Democrats built their billion-dollar fundraising empire on one promise – that ActBlue kept foreign money out of American elections.
Now their own lawyers are saying that promise was a lie.
The DOJ and FBI are already investigating, and what just surfaced from inside ActBlue's headquarters could end the whole operation.
CEO's 2023 Letter to Congress Told a Story That Wasn't True
In November 2023, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones sent a letter to Rep. Bryan Steil and the House Administration Committee assuring congressional investigators that the platform used "multilayered" screenings to block illegal foreign donations – including requiring overseas donors to submit U.S. passport numbers before any contribution was processed.
That wasn't happening.
Covington & Burling, the D.C. law firm then representing ActBlue, discovered the gap and issued a pair of internal memos in early 2025 warning Wallace-Jones directly: she may have lied to Congress.
The memos found that donors paying through Apple Pay, PayPal, or Venmo were never asked for passport information – despite Wallace-Jones telling Congress they were.
Covington's conclusion was damning: there was "a substantial risk that some of the funds received were impermissible contributions from foreign nationals."
The firm went further, warning that because ActBlue's staff knew the vetting system wasn't as robust as described, the violations could be found "knowing and willful" – a standard that opens the door to criminal prosecution by the Justice Department, not just FEC fines.
Covington warned that an aggressive prosecutor could view Wallace-Jones's letter to Congress not merely as a false statement but as an active effort to conceal the foreign contributions.
The maximum penalty for lying to Congress: five years in federal prison and $250,000 in fines.
Internal Meltdown at the Democrats' ATM
The memos triggered chaos inside what the New York Times described as one of the Democratic Party's most vital financial organs.
Within weeks, at least seven senior ActBlue officials resigned – including in-house attorney Aaron Ting, who wrote in his resignation letter that leadership was "not fully committed to transparently addressing with the Board the seriousness of our most pressing concerns."
A Covington attorney who previously served as Biden's White House Counsel personally warned Wallace-Jones on a video call that she faced individual legal liability and needed to hire her own personal lawyer.
Days later, ActBlue fired Covington & Burling.
The organization then blamed the law firm for the problem it had been hired to solve.
Covington's response was precise: "We have complete confidence in the legal advice our lawyers provided to ActBlue."
That's what getting thrown under a bus looks like in Washington.
The Smurfing Operation Nobody Wanted to Investigate
This scandal doesn't start with Wallace-Jones's 2023 letter.
It starts in 2022, when investigators first uncovered what they called "voter mules" – individuals making thousands of small-dollar donations through ActBlue, often under $5, using stolen identities.
The scheme is called "smurfing." Large sums of money – potentially from foreign governments or hostile state actors – get broken into thousands of tiny donations attributed to real Americans who never made them.
One Virginia donor appeared in FEC records tied to 22,619 separate transactions totaling over $800,000 – donations she almost certainly never made.
A Wisconsin woman named "Sonia," living in an assisted living facility, appears as the source of 69,433 donations to Sen. Tammy Baldwin – at a rate of 7.5 donations per day, every single day, for 7.5 years.
Baldwin's fundraising nearly doubled between her 2018 and 2024 campaigns – from $30.9 million to $59.6 million – while investigators say she received over $27 million through the smurfing operation.
A White House investigation confirmed that a House probe found ActBlue had detected at least 22 "significant fraud campaigns" in recent years – nearly half with a foreign nexus – involving actors from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China.
Congress asked the FBI and FEC about smurfing in 2023.
Both stayed silent.
Jordan, Comer, and Steil Have Had Enough
Three House committee chairmen – Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Bryan Steil – issued a joint statement this week.
"Our investigation found ActBlue's internal fraud prevention measures were wholly insufficient for preventing illegal foreign campaign donations," they wrote. "Today's reporting reconfirms that finding and raises serious questions about whether ActBlue's CEO intentionally misled Congress at the onset of this investigation."
President Trump ordered the DOJ to investigate ActBlue in April 2025.
The FBI joined the effort.
At least 20 state attorneys general are running parallel investigations.
The SHIELD Act – legislation requiring CVV verification for online political donations and banning prepaid gift cards – passed the House in December 2024.
The Senate never voted on it.
ActBlue processed more than $7 billion in small-dollar contributions over the past five years.
Democrats are worried that continued upheaval at ActBlue could destabilize their entire fundraising operation heading into the 2026 midterms.
That fear is the most honest thing Democrats have said about this scandal in three years.
Regina Wallace-Jones told Congress her platform was clean, her lawyers documented in writing that it wasn't, and the DOJ now has every memo.
Five years in federal prison is what lying to Congress carries.
Her own lawyers already told her to get a personal attorney.
The clock is running.
Sources:
- Daily Signal, "ActBlue Lawyers Raised Alarm About Potential Misstatements to Congress on Foreign Donations," April 3, 2026.
- Fox News, "Dem Fundraising Giant ActBlue Rocked by Allegations It Misled Congress About Foreign Donations," April 3, 2026.
- The Federalist, "Report: ActBlue Likely Lied to Congress About Illegal Foreign Donations, Its Lawyers Feared Privately," April 2, 2026.
- Daily Caller, "ActBlue's Own Lawyers Sounded Alarm Bells About Illegal Foreign Contributions," April 2, 2026.
- Washington Free Beacon, "Substantial Risk: Democratic Fundraising Juggernaut ActBlue May Have Misled Congress About Vetting Foreign Donations," April 2, 2026.
- White House, "Investigation into Unlawful Straw Donor and Foreign Contributions in American Elections," April 24, 2025.
- House Administration Committee, "Chairman Steil Demands Information from ActBlue on Potential Foreign Influence in Campaign Funding," October 2024.
