Last week exposed the utter hypocrisy of Democrats who scream about “free and fair elections” and demand that we get dark money out of politics.
Specifically, the House Administration Committee shined a spotlight on the Dems’ major fund-raising platform, ActBlue, and its apparent efforts to end-run the federal laws that Dems insist are all about “clean campaigns.”
The Justice Department is investigating ActBlue’s role in the use of straw donors to launder illegal giving; a larger federal probe is looking into the platform’s alleged efforts to help funnel illegal foreign donations to Democratic candidates.
ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones appeared Wednesday to answer questions about how her company abetted illegal donations — only to repeatedly plead the Fifth.
A terrible look, but probably wise, since she gave false testimony to the same committee in 2023.
ActBlue’s record is filthy: For years, it failed to follow basic security procedures (like requiring 3-digit CVV numbers on credit cards), leading its own internal anti-fraud team to sound the alarm — leaving huge loopholes for, in the company’s own words, “a big attack where each individual donation fell below the [fraud review] threshold.”
A 2023 House analysis of more than 200 million FEC records of ActBlue-processed “giving” found hundreds of small donations from the same individual, donations in amounts far greater than the donor could afford, and unusually frequent donations from elderly people or first-time contributors — all telltale signs of “smurfing,” or using fake info to give illegally to campaigns.
That prompted the House committee to ask Wallace-Jones how secure her platform really was: She insisted, “our approach is multilayered, with checks and confirmations occurring throughout the donation process” to “root out potential foreign contributions, and protect donors from financial fraud.”
That was three years ago — and it was false when she said it, per an investigation conducted last year by law firm Covington and Burling.
A Democratic superlawyer and ex-Obama official, Dana Remus, was Covington’s point person on that probe; Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder is a senior counsel at the firm. This wasn’t about partisanship.
Wallace-Jones’ false testimony to Congress “presents a substantial risk for ActBlue,” the investigation found. The CEO’s response? To fire Covington, even as senior-level lawyers and other top people within ActBlue headed for the hills.
Meanwhile, the company lowered its already-lax standards for the 2024 election cycle — not once but twice, to let hundreds of illegal donations from foreign nationals flow through, and missing more than 6% of fraud (at the most conservative estimate).
Pretty bold, when Wallace-Jones knew she was under federal scrutiny.
Democrats should be up in arms about this crooked setup; they’ve spent the past decade screaming about election integrity — and yelling about the pernicious power of money in politics for even longer.
Hah! Dems at Wednesday’s hearing dismissed the investigation as just a partisan attack, with serial liar Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md) droning, “This hearing is part of a political vengeance and vendetta campaign.”
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) saw racism at work: “Over and over again, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has harassed Black women with bogus lawsuits.”
Yes, Wallace-Jones is black — but it’s the Democrats who chose to make her the face of ActBlue, the source of the stink. (Did they hire her expressly so they could play the race card when ActBlue got caught?)
If Democrats actually gave a damn about the crisis of public trust, they’d be the ones hammering ActBlue into oblivion.
Instead, they’re running interference for it — fresh proof that, for all their lip service about clean politics, all the Dems really care about is power.