ActBlue and other campaign donation platforms are at the center of an investigation being conducted by at least 20 State’s attorneys general, as well as the House Administration Committee in Congress. It is also the subject of a lawsuit in Waukesha County, where earlier this month a judge allowed limited discovery into ActBlue to proceed.
The colloquial term used to describe this alleged operation is “smurfing.” Peter Bernegger, Chris Gleason, and their team discovered this suspected campaign money laundering operation and went public with it in 2023 when James O’Keefe’s OMG published videos interviewing suspected victims of this scheme.
According to the FEC.gov website, there are potentially thousands upon thousands of individuals whose identities are being stolen to launder millions of dollars to political campaigns and PACs across the country. This scheme can be verified by anyone:
- Simply go to FEC.gov.
- Under “Campaign Finance Data”, select “Look up contributions from specific individuals.”
- Put “ActBlue” as the “Recipient Name”
- Select a zip code or city you’d like to search
- Under “Occupation” put “retired”
- Uncheck the Report Time Period box or expand it to the date range you’d like to check
The last step is to click “Export” in the top right hand corner. This will download the data in a spreadsheet format. When you open it up, sort the data by name. Each contribution in this alleged scheme is typically under $5.
On Friday, Bernegger joined the Why We Vote podcast to discuss the recent reports that have come out of Congress via Rep. Bryan Steil and Rep. Jim Jordan. According to subpoenaed records from ActBlue, Just The News reported that ActBlue updated its policy on Sept 9th to “automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined,” by its solution provider, Sift.
Bernegger had several crucial updates regarding their own investigation into this money-laundering scheme regarding an automated process to make the donations, why ActBlue’s policy update likely won’t have any impact on any accounts established before the change, and whether or not the incoming Trump administration will engage in this investigation.
Hellbound and Down 