A joint report from three House committees released this week accuses ActBlue, the top Democratic fundraising platform, of systematically weakening its fraud-prevention system even as it detected dozens of significant fraud campaigns, including from foreign sources — according to internal Slack messages and staff testimony the committees say prove it.
Why it matters: ActBlue processes the bulk of Democratic online political fundraising, and federal law bars foreign nationals from making U.S. political contributions. The report lands weeks before the midterms and is already being used as a campaign-trail attack line against Democratic candidates who rely on the platform.
Driving the news:
The “Fraud on ActBlue, Part III” report — from the House Judiciary, Administration, and Oversight committees — publishes internal Slack messages showing staff approved flagged donations rather than rejecting them. One supervisor cleared a donation with a foreign credit card and mismatched billing, writing: “we give the benefit of the doubt to the donor… I can't say for sure that this is fraud.”
The report says ActBlue's touted passport-verification system for foreign donors only checked the number of characters entered, without checking any government database; donors without a passport number could be assigned a placeholder value that exempted future transactions from the check entirely.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) pressed ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones during testimony: “Your board chairman said 38 million contributions in 2024 had the signs of foreign origin. How much fraud is too much fraud?”
Five ActBlue employees invoked the Fifth Amendment a combined 146 times during depositions; Wallace-Jones herself invoked it 22 times during June testimony.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has separately sued ActBlue, alleging it misrepresented its fraud-prevention practices to donors.
By the numbers:
99.8% — share of ActBlue donations the report says were auto-approved with no manual review.
Less than 0.1% — share of all contributions rejected for suspected fraud, despite 22 flagged “significant” fraud campaigns.
38 million — contributions ActBlue's own board chairman reportedly said showed signs of foreign origin in 2024.
146 — times five ActBlue employees invoked the Fifth Amendment during depositions.
What they're saying: ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones has dismissed the report as a “political stunt,” pointing to a third-party analysis she says shows nearly every dollar donated in 2023 came from donors who supplied U.S. addresses or passport numbers.
The other side: ActBlue and its allies frame the investigation itself as a partisan effort by Republican committee chairs, timed to damage Democratic fundraising ahead of the midterms; the company disputes the “cover-up” characterization and notes no court has found it violated federal law, even as some employees cited legal advice for invoking the Fifth Amendment rather than an admission of wrongdoing.
What's next:
Paxton's Texas lawsuit against ActBlue continues separately from the congressional probe.
The committees have shared findings with the DOJ, which has not said publicly whether it will act.
The report is already surfacing in individual House races, including Virginia's 2nd District, where it's become a line of attack against Democratic challenger Elaine Luria.
The bottom line: Three House committees say they've documented a fraud-detection system built to look busy rather than actually block bad money. With Democratic campaigns, foreign-donation law and a DOJ referral all colliding weeks before the midterms, the political fallout may end up mattering as much as whatever a court eventually decides.
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