ActBlue regarding “suspicious donations,” the outlet said:
Biggs’s letter cited concerns that ActBlue had “been used to skirt the integrity of federal campaign finance laws,” and noted that while the “U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on House Administration have been investigating these allegations of misconduct,” the Biden administration had “stalled access to the necessary documents.”
The following month, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate ActBlue, according to the Associated Press (AP).
More recently, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for records connected to alleged fraud by ActBlue, the organization announced February 3.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, “There are legitimate, grave concerns that ActBlue has enabled illegal fundraising. By failing to prevent widespread straw-donor schemes and other tactics, it is likely that fraudulent and even foreign-sourced contributions have crept into Democrat campaign coffers.”
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