GOP lawmakers say ActBlue not taking fraud concerns seriously ahead of midterms

As the midterm elections approach, Republican lawmakers are concerned that the Democratic fundraising giant ActBlue is failing to take fraud prevention seriously, even after their probe of the company uncovered lax security practices. Lawmakers allege that lack of oversight allowed foreign donations to flow to progressive causes. “My concern from the beginning was that ActBlue did not have the fraud prevention standards that are needed to make sure that foreign money is not coming into U.S. elections, and what we reveal in the report … is clear indications that Act Blue is continuing to not make fraud, preventing fraud, a priority,” House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis, told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. 
ActBlue’s most senior officials repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment
“This is all based on a simple premise that U.S. elections should be for U.S. citizens only, and that foreign individuals should not be allowed to get money into U.S. elections. But time and again, it appears that Act Blue is not taking the proper fraud protocols and prevention needed to prevent that from happening,” Steil said.
ActBlue executives seem to have shown little interest in answering Congress’s questions about the company’s fraud prevention practices. ActBlue’s most senior officials have repeatedly invoked their Fifth Amendment rights when asked questions about the company’s donor verification practices. CEO Regina Wallace-Jones herself invoked that right 22 times in her appearance earlier this summer before the committees. ActBlue has repeatedly denied running afoul of the law during the course of Republicans’ probe. Pleading the Fifth Amendment is not evidence of wrongdoing.
Steil’s committee, along with the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, launched the probe into the progressive fundraising giant in 2024 after reviewing evidence that the platform, which is widely used by Democratic Party campaigns and affiliated causes, accepted donations from foreign sources and employed lax verification standards. Last week, Steil’s committee — along with the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees — released the third interim report detailing the joint congressional investigation into ActBlue. 
The new report provides evidence that its passport verification system, which it previously told Congress was designed to exclude foreign donors from contributing to its system, did not actually verify passport numbers at all. Instead, ActBlue only verified that the number of characters matched the number used in valid passport numbers, according to internal company messages released by the committees. 
Steil: ActBlue were “looking for ways to process the donations rather than conduct fraud checks”
The communications also show that, in some instances, ActBlue staff appears to have approved donations despite significant red flags. Steil said that this evidence indicates that staff were “looking for ways” to process the donations rather than conduct fraud checks. The committee found ActBlue’s policy to be: “we give the benefit of the doubt to the donor.”
“If they were interested in preventing fraud, what they would be doing is leading the charge to make sure that no fraudulent donation was processed on their platform. They were doing the exact opposite. They were looking for ways to process the donation,” Steil told Just the News. 
In one instance uncovered by the committee, an ActBlue supervisor approved a donation despite it displaying multiple severe fraud indicators, including “IP/billing mismatch and a concerning IP provider name, a foreign credit card, an odd email domain, and being connected to other rejected users.” Instead of addressing the concerns, the supervisor instructed the subordinate to approve the donation because they could not “say for sure that this is fraud.” 
Using unverified social media accounts to verify donor identities 
In another, a supervisor faulted an analyst for rejecting a foreign contribution that used an Arkansas state code on the donation form. The supervisor instructed that the transaction should have been accepted because the software “can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors.”
Additionally, the investigation showed that ActBlue staff would use things like social media accounts to verify donor identities. For example, in one case where the donor details indicated he or she was located in Canada but using a Missouri billing address, a supervisor instructed staff to accept the donation and use the donor’s online X account to verify their identity. Most social media accounts are not verified, and people can create multiple profiles called “sockpuppets” in internet parlance.
You can read the report below: 
ActBlue lawyers warned the company about misleading Congress
Lawmakers are also raising concerns about a concerted effort by ActBlue’s leadership to cover up its lax security practices, and retaliate against internal whistleblowers who raised questions about them, Just the News reported last week. 
An outside law firm working for ActBlue warned the company in 2024 that it may have misled Congress in a 2023 letter that claimed it used “multilayered” screenings of contributions to help “root out” donations from overseas after the lawyers found that some of ActBlue’s fraud prevention steps were not always followed, according to The New York Times. Amid the internal chaos at the company sparked by the congressional investigation, ActBlue’s interim General Counsel Aaron Ting resigned. 
His letter of resignation reportedly cited “ActBlue’s past practices for screening political donations from abroad and its past representations to Congress regarding foreign donations and related matters.”
After Ting’s resignation, the company’s last remaining lawyer on the legal team, Zain Ahmad, “reportedly notified ActBlue leadership, including ActBlue’s Board of Directors, of credible allegations of misconduct at the company, including significant alleged violations of federal campaign finance law and false statements to Congress.” 
According to the committee, Ahmad was placed on “a suspicious medical leave” and had his access to company email revoked. When Ahmed sent a message to IT services to request his access be restored, Hanna Bonin, ActBlue’s director of IT, deleted the request. Ahmed appeared to suspect that he was facing retaliation for raising internal concerns about company policy.
Ultimately, after the outside counsel raised serious concerns about possible illegal conduct at the company, “the platform’s entire legal and compliance team either resigned, was fired, or went on extended leave within just four months after the 2024 election,” the committees found. 

Read Full Article: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/lawmakers-say-actblue-not-taking-fraud-concerns-seriously-ahead-midterms?utm_source=justthenews.com&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=external-news-aggregators