Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff said in a Wednesday report that federal records had tied an 88-year-old retiree in Milan, Michigan, to nearly $4,500 in new ActBlue donations over six weeks, among them four logged on a day she had no internet access.
LeDuff reported that 562 transactions were attributed to Elizabeth Waffle during that stretch. Four of them, totaling $22, posted the very day he first visited her rural trailer, where the power, water, and internet are all off.
During that first visit, LeDuff and Waffle tried to make a donation together and could not get online.
“Last time we were here, remember, we tried to make a donation,” LeDuff said, recounting the exchange in a follow-up interview.
Among the new transactions was $51 logged for Abdul El-Sayed, whom LeDuff called “the king of the Michigan micro-donors.” El-Sayed won the Democrat Senate primary in August by under a percentage point and faces Republican Mike Rogers in November, in a contest analysts rate as a possible tipping point for Senate control.
The retiree lost her house to a fire two years ago and has lived in the trailer since. She said the figures made no sense to her. Federal filings reviewed in July had attributed 14,696 donations to her over five years — roughly eight a day — a tally LeDuff put at more than $130,000.
When the reporter returned last week with printouts, the widow turned on him, asking whether he was building a hit piece on the platform.
“I think it’s a bunch of hogwash,” Waffle said.
She suggested Republicans cheat too, and agreed when LeDuff asked if her view was to “fight fire with fire.” Then she softened.
“I believe in honesty,” she said. “I do care if somebody is fudging and putting stuff in.”
Asked whether she wanted him to keep looking, Waffle agreed. “Yeah, if they are,” she said.
Not every independent review matches the Michigan Enjoyer’s totals. The Center Square reported that FEC records show $100,295 in contributions tied to Waffle’s name across three cycles, and noted that ActBlue’s Tandem Fundraising tool can split a single donation form across many campaigns, generating multiple logged transactions from one gift.
The renewed attention follows months of federal scrutiny of the Democrat fundraising platform. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment rights before the House Administration Committee this year. President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department in April 2025 to examine whether online fundraising platforms had processed illegal contributions.
