The Democratic Party’s fundraising machine under fire as ActBlue’s CEO plead the Fifth before Congress nearly two dozen times over allegations of weak fraud controls.
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones refused to answer questions and invoked the Fifth Amendment on Capitol Hill Wednesday amid a Republican-led House investigation into whether the platform allowed illegal foreign donations to flow into federal campaigns.
The Investigation
The massive fundraising site has processed roughly $19 billion in donations since its 2004 founding, with thousands of candidates and left-wing organizations benefitting from millions of donors.
Since 2023, ActBlue has been under investigation by multiple GOP-chaired House committees after viral reporting from independent journalist James O’Keefe alleged suspicious donation patterns tied to the platform.
Republicans now probing whether ActBlue kept its fraud controls deliberately weak to allow illegal foreign donations and other potentially unlawful contributions to flow through the platform.
The investigation gained momentum in April when The New York Times reported ActBlue’s own lawyers warned the group it may have misled Congress about its foreign-donation safeguards. Wallace-Jones then telling lawmakers ActBlue used “multilayered” screening to root out foreign contributions.
But internal legal memos reportedly warned ActBlue did not have the rigor it had described to Congress and there was a “substantial risk” some funds may have come from foreign nationals. The group later dismissed the investigations as a “witch hunt,” while also telling Congress it had strengthened its foreign-donation safeguards.
The Hearing
House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI) opened Wednesday’s hearing by arguing internal ActBlue documents show the platform was not merely missing fraud red flags but also training staff to work around them.
“This committee issued subpoenas for documents related to fraudulent and foreign donations and alleged misconduct by ActBlue staff,” Rep. Steil explained. “In ActBlue meeting notes turned over to this committee, staff were instructed, ‘Remember that we, that we want to look for reasons to accept contributions. Do not reject contributions for a single suspicious characteristic. Look for the forest and not the trees.'”
“Further, an ActBlue memo titled ‘Fraud Prevention 101 for New Associates in the Workflow’ advises that, ‘if an otherwise legitimate donor uses a fake name, we would want to accept their donation,'” he continued. “We have additional evidence of ActBlue detecting at least 22 significant fraud campaigns. Nine of those fraud campaigns had a foreign nexus.”
Chairman Steil noted Wallace-Jones was only appearing before the committee due to a subpoena. Prior to her appearance on the Hill, she released a video on social media that previewed her plan for the hearing. Watch:
“President Trump and his allies are abusing their power to target ActBlue. I was called to testify before Congress, and I will invoke my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination,” Wallace-Jones said, in part. “Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission or even an insinuation of guilt. It is the only reasonable response to a highly partisan proceeding that is about harassing its largest political opponent’s fundraising platform, not genuine oversight.”
“These attacks did not start with ActBlue, and sadly we know they are not stopping here,” she continued. “They are part of a much bigger trend of retaliation and retribution. It was universities, it was law firms, then civil rights organizations. We will not be intimidated.””
Inside the hearing room, Wallace-Jones refused to engage, like in this exchange with Chairman Steil:
STEIL: In 2023, I sent you this letter with five straightforward questions with a goal of confirming that foreign funds are not in our elections, and that ActBlue had adequate fraud prevention measures in place. You replied a month later with a four-page letter describing your fraud prevention policies and procedures that you had in place at ActBlue, but, according to The New York Times, your response to this committee may have been false and misleading, Ms. Wallace-Jones, when you signed this letter to me, did you believe that this letter was false and misleading?
JONES: On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer this question, pursuant to my fifth amendment rights under the Constitution.
Wallace-Jones went on to invoke the Fifth 21 more times and the hearing wrapped after roughly an hour. Democrats, for their part, largely dismissed the hearing as a partisan witch hunt, accusing Republicans of targeting ActBlue while ignoring similar questions about the GOP fundraising platform WinRed.
The House probe is running alongside a separate Justice Department investigation ordered by President Donald Trump last year.
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