Something smells fishy around the Democrat fundraising platform “ActBlue,” a website that raised millions for VP Kamala Harris in a short span of time, and the GOP is moving to investigate some of the claims made by whistleblowers.
According to Fox News, Wisconsin Republican Bryan Steil, Committee on House Administration chair, is going to probe ActBlue over accusations of “skirting campaign donation laws” which could pave the way for unchecked fraud on the website:
In a letter sent to top officials on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Monday, Steil urged them to “immediately initiate an emergency rulemaking to require political campaigns to verify the card verification value (‘CVV’) of donors who contribute online using a credit or debit card, and to prohibit political campaigns from accepting online contributions from a gift card or other prepaid credit cards.”
Steil is going to see to whether the claims that the lousy verification standards on the site hold any water. Multiple whistleblowers have accused ActBlue of intentionally leaving out the CVV requirement most sites have nowadays so that it’s not nearly as hard to donate. These whistleblowers have also reported that a lot of these donations came from retirees on a fixed income, with hundreds of $2.50 donations coming from one person.
“Following widespread allegations of fraudulent donations being reported to the FEC by ActBlue, one of the largest fundraising platforms in the country, this emergency rulemaking is necessary to reassure the American people that ActBlue is taking the necessary steps to protect its donors,” Steil said in his letter.
According to Fox News, the letter also said that the site allows for other forms of payment that could open up a real problem for fraudulent donations:
Steil’s letter also argued that the site’s acceptance of prepaid credit cards and gift cards fueled a “very real possibility that straw donors are making campaign donations with funds provided by another person or an unlawful donor including a foreign national. These issues present a serious loophole to the transparency and integrity of the campaign donation process, and an emergency rulemaking is required to rectify these issues.”
The committee said whistleblowers have also claimed prepaid gift cards and credit cards are being used to launder campaign contributions that would otherwise violate campaign finance laws.
As RedState reported on Saturday, both Wyoming and Virginia are also launching investigations into ActBlue’s donation oddities. Virginia’s AG Jason Miyares said some of the donations came “in volumes that are facially implausible and appear suspicious.”
Meanwhile, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray is looking into reports that ActBlue is engaging in identity theft, nothing that “a person donated to a PAC if that person never donated to that PAC would be a felony under Wyoming law.”
According to Florida Senator Marco Rubio, ActBlue “has become a money laundering operation,” noting its lack of requirement for a CVV code to give money and calling it “a deliberate strategy on their part” to rake in donations fraudulently.
ActBlue accused the GOP of “partisan politics” and denied any wrongdoing.
“This investigation is nothing more than a partisan political attack and scare tactic to undermine the power of Democratic and progressive small-dollar donors,” ActBlue said in a statement. “We welcome the opportunity to respond to these frivolous claims.”
