House investigators say their examination of ActBlue will continue after internal records raised new questions about how the Democratic fundraising platform screened potentially foreign contributions, allegations ActBlue disputes.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
House Republican investigators say they are continuing their examination of ActBlue after internal records raised additional questions about the Democratic fundraising platform’s procedures for detecting potentially illegal foreign political contributions.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said lawmakers expect additional documents and testimony as three Republican-led House committees continue investigating ActBlue’s fraud-prevention and donor-verification practices.
“Whether it’s allowing fraudsters to steal taxpayer dollars or accepting illegal foreign donations through ActBlue, Democrats have proven themselves to be the party of fraud. Our investigation into ActBlue is far from over. We expect more documents and testimony in the weeks ahead,” Comer told Fox News in reporting published Monday. His characterization reflects the committees’ allegations; the investigation has not established that Democrats as a party accepted illegal foreign donations through ActBlue.
The latest scrutiny follows a Sept. 16 interim staff report released jointly by the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees. Republican investigators said internal ActBlue policies and communications raised concerns about the way contributions associated with foreign addresses were reviewed.
Among the issues identified by the committees was ActBlue’s former passport-number procedure for donors using foreign addresses. According to the congressional report, the system checked whether an entered passport number contained the expected number of characters but did not validate the number against a government database.
The report also cited internal communications in which ActBlue personnel discussed contributions that had triggered fraud indicators. One communication described by Fox News showed a supervisor arguing that a rejected contribution “should have been accepted” despite being identified internally as foreign because other identifying information matched. Another reportedly showed a supervisor recommending that a donor whose contribution had generated multiple warnings receive the “benefit of the doubt.”
Those records form part of a broader inquiry that House Republicans have pursued through multiple congressional sessions.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, discussed the investigation in an April interview, pointing to upheaval within ActBlue’s legal and compliance operation after the 2024 election.
“But things began to go a bit sideways for ActBlue during the 2024 election, after ‘their top people in their legal department dealing with fraud prevention resigned,’ Jordan explained,” the report stated.
A joint congressional report released in April said that by March 2025 every member of ActBlue’s legal and compliance team had either resigned, been dismissed or gone on extended leave. House investigators have argued that those departures were connected to internal disputes over fraud prevention and representations made to Congress. ActBlue has disputed the committees’ characterization of events and their conclusions.
The investigation moved into a public hearing June 10, when ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones appeared before the House Administration Committee.
Wallace-Jones repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer lawmakers’ questions concerning foreign contributions, ActBlue’s earlier communications with Congress and its fraud-prevention procedures. Invoking the Fifth Amendment is a constitutional right and does not by itself establish wrongdoing.
During one exchange, Jordan said ActBlue’s board chairman had identified as much as $38 million in 2024 contributions displaying indicators of foreign origin and asked Wallace-Jones how much fraud would be acceptable.
“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution,” Wallace-Jones responded.
Republican lawmakers subsequently intensified their document demands. On June 22, Jordan, Comer and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., warned that ActBlue could face contempt proceedings over what they characterized as inadequate compliance with congressional subpoenas. ActBlue has maintained that it has cooperated while asserting legitimate attorney-client privilege over certain records.
Steil said the most recent disclosures left unresolved questions about whether ActBlue’s safeguards were adequate.
“ActBlue’s own admissions raise serious questions about its fraud prevention practices, including a so-called passport verification process that did not actually verify or check entries against any government database. All options are on the table to ensure we get to the bottom of what is going on at ActBlue,” Steil told Fox News.
ActBlue rejects the central allegations.
In a Sept. 16 response, the organization said an outside forensic review of its 2023 contribution records found that 99.99% of nearly $990 million in political contributions came from donors who supplied either a U.S. address or passport number. ActBlue said donations originating from Americans living abroad represented a very small portion of overall activity and argued that congressional Republicans had mischaracterized its procedures.
ActBlue also said its former system required donors entering a foreign address to provide a U.S. passport number and that compliance personnel reviewed contributions in which an apparently foreign address was paired with the United States as the selected country. The organization has since said it blocks political contributions involving foreign mailing addresses, foreign IP addresses or foreign bank-identification numbers, even when doing so prevents some U.S. citizens overseas from contributing through the platform.
The congressional committees dispute ActBlue’s explanation, arguing that requesting a passport number without independently validating it was insufficient to establish that a donor was an American citizen. Their latest interim report maintains that the platform failed to adequately prevent unlawful foreign contributions.
Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from directly or indirectly making contributions or donations in connection with federal, state or local elections.
The House inquiry is now expected to continue through additional document production and testimony, with Comer saying investigators have not reached the end of their review and Steil saying lawmakers are keeping “all options” available as they examine ActBlue’s past fraud controls and foreign-donor screening procedures.
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