WASHINGTON — Democratic fundraising powerhouse ActBlue let overseas money illegally flow to US campaigns and causes with barely the appearance of proper vetting, according to a report released this week by three House Republican-led committees.
New documents obtained by the House Oversight, Judiciary and Administration Committees revealed that ActBlue’s fraud safeguards, including its methods for passport verification, “could be bypassed easily by foreign actors.”
“We use some very basic validation — number of characters — to ensure that the number entered is a valid passport number, but we do not verify the information in any other way,” the report quoted an ActBlue customer service webpage.
“We do not, for instance, check the information provided against a government database,” it added. “We merely store the information and continue with the contribution flow.”
Policies adopted by the platform also forced its fraud analysts to “give the donor the benefit of the doubt,” even when contributions originated from foreign IP addresses or had other indications of originating outside America.
“Donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows,” an ActBlue supervisor wrote to an employee urging them to accept a June 2024 contribution.
“It’s odd that all signs point to this person being from Canada but they used a Missouri billing address, but Twitter seems to confirm that they are a real person,” read another note from a supervisor on an accepted donation from early 2022.
The report also found that “every member of ActBlue’s legal and compliance team appears to have left the platform after the 2024 election because of its ‘knowing and willful’ acceptance of illegal foreign contributions, and the subsequent cover-up.”
“There’s nothing to see here,” an ActBlue spokesperson responded in a statement. “After we released findings of a third-party forensic analysis that completely undermined a central claim that they have made against ActBlue, Republicans are refusing to move on.”
“Instead, they are orchestrating another political stunt before rushing out of town weeks early to go campaign,” the rep added. “This coordinated campaign against ActBlue isn’t about the facts, or legislating, it’s about Republicans’ efforts to silence organizations they believe threaten their agenda.”
In response to the report’s Wednesday release, ActBlue put out the results of an audit of donations received in 2023 that concluded “99.99% came from donors who provided ActBlue a US address or a passport number.”
The House Republican committees have been investigating ActBlue since 2023, following accusations that the platform did not require a Card Verification Value (CVV) for credit or debit transactions, which would expose it to illegal transactions.
The Post later reported on internal documents obtained as part of the investigation that showed ActBlue adopted “more lenient” standards for fraud vetting during the 2024 election year.
Several ActBlue officials were subsequently subpoenaed for testimony, but most have exercised their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Among those to take the Fifth was CEO Regina Wallace-Jones, who was accused by lawmakers of having misled Congress about its fraud vetting.
Lawyers for the platform had resigned in early 2025 after they claimed their warnings about the lax fraud safeguards weren’t heeded.
Some sections of a resignation letter written by one of those lawyers, Aaron Ting, are still being withheld by ActBlue due to attorney-client privilege claims, the report stated.
