House Committees, DOJ Turn Up The Heat On Dems’ ActBlue

The hounds are closing in on the Democratic Party’s suspect online fundraising platform that has raised billions of dollars for Democrats and liberal causes. Now the House committees looking into the potentially nefarious activities of ActBlue is sharing its findings with President Trump’s Department of Justice, which could prosecute platform players for possible federal campaign finance law violations and other crimes. 

On Wednesday, Reps. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, R.Ky., who heads up the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, apprised Attorney General Pam Bondi on ActBlue’s checkered record. In a letter, they explained that the embroiled platform’s “concerning activities may have a direct effect on U.S. political campaigns and elections.” 

“The Committees writes today to draw your attention to our ongoing investigation into ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for the Democrat Party,” the letter states. “The oversight has uncovered that ActBlue has weak fraud-prevention practices and overlooks bad actors, including foreign actors, who take advantage of the platform to make illicit political donations.”

‘Attempted to Hide’

President Donald Trump has made clear he expects answers and accountability. In April, Trump issued a memorandum directing the Department of Justice to “investigate allegations regarding the unlawful use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates.”

Steil said the House members wanted to bring Bondi up to speed on the committee’s findings and turn over documents to assist the DOJ in its investigative efforts. He said the committees’ work will continue while the Justice Department pursues its course.  

“Jim Jordan, James Comer and myself are working to make sure the Department of Justice has the information they need to move forward in their investigation. At the same time we’ll continue our investigation in the House of Representatives, all with a goal of not only exposing what’s going on but also putting in place rules and laws that prevent any abuse in the future,” the Wisconsin congressman told me Wednesday in an interview on the Vicki McKenna Show in Milwaukee. 

Last month, the committees released a joint report revealing “that ActBlue knowingly made its fraud-prevention rules more lenient multiple times in 2024, despite knowledge of extensive fraud on the platform, including foreign sources.”

“The report detailed internal communications showing that ActBlue attempted to hide fraud-related policy changes to avoid public discourse about the fraud executive on its platform,” the letter to the attorney general explained. “The report also highlighted hundreds of foreign donations made from foreign IP addresses on the ActBlue platform.”

ActBlue officials have not returned The Federalist’s multiple requests for comment. 

‘Rooting Out Foreign Influence’

Steil and the House Administration Committee have been looking into ActBlue’s questionable fundraising activities since October 2023. A cloud of doubt has long hung over the left’s successful platform for online donations, mainly due to suspicions that the mountain of contributions ActBlue has piled up has been illegally collected. The investigation has found platform operators were accepting credit card contributions without a card verification value (CVV) — the three-digit identifying code on the back of the plastic. Such donations, the committee chairs note in the letter, are difficult to trace “and can be used by bad actors to make fraudulent and illicit contributions.”

On Halloween 2023, Steil sent ActBlue officials a letter seeking information about the platform’s practices and whether it had safeguards in place. ActBlue’s response was “lackluster,” but the organization confirmed it did not collect CVVs, the letter to Bondi notes. Steil then introduced a bill barring political committees from accepting online donations sans CVV codes and a billing address connected to the credit card. The bill also banned the use of prepaid cards for donations on the online political fundraising platforms. 

The SHIELD Act, as the bill was known, would prohibit individuals from “knowingly directing, helping, or assisting a person in the name of another person.” As The Federalist has reported, some have suspected users on ActBlue of engaging in the illegal practice of “smurfing,” a cute blue way of describing political money laundering. In campaign finance land, smurfing entails “breaking up large-scale donations in a way that disguises who the money is actually coming from, so the contribution limits on how much money can be donated to a particular candidate can be skirted,” explained former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky in a column last year for Fox News. 

The bill stalled in the last session. 

“We remain committed to rooting out foreign influence in American elections, and Chairman Steil plans to reintroduce the SHIELD Act this Congress,” the letter to the attorney general asserts. 

‘Internal Turmoil’

Things have not gone well for ActBlue over the course of the congressional investigation. In October, the Administration committee issued subpoenas seeking documents related to the platform’s “verification policies, contributions originating outside of the United States, deplatformed entities and reported unauthorized or fraudulent donations.” The records ActBlue turned over confirmed suspicions that the organization had accepted unverified payments during record-smashing fundraising totals for Democratic Party presidential replacement candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. ActBlue has since updated its policies, rejecting donations without identification safeguards, but only after the fundraising bonanza, according to the the committee chairmen. 

Subsequent records obtained have shed light on ActBlue’s operations, but the lawmakers say many questions remain. Since March, the oversight committees have been working with the Treasury Department to obtain “Suspicious Activity Reports” involving ActBlue, including SARs blocked by the Biden administration, the letter to the AG notes. 

In the meantime, several high-level platform officials have resigned. The committees are very interested in the “internal turmoil, lack of a functioning legal team, possible retaliatory actions, and failure to take fraud seriously.”

Democrats have painted the congressional investigations and Trump’s memo to the Justice Department as a “sustained attack” on the Democrats’ primary fundraising platform.

‘Uniquely Vulnerable’

Despite the specter of corruption that surrounds it, ActBlue continues to rake in hefty contributions. The platform raised $400 million in the first quarter of the year, “the biggest fundraising total in the first quarter of a non-presidential or midterm election year ever, “ Politico reported. 

Steil said his committee’s investigation found a “uniquely vulnerable” fundraising platform. Those vulnerabilities have raised concerns that actors inside of ActBlue were intentionally looking the other way “as others were using ActBlue for identity theft and effectively money laundering to a whole host of either democratic candidates or liberal causes.”

“This is a huge opportunity to turn the tide, not only in our investigation but also now with the work of the U.S. Department of Justice and Pam Bondi joining us in this investigation,” Steil said in the radio interview. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.