The Democrat Party’s main digital fundraising platform, ActBlue, has found itself once again the center of attention from Republican lawmakers who have some questions about the site’s shady operating practices.
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As RedState reported back in October, not only had ActBlue’s questionable activities been flagged by the Committee on House Administration and its Republican chairman, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), but it also was the subject of a letter signed by nineteen state attorneys general for facilitating a money-laundering scheme known as “smurfing.”
Smurfing is defined as “a money-laundering technique involving the structuring of large amounts of cash into multiple small transactions.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, ActBlue has now notified Congress that, until September of this year, they didn’t block donations made by foreign entities using gift cards. This brings up questions over whether countries like China, Russia, Venezuela, or Iran could have poured money into the Democrat Party’s campaign coffers intending to influence the outcome of the presidential race.
In documents submitted to Congress under subpoena, ActBlue claims they had closed by September 9 whatever loophole existed in its system that allowed acceptance of foreign gift cards. This was three days after Rep. Steil introduced the Secure Handling of Internet Electronic Donations (SHIELD) Act intended to ensure foreign money, particularly from countries sanctioned by the United States, was unable to be processed via online donations.
ActBlue coughing up the documents is a good sign, according to Steil, but doesn’t go far enough.
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“While this is a positive step forward, there is still more work to be done to ensure our campaign finance system is fully protected from fraud and unlawful foreign interference,” Steil told Just the News. “The documents provided to the Committee also confirm that ActBlue still accepted these concerning payment methods in July, a period when Democrats raised a record number of campaign money before implementing these safeguards.”
In a tweet that has over 22 million views as of Wednesday evening, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson declared ActBlue’s activities “ILLEGAL,” and he promised further investigation into the matter.
BREAKING: ActBlue was accepting foreign gift cards until September.
This is ILLEGAL.
The @HouseAdmin Committee will continue this important investigation into ActBlue next Congress.
Our work here is just getting started. https://t.co/ffDc5I7j4H
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) December 11, 2024
There are some questions, however, as to whether or not ActBlue actually did stop accepting those foreign donations in September. One intrepid researcher says maybe not, showing proof that he successfully submitted a donation in October to Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) using a foreign gift card.
🚨 In response to a subpoena, ActBlue apparently told Congress that they stopped accepting donations made by prepaid gift-cards in September 2024.
That CAN’T be true! You’ll see below that I donated using a pre-paid gift card bought with cash in November👇🏻
Did @actblue lie? https://t.co/DGl4Qfppet pic.twitter.com/sdlJVGYXfC
— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) December 11, 2024
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Here’s the gift card I used and the receipt from ActBlue showing that I donated with it on 10/23/2024, well after September. pic.twitter.com/nd5OpLYJto
— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) December 11, 2024
So, the question is: Did ActBlue knowingly continue to accept foreign donations even after the SHIELD Act was introduced to Congress? And what about those documents they submitted under subpoena? Do they show that the platform that has raised billions of dollars for Democrats and leftist causes is playing by the rules? Or, did ActBlue lie to Congress?
Here’s another question: Did they reverse these fraudulent transactions? After all, the Democrat Party has bragged about the huge amount of money it raised for Kamala Harris’s failed campaign, now finding itself in the hole for her free-spending ways. How much of that came from bad actors on the international stage and how much has been returned?
Let’s hope the GOP keeps digging away at this one.
