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Democratic Fundraising Platform Subpoenaed for Laundering Donations from Foreign Actors

November 1, 2024

The Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue has been subpoenaed by a House committee for allowing foreign actors to contribute money under the aliases of American citizens without their knowledge.

On Wednesday, Committee on House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) sent a letter to the platform zeroing in on issues with its security measures and asking for “a series of documents and communications” related to the problem by November 6.

“We cannot allow foreign actors to influence our elections through campaign financing,” Steil stated. “The Committee’s investigation uncovered that foreign actors might be taking advantage of ActBlue’s inadequate security protocols.” He went on to reveal that China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela “may be exploiting existing U.S. donors by making straw donations without the individuals’ or [ActBlue]’s knowledge.”

On Thursday, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to discuss the reasons behind the House investigation.

“James O’Keefe uncovered this smurfing [money laundering] … back in March of 2023,” he explained. “We immediately wrote to the FEC [Federal Election Commission] to find out what they are doing to investigate it. We kept following up week after week after week. They would never even tell us whether or not they were investigating this. I was part of a secure briefing before we left Washington in September with the DNI [Director Avril] Haines and FBI Director [Christopher] Wray. … I asked them specifically … ‘What are you doing about smurfing, about these massive numbers of donations being funneled through individuals without their knowledge?’ Sometimes … donations total[ed] in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates through ActBlue. And the FBI director [and] Haines said nothing about it. … It’s grotesque.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins noted that the Treasury Department’s money laundering detection system was triggered by some of the suspicious transactions. “[Y]ou would think the Biden Treasury Department would be talking to the Biden Department of Justice” about the issue, he surmised.

“You would think so,” Johnson responded, contending that the investigation may not be happening for political reasons. “[I]t’s so difficult to investigate these agencies who are the law. They hold themselves above the law. They don’t believe they are accountable to the American public, certainly not to Congress. And so they just give us the middle finger when it comes to our investigations. But there have to be actors inside the Treasury Department that are covering up for Democrats. Let’s be honest.”

Johnson, who serves on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs as well as the Committee on Finance and Budget, went on to describe how the money laundering is taking place.

“[W]e suspect foreign actors, but it could also be American billionaires and millionaires as well,” he pointed out. “Again, somebody is taking massive amounts of money [and] filtering [it] through ActBlue, breaking these large amounts of money up into $5, $10, $15, $20 donations. … I’ve seen the spreadsheets. … This is public information. There are tens and tens of thousands of these donations made [by] one individual. I saw $1.4 million worth of donations made through one individual — I think 9,518 donations. [This is a] clear violation of campaign finance laws. These individuals have been contacted by … investigators, [and] they have no knowledge that they have in their name [made] literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations to Democratic candidates. This should be a huge scandal.”

Johnson also pointed out that “ActBlue doesn’t even require the [credit card] CVV code, which is one of the ways to detect money laundering. They don’t require that for these donations. So again, it sounds very similar to what Hillary Clinton [and] the Clinton campaign had with those Chinese donations made in small dollars so you don’t have to comply with the certain disclosure requirements.”

Johnson further argued that ActBlue should be criminally prosecuted for “a clear violation of campaign finance law.”

“[T]his is how the Left operates,” Perkins contended. “It’s deceptive. It is deceitful, dishonest. … [T]his seems to be a common thread that we see woven throughout the Left.”

Johnson concurred. “I thought it was interesting that Kamala Harris was saying that we have to ‘end the Republican playbook of fear and division.’ How galling that is. … That’s all the Democrats have. They certainly can’t run this campaign on their record. The record is one of destruction of America, and so all they can do is literally lie, falsely accuse their political opponents of doing exactly what they do, creating fear and division within America. It’s scandalous.”

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.



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