ActBlue built the machine that bankrolls virtually every Democrat running for federal office in America.
Now House Republicans say the lawyer who cleared that machine of wrongdoing just got caught contradicting his own review.
What investigators found buried in ActBlue's internal records has three committee chairmen demanding answers before Congress leaves town.
Ten ActBlue Witnesses Took The Fifth Instead Of Answering Questions
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan says his committee deposed ten people connected to ActBlue.
Every single one of them invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Not one witness would answer basic questions about how Democrats' favorite fundraising platform screens out foreign cash.
That is not what an innocent company's employees do.
That is what people do when the truth is worse than the accusation.
Jordan, House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, and House Oversight Chairman James Comer put it in writing Monday: Machen needs to sit down with investigators before October 9.
Machen briefed the committees on September 11 and told them ActBlue's compliance was "as close to 100 percent as it could be."
The chairmen say the documents in their possession tell a different story.
Democrats' Own Lawyer Undermined The Story He Was Hired To Defend
Machen was not brought in to investigate ActBlue.
He was brought in to defend it, after CEO Regina Wallace-Jones testified before Congress and then invoked the Fifth Amendment herself.
According to the committees' letter, an ActBlue employee could enter a generic placeholder in place of an actual passport number, then keep accepting money from that same donor indefinitely without ever confirming citizenship.
This is not a paperwork technicality.
Congress does not let a campaign take a donor's word for it once red flags show up.
The law says get the passport.
ActBlue's own records show a way to skip that step entirely.
The letter cites an even more damaging document – a 2024 review by Dana Remus, President Biden's own former White House Counsel, hired at the time as ActBlue's outside lawyer.
Remus concluded there was a meaningful chance that some of that Democrat campaign money had come from donors who were not U.S. citizens.
Even Biden's own lawyer could not clear ActBlue.
Machen's review only covered 2023, while records show ActBlue loosened its fraud rules twice in 2024, the year Democrats needed every dollar they could get.
ActBlue calls all of this a "political stunt" timed to hurt Democrats before the midterms.
A stunt does not explain why ActBlue's own hired lawyer flagged this risk in 2024, two years before Republicans wrote a single letter about it.
Democrats are not being persecuted here.
Democrats built a fundraising machine, got warned about it by their own side, and are now asking voters to look away.
Every Vulnerable Democrat On The Ballot Took This Money
Democrats spent a decade building ActBlue into the single most powerful small-dollar fundraising machine in American politics, the one thing keeping vulnerable House Democrats and long-shot Senate candidates afloat in red states.
If foreign cash quietly flowed through that machine for years, every candidate who touched that money has a problem, not just ActBlue.
Chinagate taught Washington that foreign money finds its way into American campaigns through cutouts, placeholders, and lawyers paid to look the other way – and it still took a Senate investigation years to prove it.
This time the paper trail already exists inside ActBlue's own files, written by its own lawyers.
That money is already spent.
It bought ads, staff, and mailers for Democrats running in tight races this November, and none of that can be unspent if the money turns out to be illegal.
Every Democrat who leaned on ActBlue cash now has to answer a question their own fundraiser cannot answer for them.
Where exactly did the money come from.
Sources:
- Elizabeth Elkind, "Republicans zero in on key player accused of helping Democrat fundraising giant hide foreign cash," Fox News, September 28, 2026.
- Emily Kopp, "Investigation: ActBlue Got Foreign Cash Then Punished Whistleblower," The Western Journal, September 26, 2026.
- "House Republicans Summon ActBlue Lawyer After Foreign-Donation Answers Collide With Internal Records," 100 Percent Fed Up, September 28, 2026.
- House Judiciary Committee, official statement on ActBlue investigation, September 28, 2026.
- Federal Election Commission, 11 CFR § 110.20, Foreign National Contribution Regulations.
