All ten ActBlue employees and board members deposed by House investigators have invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the Democratic Party's dominant fundraising platform. Five of the ten are board members, all deposed in the past five weeks, and the three committees running the probe say they are not done. Their third report, released last week, alleged ActBlue accepted a substantial volume of foreign and fraudulent donations with minimal scrutiny.
The investigation's third report, released last week, alleged ActBlue accepted a substantial volume of foreign and fraudulent donations with minimal scrutiny.
It builds on the first report, released in April 2025, which found that ActBlue skipped standard verification steps such as CVV checks, identified at least 22 significant fraud campaigns, and documented 237 prepaid-card donations from foreign IP addresses in a single month before the 2024 election.
Investigators found that skipping those checks opened the door to smurfing, the practice of dressing up one illegal mega-donation as a parade of small contributions filed under real people's names. ActBlue's much-touted "passport verification" process appears to have checked nothing against any government database. Fraud analysts inside the company faced pressure to wave through foreign-flagged donations, in one case clearing a donor on the strength of a LinkedIn profile.
House Oversight, House Administration, and House Judiciary are still working the case now, and none of them show signs of backing off. "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," Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer told Fox News Digital. "Our investigation into ActBlue is far from over. We expect more documents and testimony in the weeks ahead."
Republicans have complained about ActBlue's verification standards for years, and the company insists it has tightened those safeguards since the investigation began. That claim falls apart against the committees' own findings. The report says ActBlue took "a more lenient approach" to fraud prevention in 2024, after Steil first questioned its practices in October 2023, and the internal records released last week show employees approving donations despite unresolved red flags about the money's origins.
ActBlue still denies wrongdoing and has given no indication it plans to return any flagged contribution.
"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," Committee on House Administration Chairman Rep. Bryan Steil told Fox News Digital on Friday. "All options are on the table to ensure we get to the bottom of what is going on at ActBlue."
A spokesperson for Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan confirmed to Fox News Digital that the panel "will continue aggressive oversight of ActBlue, including additional depositions."
Co-founder Matt DeBergalis was among the ten who took the Fifth, and CEO Regina Wallace-Jones did the same during a public hearing. In a letter to Steil cited by the report, she claimed donors with non-U.S. addresses must submit a passport number to get verified. The GOP report picked that claim apart, noting the system only confirms the number contains the right count of characters, not that it belongs to an actual passport.
In one internal ActBlue memo, a donation with a Hong Kong IP address was described as a "great accept," reasoning that none of the donor's other signals raised eyebrows. Another argued a previously denied contribution should have gone through because the name, email, and billing address all lined up, even though it was a foreign contribution. A supervisor waved through a donation that had set off a lot of alarms because the donor deserved the benefit of the doubt. In one case involving a Missouri billing address with every sign pointing to Canada, an analyst approved the donation because "Twitter seems to confirm that they are a real person."
Now the National Republican Congressional Committee wants House Democrats to cut ties with ActBlue. "House Democrats cannot claim ignorance while continuing to rely on a fundraising platform facing serious allegations," NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella said. "The National Republican Congressional Committee officially calls on every House Democrat to cut ties with ActBlue and return any illegal contributions funneled to their campaigns through the platform." Asked whether it would return any donations, ActBlue pointed back to its own statement instead of answering the question.
"There's nothing to see here," ActBlue said, arguing a third-party forensic analysis had undercut a central GOP claim and accusing Republicans of "orchestrating another political stunt before rushing out of town weeks early to go campaign." That review of ActBlue's 2023 data found 99.99% of contribution dollars came from donors who gave a U.S. address or a passport number, according to the company's release, though it did not test whether either was genuine. The company framed the entire affair as an effort "to silence organizations they believe threaten their agenda."
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