Three House committees released an interim report alleging that ActBlue, the Democratic Party's dominant fundraising platform, recklessly allowed foreign money into U.S. elections and retaliated against attorneys who raised legal concerns.
The report, issued Wednesday by the House Administration Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, lays out what investigators describe as a pattern of willful negligence: ActBlue supervisors instructed employees to accept donations from contributors flagged with foreign IP addresses, the platform's passport verification amounted to little more than a character count, and the company's CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, may have misled Congress about the security of its systems. When outside counsel warned ActBlue it could be breaking the law, the company fired the law firm and deleted internal messages from its last remaining in-house attorney.
ActBlue has raised nearly $20 billion since its founding. The platform dismissed the report as a "Republican witch hunt" timed to damage Democrats before midterm elections. But the details in the congressional record, drawn from subpoenaed documents, internal communications, and ActBlue's own customer service disclosures, tell a different story than the one Wallace-Jones gave Congress in 2023.
At the center of the report is a log of internal reviews covering risky donations from 2022 through 2024, obtained by the House Administration Committee over the summer. Those records show ActBlue supervisors sometimes directed fraud prevention analysts to accept every donation, regardless of risk indicators, and to "give the donor the benefit of the doubt."
In one case, a supervisor instructed an employee to process a contribution from a donor whose IP address traced to Hong Kong. The rationale, as the New York Post reported, was that the "donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows." In another instance, supervisors told staff to accept contributions from a donor flagged with "a few foreign IPs" because "they are all consistently in the same place."
The platform never required donors to enter a CVV, the three- or four-digit security code on the back of a credit card, a basic anti-fraud measure standard across online commerce. The House Administration Committee launched its investigation in October 2023 after that gap surfaced publicly.
Congressional investigators allege foreign actors from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China may have exploited the platform to funnel money into U.S. campaigns through straw donations, contributions made in someone else's name. Federal law prohibits both foreign nationals and straw donors from contributing to American political campaigns. Just The News reported that three House committee chairmen threatened subpoenas after ActBlue officials initially agreed to voluntary transcribed interviews, then reversed course once President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice to investigate the platform.
Wallace-Jones told the House Administration Committee in a 2023 letter that ActBlue maintains a "multilayered and rigorous process" to root out foreign contributions. She wrote plainly: "Only donations with passport information are processed."
Subpoenaed records painted a different picture. ActBlue's own customer service page disclosed that passport verification consisted of checking whether the number entered had the correct number of characters, nothing more. The platform did not verify passport numbers against any government database. A foreign actor could enter any string of digits with the right character count and pass through.
WilmerHale, the law firm ActBlue retained after firing its original outside counsel, sent a letter to the committee describing foreign donations as "vanishingly rare." The letter stated that "in 2023 ActBlue collected a passport number at the time of contribution for 93% of foreign-address contribution dollars." But the letter did not appear to dispute the committee's finding that those passport numbers were never actually verified. And it remained unclear whether donors using Apple Pay, PayPal, or Venmo were required to supply a passport number at all.
Seven percent of foreign-address donation dollars with no passport number collected, on a platform that has processed nearly $20 billion, is not a rounding error.
Before WilmerHale entered the picture, ActBlue relied on Covington & Burling as outside counsel. That relationship ended badly. The Washington Examiner reported that Covington & Burling wrote internal memos warning ActBlue it may have misled Congress about its safeguards against foreign donations.
The firm's concerns centered on Wallace-Jones's 2023 letter to the committee, the same letter in which she assured lawmakers that only donations with passport information were processed. Covington & Burling found that Wallace-Jones gave a "potentially misleading" response, as Breitbart detailed, and warned that the discrepancy presented "substantial risk," including the possibility of criminal investigation if prosecutors believed ActBlue tried to conceal facts.
ActBlue's response was to fire the messenger. The company terminated Covington & Burling in March 2025. In an April 2026 New York Times investigation into ActBlue's internal turmoil, the platform accused its former counsel of "counsel that bordered on malpractice." Covington & Burling forcefully denied the accusation.
The law firm's departure was not an isolated event. By February 2025, ActBlue's entire legal and compliance team had left the platform. The company's last remaining in-house attorney alleged he faced illegal retaliation for raising concerns.
What happened next compounds the problem. Hanna Bonin, ActBlue's Director of IT, deleted the attorney's internal Slack messages after he alleged retaliation. The congressional report treats this as evidence of a broader effort to suppress dissent within the organization, attorneys who voiced concerns about potential lawbreaking were sidelined or pushed out, and the digital record of their objections was scrubbed.
Wallace-Jones herself was compelled to testify before the committee in June. She repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
A CEO who told Congress in writing that her platform's safeguards were rigorous and multilayered, then took the Fifth when asked to explain the gap between that claim and the subpoenaed evidence, leaves investigators with a straightforward question: which version was true?
Fox News reported that the congressional investigation found ActBlue internally adopted "a more lenient approach" to fraud prevention in 2024, a presidential election year, weakening its policies at least twice despite internal assessments showing the changes would increase fraudulent contributions. Internal trainings directed the fraud prevention team to "look for reasons to accept contributions" rather than scrutinize them for indicators of fraud.
ActBlue detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on its platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources. The platform told the committee, "There is no evidence that foreign donations through online or small-dollar contributions are a problem in U.S. elections." The committee's subpoenaed records suggest otherwise.
ActBlue's choice of replacement counsel carries its own baggage. WilmerHale, the firm that hired the late FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and two of his aides, was itself targeted by a March 2025 Trump White House executive order. Executive Order 14250 sought to cut off the firm from federal contracts and jobs, alleging it engages in racially discriminatory DEI policies and pro bono liberal advocacy.
WilmerHale attorneys briefed the committee on the Friday before the report's release. The firm's letter describing foreign donations as "vanishingly rare" became part of the committee's evidentiary record, but its failure to dispute the passport-verification gap undercut the reassurance ActBlue hoped the letter would provide.
ActBlue told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the report amounts to nothing:
"There's nothing to see here. After we released findings of a third-party forensic analysis that completely undermined a central claim that they have made against ActBlue, Republicans are refusing to move on. Instead, they are orchestrating another political stunt before rushing out of town weeks early to go campaign."
A spokesperson added that the investigation "isn't about the facts, or legislating, it's about Republicans' efforts to silence organizations they believe threaten their agenda."
ActBlue did not specify which "central claim" its forensic analysis allegedly undermined. The company offered no public explanation for why its CEO invoked the Fifth Amendment, why its legal team departed en masse, why its IT director deleted an attorney's internal messages, or why its supervisors instructed staff to accept donations from contributors with foreign IP addresses.
Rep. Elise Stefanik called the investigation "among the biggest bombshell campaign finance corruption and actual foreign election interference stories in American politics." Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said there are "legitimate, grave concerns that ActBlue has enabled illegal fundraising" and that "fraudulent and even foreign-sourced contributions have crept into Democrat campaign coffers."
Open questions remain. No law enforcement agency has publicly confirmed a formal criminal investigation based on the committee's findings. The report does not quantify the total dollar amount of suspected foreign contributions. And ActBlue's claim that a third-party forensic analysis clears the platform has not been tested against the committee's subpoenaed evidence in any public proceeding.
For three years, Americans were told that foreign election interference was an existential threat to democracy. A platform that processed nearly $20 billion in Democratic donations now stands accused of leaving the door wide open for exactly that, and punishing anyone inside who tried to close it.
