Blog

President Trump is expected to sign a presidential memorandum on Thursday targeting major Democrat online donation platform, ActBlue – specifically cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections, Politico reports, citing a person Trump admin leaker familiar with the policy.

Photo: Alexander Grey/Unsplash; ActBlue

The crackdown is expected to involve Attorney General Pam Bondi's office.

Related:

• Congressional Probe Into Political Fundraising Platform ActBlue Finds Potential "Criminal Activity"

• Coalition Of 19 GOP AGs Launch Investigation Into ActBlue Over Money Laundering Allegations

• "Bad Actors": Texas Demands FEC Action Over 'Suspicious Donations' To Democrats Through ActBlue

• Vandalism And Attacks On Tesla Accelerate As Musk Says ActBlue, Soros To Blame

According to Elon Musk, "ActBlue is currently under investigation for allowing foreign and illegal donations in criminal violation of campaign finance regulations. This week, 7 ActBlue senior officials resigned, including the associate general counsel."

For starters, ActBlue did not require a card verification value (CVV) for donations, according to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Administration Committee, who sent letters and information collected over the past year to Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Florida, and Missouri for further investigation into ActBlue.

In December 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation into ActBlue alleging the platform "may enable fraud," and that "straw donations" were systematically being made using false identities through untraceable payment methods.

Paxton said in an Aug. 8 statement ActBlue has cooperated with the Texas investigation and will now require CVV codes for credit card contributions.

In his letter to attorneys general, Steil said whistleblowers reported “anomalies” in Federal Election Commission donor records.

That prompted a data analysis of records spanning 14 years, which looked for suspicious trends by comparing donation patterns to open-source consumer data, voter rolls, and political profiling databases.

The ensuing investigation included consultations with the election commission, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, according to Steil’s letter.

Findings included donations that were significantly disproportionate to a person’s net worth or previous giving history; uncharacteristic donations from party-affiliated registered voters that suddenly contributed to candidates of the opposing party; and unusually frequent donations from the elderly and first-time donors.

Similar concerns were raised in March 2023 by O'Keefe Media Group, which reported that some senior citizens in Maryland and elsewhere denied making the donations attributed to them in Federal Election Commission records.

Donors contacted by O'Keefe Media Group said they made political contributions to ActBlue but had no knowledge of making what amounted to thousands of donations—with some totaling more than $200,000—in a few years.

In December, Steil announced that documents turned over by ActBlue showed that the company had implemented new policies to "automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined," but said there "is still more work to be done."