(Casey Harper, The Center Square) A top Democratic donation processor, ActBlue, is facing an investigation over concerns that the donation processing service is being used to circumvent campaign finance laws.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee launched the investigation, citing “reports of potentially fraudulent and illicit financial activity” in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
The lawmakers ask Yellen for copies of financial suspicious activity reports related to ActBlue, which serves as an online catch-all processor for online donations to Democratic candidates.
“Recent reports have raised the specter of fraud and evasion of campaign finance law by individuals exploiting online contribution platforms, especially ActBlue,” the letter states. “For example, ActBlue had not implemented standard procedures to guard against identity theft and fraud such as requiring a Card Verification Value (CVV) to process online transactions until it received criticism for not doing so.”
It continues, “ActBlue is also being investigated by several states’ officials in relation to contributions allegedly made via the platform fraudulently without the reported contributor’s awareness.
“In Virginia, reports of contribution activity facilitated through the ActBlue platform included ‘some cases in which single donors made tens of thousands of separate donations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.’”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said in August that he was investigating reports of misuse of ActBlue after reports of “dummy” accounts being used to make thousands of donations, allegedly by criminal sources.
Donating in the name of someone else is illegal and can be used to circumvent oversight and caps on contributions.
“These bad actors could include foreign nationals not lawfully admitted for permanent residence who are prohibited by statute from contributing to campaigns or political parties,” the letter adds.
ActBlue did not respond to a request for comment.
“We can’t tolerate shady practices, foreign interference, and blatant exploitation of our campaign finance laws,” Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., wrote on X.
“The American people deserve to know who’s really behind these contributions,” he added. “ActBlue has been funneling questionable donations into Democrat campaigns for far too long, raising serious concerns about fraud and illegal contribution…”
Since allegations of Russian involvement and voter fraud has escalated in recent federal elections, oversight and scrutiny of possible foreign interference in U.S. elections has increased for both Republicans and Democrats.
However, the Russia hoax, widely considered to be a canard used by the 2016 Clinton campaign to deflect from its own corrupt activities, may well be eclipsed by foreign influence to Democrats coming from other sources, such as China, Iran and Ukraine.
In fact, Clinton’s own brother, Tony Rodham, was enmeshed in a scandal alongside longtime Clinton donation bundler—and future Virginia governor—Terry McAuliffe, in which the two appeared to set up a shell company using government grants from the Obama administration’s green tax incentives that was instead used to trade foreign-worker visas to Chinese businessmen in return for donations.
The Clinton Foundation—which McAuliffe also ran for a time—was also investigated as being a source for laundering many illicit foreign donations and using Clinton’s role as secretary of State for influence peddling.
McAuliffe lost his re-election bid for the Virginia governorship to current Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
