On March twentieth, 2025, the Home Judiciary, the Committee on Home Administration, and the Committee on Oversight and Authorities Reform requested two staff of the Democrat fundraising powerhouse ActBlue to voluntarily adjust to a request for transcribed interviews. Based on letters issued by the Committees, the staff “did not comply” and at the moment are being compelled to testify.
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, Home Admin Chairman Bryan Steil, and Home Oversight Chairman James Comer have issued subpoenas to former Vice President of Buyer Service Alyssa Twomey and an ActBlue Senior Workflow Specialist for his or her depositions “relating to allegations that on-line fundraising platforms, together with ActBlue, have accepted fraudulent donations from home and overseas sources.”
Based on a press launch, “Whereas serving as ActBlue’s Vice President of Buyer Service, Alyssa Twomey managed ActBlue’s fraud-prevention workforce. The Committees have discovered important proof that ActBlue had ‘a essentially unserious strategy to fraud prevention’ throughout this era.
The discharge claims that ActBlue “weakened its fraud-prevention requirements twice in 2024 regardless of information of serious tried fraud on the platform, together with from overseas actors.” Coaching guides from ActBlue inspired staff to “search for causes to just accept contributions” reasonably than assess them for potential fraud.
#BREAKING: @Jim_Jordan, @RepBryanSteil, and @RepJamesComer Subpoena Senior ActBlue Staff for Depositions.
Allegations have risen that on-line fundraising platforms, together with ActBlue, have accepted fraudulent donations from home and overseas sources. pic.twitter.com/2yYUZu5J9N
— Home Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) June 25, 2025
On April twenty first, counsel for the ActBlue staff, Danny Onorato, agreed to his shoppers showing for transcribed interviews. Nonetheless, three days afterward April twenty fourth, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum calling for the crackdown on unlawful “straw donor” and overseas contributions to political campaigns by means of fundraising platforms reminiscent of ActBlue.
Onorato at the moment suggested his shoppers to not seem till that they had “extra data” about President Trump’s ordered investigation, asking for the requests for interviews to be withdrawn “till the Division of Justice completes its investigation or clarifies its place with respect to our shoppers.”
The letter to Twomey states:
Mr. Onorato’s request that the Committees “withdraw [our] requests for transcribed interviews till the Division of Justice completes its investigation or clarifies its place with respect to our shoppers” quantities to a requirement that the Committees forgo testimony that’s doubtlessly vital to our legislative oversight. Congress might set the phrases of its personal oversight, compelling testimony in a time, place, and method of its personal selecting. Federal courts have persistently held that witnesses might not “impose [their] personal circumstances upon the way of [congressional] inquiry.” That’s as a result of “a witness doesn’t have the authorized proper to dictate the circumstances below which he’ll or is not going to testify” or “to prescribe the circumstances below which he could also be interrogated by Congress.”
…
“The Committees’ investigation has a transparent – and essential – legislative goal. Congress has a particular curiosity in guaranteeing that dangerous actors, together with overseas actors, can’t make fraudulent or unlawful political donations by means of on-line fundraising platforms. Our oversight so far signifies that present regulation could also be inadequate to cease these illicit donations. The Committees are contemplating a wide selection of potential legislative reforms to deal with these issues.”
The letter acknowledges these reforms might doubtlessly be requiring card verification values (CVV) to be captured for on-line political donations, restrictions on donations made utilizing present playing cards, pay as you go playing cards, or overseas bank cards, and “enhanced reporting necessities for on-line fundraising conduits” and that they might be enforced with felony penalties.
The Gateway Pundit has reported extensively on the ActBlue “Smurfing” donations uncovered by Peter Bernegger, Chris Gleason, Draza Smith and their workforce. Within the alleged smurfing operation, taxpayer funds are stated to be laundered from abroad and distributed in low-dollar donations to campaigns by using unsuspecting “retired” or “unemployed” senior residents.
James O’Keefe’s OMG additionally went door to door after discovering a plethora of “straw donors” to inquire whether or not or not they knew their id was being utilized to launder these funds to campaigns. Right here is one such instance:
ActBlue Uncovered: Texas Donors Shocked by Unauthorized Donations, AG’s Workplace Investigating
“I’m not wealthy. I don’t give that form of cash,” says Janice Bosco of Horseshoe Bay, TX, after discovering that ActBlue (@actblue) recorded 648 donations totaling round $16,000 in her… pic.twitter.com/xbmGF7XJ7A
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) August 12, 2024
In Could, Peter Bernegger joined Ashe Epp and myself on Badlands Media’s Why We Vote podcast to debate new developments within the smurfing investigation:
