After raising huge sums of money for left-wing candidates and committees, ActBlue, the most important online fundraising engine for the Democratic Party, has imploded. A series of resignations has been accompanied by accusations of nefarious financial dealings that prompted even the organization’s unions to call for an outside investigation. House Republicans have been investigating ActBlue’s suspicious activities for months. Senate Republicans should join them. The Trump administration should do everything in its power to speed up the findings of these inquiries and refer evidence of fraud to the Justice Department.
ActBlue has served as the online clearing house for Democratic online fundraising since 2004. Organized legally as a political action committee, ActBlue acts as a one-stop processing center for donors who want to give to Democratic Party candidates and causes. It means small-dollar donors don’t have to enter their credit card information into the websites of every entity they want to give money to. Instead, ActBlue allows them to enter their information one time and donate to as many candidates and committees as they like — the more, the better. This also makes life easier for Democratic candidates who can outsource their online donation infrastructure to a reliable and friendly partisan powerhouse.
ActBlue has helped Democrats beat Republicans in online fundraising. But something happened in 2018 that supercharged ActBlue’s results. In 2016, Senate Republicans outraised Democrats overall by about $450 million to $350 million, with $250 million for Democrats coming from ActBlue. But then, in 2018, Senate Democrats were able to raise $600 million with $500 million coming from ActBlue, compared to about $420 million for Senate Republicans overall. In just one cycle, Democrats doubled their online take. Then, in 2020, Senate Democrats doubled their online take again to about $1.2 billion, with $1 billion of that coming from ActBlue.
Unsurprisingly, House Republicans started investigating ActBlue’s Federal Election Commission reports. They found anomalies including sudden and frequent donations from elderly citizens, uncharacteristic donations from voters registered for one party but voting for another, and unusually large donations from voters with little money.
House Republicans confirmed that, unlike most online retailers, ActBlue does not require online credit and gift donors to submit the CVV, or card verification value. This security oversight opens the door for foreign donors to donate fraudulently to Democratic candidates and groups using names and addresses of unknowing American citizens.
ActBlue fervently denies that it is doing this, or indeed doing anything else wrong, but the number of ActBlue officials willing to make such statements on the record is dwindling rapidly. Since Feb. 21, ActBlue has lost its customer service and partnerships directors, who had been with the organization for more than a decade, its chief revenue officer, its highest ranking legal officer, its assistant research director, a human resource official, and a senior engineer. The only remaining lawyer at the agency has now revealed that his access to internal email and files had been cut off, which prompted him to remind other employees, “Please be advised that we have Anti-Retaliation and Whistleblower Policies for a reason.”
No former ActBlue employees are talking to the press, but unions representing staff were unnerved enough by these events to fret about an “unsettling and disturbing … growing pattern of volatility and toxicity stemming from current leadership.” They went on to call for outside “investigatory actions to better understand the current state of the organization.”
TARIFF CHAOS THREATENS TRUMP AGENDA
House and Senate Republicans should agree. Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Bryan Steil (R-WI) already have the House Oversight and Administration committees, respectively, looking into ActBlue malfeasance, and the Senate should do the same. Comer and Steil have requested data from the Treasury Department connected to ActBlue, and the Trump administration should ensure congressional investigators get what they need.
Even if ActBlue did not actively solicit foreign donations, if it knowingly set up a system that could be easily abused, the public and the FEC deserve to know.
