A joint investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, House Administration Committee, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee alleges that ActBlue deliberately relaxed fraud controls during the 2024 election cycle, even after internal analysis indicated that doing so would allow additional suspicious transactions through the system.
Fraud Analysts Were Told to Search for Reasons to Approve Donations
One of the most striking findings concerns the instructions given to ActBlue employees responsible for identifying questionable transactions.
According to congressional investigators, internal training material told workers to “look for reasons to accept contributions.”
House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil previously quoted ActBlue meeting notes containing a longer version of the guidance:
“Remember that we want to look for reasons to accept contributions…Do not reject contributions for a single suspicious characteristic. Look for the forest and not the trees.”
Steil also said investigators found evidence that ActBlue had identified “at least 22 significant fraud campaigns,” nine of which had a foreign connection.
Those revelations raise obvious questions about how aggressively suspicious donations were being screened before money moved through one of the Democratic Party’s most important fundraising platforms.
But another internal exchange obtained by investigators puts an even brighter spotlight on the issue.
A Hong Kong IP — and a “Great Accept”
According to the September congressional report, an ActBlue supervisor reviewed a contribution in June 2024 that carried an unusual geographic indicator.
The donor sometimes appeared to be connecting from Hong Kong.
Instead of rejecting the contribution on that basis, the supervisor approved it.
The internal communication reportedly described the transaction as a “great accept.”
The explanation stated:
“Donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows.”
The congressional report included another internal exchange involving a previously rejected transaction. A supervisor argued that it “should have been accepted.”
The memo continued:
“It is a foreign contribution, but the name/email match, the IP/billing match, a full address with the correct country code, and there were previously accepted and successful contributions.”
Then came another remarkable explanation:
“The donor uses an Arkansas state code, which isn’t great, but [the] system can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors.”
Fox News Digital reported that the excerpts appeared in the committees’ report but noted that it had not independently verified the underlying communications. ActBlue has denied wrongdoing.
Passport Verification Comes Under Scrutiny
The controversy extends beyond IP addresses.
Steil said ActBlue had previously told Congress that donors using foreign addresses were required to provide U.S. passport information and that contributions would be refunded when the organization could not obtain the required verification.
But congressional investigators later alleged serious weaknesses in those procedures.
At a June hearing, Steil said ActBlue’s outside counsel had determined that those steps were not consistently followed, including for transactions made through third-party payment services such as PayPal and Venmo.
He also said outside counsel warned ActBlue that “some of the funds received were impermissible contributions from foreign nationals.”
The committees have further alleged that ActBlue’s passport-number safeguard did not actually authenticate a passport but instead checked whether the submitted entry had the expected number of characters.
That distinction could be significant because federal law prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions in connection with U.S. elections.
Fifth Amendment Invocations Deepen Congressional Scrutiny
The investigation has also produced contentious testimony.
At the June 10 hearing, Steil said five current or former ActBlue employees had invoked their Fifth Amendment rights 146 times during congressional depositions rather than answering investigators’ substantive questions.
Those invocations do not establish guilt, and the constitutional right against self-incrimination cannot by itself prove the committees’ allegations.
Nevertheless, they have left investigators without answers to several questions surrounding ActBlue’s internal fraud controls.
The latest report represents the third installment of the Republican-led congressional investigation. The committees say their purpose is to determine whether foreign nationals or other prohibited actors were able to exploit weaknesses in online political fundraising systems.
ActBlue, meanwhile, has previously denied wrongdoing, and Democrats have characterized the congressional investigation as politically motivated scrutiny of a major piece of their fundraising infrastructure.
What the newly disclosed records establish is that ActBlue employees were confronting transactions containing foreign-location indicators — and, in at least some documented cases cited by investigators, supervisors concluded that those indicators were not sufficient reason to reject the contributions.
Whether those transactions represented lawful donations by eligible Americans overseas, fraud, or prohibited foreign contributions is the central distinction investigators still must establish.
But after internal instructions to “look for reasons to accept contributions,” the Hong Kong-IP communication, disputed passport safeguards, and repeated Fifth Amendment invocations, congressional scrutiny of ActBlue is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
