House Panel Expands ActBlue Probe, Calls On FEC To Help Prevent Fraud

Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times,

A House panel is expanding its investigation into whether the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue may be skirting or violating federal campaign finance laws.

Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Administration Committee, launched the probe last fall amid allegations that ActBlue was facilitating the funneling of unlawful contributions to political committees across the country.

One of the committee’s initial findings was that ActBlue does not require online donors using a credit or debit card to provide a card verification value (CVV), a code meant to prevent fraudulent transactions.

Steil is now asking the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to change that.

In an Aug. 5 letter to FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey and Vice-Chair Ellen Weintraub, Steil urged the commission to initiate an emergency rulemaking process to require political campaigns to verify online donors’ CVV codes and bar them from accepting donations via prepaid credit cards or gift cards.

The congressman wrote, “This emergency rulemaking is necessary to reassure the American people that ActBlue is taking the necessary steps to protect its donors.”

He said that the platform’s current practices “invite the possibility of foreign donations,” and could also provide a vehicle for skirting campaign contribution limits via “straw donors.”

“These issues present a serious loophole to the transparency and integrity of the campaign donation process, and an emergency rulemaking is required to rectify these issues,” he wrote.

Neither the committee nor ActBlue returned requests for comment.

ActBlue, however, has referred to the allegations against it as “frivolous and false accusations.”

“This investigation is nothing more than a partisan political attack and scare tactic to undermine the power of Democratic and progressive small-dollar donors,” the organization said in a statement on Aug. 2 as Virginia joined the list of states scrutinizing its operations.

Accusing investigators of harassing staff and donors, the group added: “Republicans simply cannot accept that millions of Democrats are energized and engaged in the political process, and are instead resorting to political attacks and spreading false accusations.”

Steil’s request to the FEC was made as the committee launched the second phase of its probe.

According to a committee news release, “a wide array of sources” have come forward in recent weeks to voice concerns that ActBlue may have engaged in illegal activities.

Allegations include the laundering of unlawful—including foreign—donations, deliberately obscuring the identities and locations of cardholders by not requiring CVV codes, and accepting suspiciously large or frequent donations from donors on fixed incomes or with no history of such behavior.

Steil’s plan for preventing such violations includes passing legislation to require political committees to verify the CVV codes and addresses of donors using credit or debit cards. He would also prohibit political committees from accepting donations made via gift cards or prepaid credit cards and require campaigns to obtain donors’ “affirmative consent” for recurring contributions.

The attorneys general of Missouri, Virginia, and Wyoming are conducting their own investigations into ActBlue’s operations.

ActBlue came under scrutiny in March 2023 after O’Keefe Media Group published a report detailing atypical donation patterns among senior citizens who had used the platform to make political contributions. Individuals were recorded as having made thousands of donations—in some cases totaling upwards of $200,000—in just a few years’ time. But when asked about those donations, the seniors said they had no knowledge of them.

O’Keefe Media Group also found similar irregularities in data from WinRed, the Republican counterpart to ActBlue, though the House Administration Committee does not appear to be investigating that platform.