Tag: corruption

“Dead To Rights”: Internal ActBlue Records Show Foreign-Flagged Donations Waved Through, Whistleblower Messages Deleted

For years, the left has lectured Americans about the dangers of “foreign interference” and dark money in our elections. But a sweeping congressional investigation has laid bare a vast Democratic fundraising apparatus that paved the way for just that: ActBlue, the billion-dollar financial engine of the Democratic Party, created a mechanism that encouraged illicit foreign cash – and then, investigators say, covered it up. Read on.

On Wednesday, House investigators released “Part III” of their bombshell investigation into ActBlue’s fundraising practices. The findings outline a staggering pattern of willful blindness, internal censorship, and a frantic race by executives to plead the Fifth.

Here is how the Democrats’ top fundraising platform built a system that welcomed very questionable cash, and how their own staff tried to bury the evidence.

Step 1: The “Smurfing” Machine

The scandal was officially brought to light in April 2025, when the House GOP released Part I of its staff report. Lawmakers detailed a structural nightmare: ActBlue had intentionally bypassed standard banking security measures, such as requiring CVV verification codes for credit card donations.

That gap is what made “smurfing” plausible – a money-laundering technique in which a large, illegal contribution is chopped into thousands of small donations, each attributed to a real person who, allegedly, never made it. The prepaid cards obscure where the money came from; the borrowed names make it look like a stream of legal small-dollar gifts from ordinary Americans. The donations themselves aren’t hidden – as a conduit, ActBlue itemizes every one in its FEC filings regardless of size, which is how the donor lists cited below were compiled. The question is whether anyone at ActBlue was checking whose names were being used.

The allegation itself predates the House probe. It surfaced in March 2023, when James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group – working from FEC-record analysis compiled by Peter Bernegger’s Election Watch – published videos of elderly donors listed in federal filings for thousands of small ActBlue contributions far beyond anything they said they’d given. Sen. Ron Johnson wrote the FEC in April 2023; Chairman Steil’s committee ran its own analysis of FEC records and in September 2024 referred its findings to five state attorneys general, citing anomalous donor profiles consistent with unwitting “straw donors”; President Trump’s April 2025 memorandum directed DOJ to investigate “straw” and “dummy” donations. ActBlue calls the inquiry politically motivated. The House reports don’t settle it. What they document is that ActBlue’s own records show at least 22 significant fraud campaigns, account takeovers used to make straw donations that appeared to come from regular donors, and 237 prepaid-card donations from foreign IP addresses in a single month before the 2024 election – and that when investigators asked former Associate General Counsel Aaron Ting under oath whether smurfing is prevalent on ActBlue, he took the Fifth.

Step 2: The Cover-Up and the Fifth Amendment

When ActBlue’s own legal and compliance teams realized the potential scale of illicit foreign donations flowing through the platform, panic set in. But instead of correcting the record with Congress, as its own lawyers advised, the execs allegedly moved to suppress the findings, as outlined in the committee’s Part II report.

Internal records show what happened to the last lawyer who escalated the foreign-donation problem. After the 2024 election, ActBlue’s outside counsel had warned the company in two memoranda that its screening of overseas contributions lacked the rigor it had described to Congress, and that its November 2023 letter to Chairman Steil may have been false or misleading. On February 25, 2025 – his first full day running the legal department – legal counsel Zain Ahmad put those memoranda in front of ActBlue’s board of directors and executive team.

The silencing began the next day. He was locked out of his email and Google Drive, against ActBlue’s own leave policy. When he objected in a 277-person IT channel – calling it retaliation and citing the company’s whistleblower and anti-retaliation policies – IT director Hanna Bonin deleted the messages as fast as he posted them: his request to restore access, his policy citations, the policies themselves, and finally his plea to “stop deleting my requests,” which vanished five seconds after it went up. Six deletions in one night. An HR staffer told the chief people officer it “look[ed] like blatant retaliation.” When his email came back the next day, HR was discussing how to “key in on him” using the company’s security tools.

Keep reading

Food Labeling Should Not Be This Hard

Knowing what’s in your food or whether what you’re about to eat comports with a medically prescribed diet can be difficult. There’s no reason why the government should make it harder. But that’s exactly what the United States Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration are doing when they prohibit companies from conveying information about FODMAP content on food labels.

Although not inherently harmful to most people, FODMAPs are a broad category of short-chain carbohydrates and sugar alcohols believed to trigger gastrointestinal symptoms in individuals living with irritable bowel syndrome and possibly several other functional gastrointestinal disorders.

In technical terms, FODMAPs are fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. More practically, people with IBS might want to be careful around most standard dairy items, honey, several cereals and artificial sweeteners, and a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and spices.

When consumed, these items can lead to luminal distension by causing increased amounts of water to enter the gastrointestinal tract and increased gas production by bacteria living in the colon. In some individuals with IBS and other functional gut disorders, this may trigger or exacerbate certain symptoms of their condition (e.g., intense pain and changes in intestinal motility), possibly through neurons in the gut responding abnormally to these physiological responses to FODMAP consumption. 

Hence, some patients with these conditions choose to limit their FODMAP intake or are encouraged to do so by their health care provider. Some go on strict low-FODMAP diets long term. Others temporarily do so for two to eight weeks then work to reintroduce specific FODMAP-containing foods into their diet to determine what they can tolerate. Broadly speaking, a lot of patients with relevant conditions find that the diet helps alleviate their symptoms.

Low-FODMAP diets though are generally considered sort of bland. They also tend to require a certain amount of time and education to be effective. Looking at a table of high- and low-FODMAP foods to make decisions about what to eat may not require an advanced degree in nutrition, but it is not difficult to imagine how having to break out such a table to evaluate every item you consider purchasing at the grocery store could become rather burdensome, especially if you’re new to the diet.

Fortunately, there are organizations and companies out there to help. Monash University, for example, has labs that both study the effectiveness of low-FODMAP diets and test food items for FODMAP content. Monash also offers several resources to help those on low-FODMAP diets make informed meal choices and works with companies that wish to offer low-FODMAP food options. If a company wants to submit a product to Monash for evaluation and Monash determines the item is low in FODMAP content, the company can then use a trademarked label to convey this information to consumers.

However, as one US company learned, even if one of the world’s leading FODMAP research facilities tells you your food is low in FODMAPs, this isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can just put on a label in the United States.

Keep reading

Massachusetts Governor Defends State Taking Catholic Couple’s Daughter Away After They Refused to Call Her a Boy

Democrat Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is defending the Department of Children and Families after Catholic parents accused the state of seizing their teenage daughter because they would not refer to her as a boy.

Healey told reporters the removal had nothing to do with gender, but the family’s lawyer says that is not true.

Joseph and Arlene Kutzko of Southborough say they have not spoken to their daughter, Sophie, since late 2024.

The child was 15 when DCF took her, and she is now 17.

The couple claims that Algonquin Regional High School began using a male name and pronouns for their daughter without telling them.

They have said that a school counselor reported the family after they refused, on Catholic and scientific grounds, to treat the girl as a boy.

“They exposed our daughter to teachings on LGBTQ and topics that conflict with our Catholic beliefs about human dignity, creation as male and female in Catholic teaching,” Joseph Kutzko said on the Lighthouse Faith podcast.

Massachusetts law allows schools to use a student’s chosen name and pronouns without notifying parents, a practice that has survived federal court challenges in other cases.

The parents say DCF has housed Sophie in a boys’ dormitory, put her on birth control and psychiatric drugs, and kept her from Sunday Mass.

A permanent restraining order bars the parents and an older brother from contact.

Attorney Vernadette Broyles of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign says the state is now seeking court permission to give the girl high-dose testosterone. A judge temporarily blocked that treatment. The next hearing is October 29.

Healey was asked about the case after an event in Boston this week.

“Let me be clear about the facts in that matter,” she said, according to a Boston Herald report. “First of all, DCF did not remove the child because of a health issue or a gender-affirming care issue. DCF removed the child after there were criminal charges filed against the parents, including the father. As you know, DCF is responsible for the care and well-being of kids, and that’s what happened in this instance.”

Healey added that the matter is “currently a subject of criminal prosecution right now against the parents,” then declined further comment while insisting the child “was not removed because of a gender-affirming care issue.”

Keep reading

Washington State Democrat Candidate Has a Meltdown in Patrol Car After DUI Arrest

Democrat candidate Krista Perez — who who is running for a state House seat in Washington — was seen on police video having a meltdown in a patrol car after being arrested for a DUI.

In the body camera footage, Perez — who won the Democrat primary in Washington state’s 29th Legislative District, Position 1 — admitted to drinking wine, declined field sobriety tests, and begged to go home before she was seen praying and sobbing in the back of a police vehicle.

“Did you get into an accident here?” an officer asked Perez in the video, to which the Democrat candidate replied, “I did not.”

In the footage, the 40-year-old woman is seen standing outside her vehicle, where an airbag had deployed at the front wheel.

“What happened, then?” the officer inquired, to which Perez responded, “I don’t know. I’ve never been in an accident before.”

After being asked for her insurance, Perez told law enforcement, “I literally just changed my insurance just, like, within the last two weeks,” and was unable to tell the officer the name of the insurance company.

Perez then told police that she was driving from “a friend’s business” on Tacoma Avenue South when the car accident occurred.

“Did you have anything to drink tonight?” the officer asked, to which the Democrat candidate replied, “I just had some wine while I was there.”

After being asked how much wine she had, Perez responded, “I had a glass of wine. One glass of wine.”

The officer then asked how big the glass was, to which she answered, “I’m confused about what our questions are right now,” before adding, “I think you might need to contact the business.”

“On a scale from zero to ten, zero being sober, ten being unable to function, where would you rate yourself tonight?” the police officer inquired, to which Perez replied, “I would like to go home.”

After being asked to rate herself on the scale from zero to ten again, the Democrat candidate finally responded, saying, “Four.”

The officer then asked Perez to participate in field sobriety tests, informing her multiple times that she can decline the tests if she prefers.

“It’s totally voluntary,” he said. “You can say no if you’d like.”

Perez told the officer she wanted to “go home” first, and repeatedly stated that she was “confused.”

“You’re not going to go home first. I’m going to tell you that right now, okay? So, your options between the test, yes or no, that’s going to be determined tonight, right now, not when you go home. So, would you like to take these tests or no?” the officer asked.

After declining the roadside sobriety tests again, the officer instructed Perez to turn around and put her hands behind her back.

“Oh no, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. One second,” she reacted.

The officer then handcuffed Perez while she repeatedly stated, “I don’t know what any of this means.”

“It means you’re under arrest for DUI,” the officer replied.

The Democrat candidate then informed law enforcement that she doesn’t know what “DUI” means, before continuing to repeat, “I don’t know what any of this means.” Perez went on to ask God to help her in Spanish.

Later, inside the squad car, Perez told the officer, “I think what I assume tonight is that you did not experience domestic violence in your life.”

“What makes you think that?” the officer asked, to which Perez responded, “I choose gratitude in my life.”

The officer then asked, “Is there anything else you want to share?” to which the Democrat candidate bizarrely replied, “Anything that you are requesting to be shared right now would be under duress.”

The video footage goes on to show Perez crying in police car and repeatedly asking, “Can you please help me?”

Upon reaching the station, the sobbing Democrat candidate told authorities, “I don’t know to get out” of the vehicle.

The Tacoma Police Department said Perez struck a parked car and set off a chain reaction that damaged five vehicles shortly after midnight on August 11, according to The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red.

The Democrat candidate was booked into Pierce County Corrections on the morning of August 11 on a DUI charge.

Keep reading

Homeless Advocate Charged With Recruiting Teens To Make and Sell Drugs

Lisa Kinkade, the Brattleboro homeless advocate who was praised last year for helping create a downtown drop-in center for homeless people, has been arrested following a drug raid in which police say a large amount of crack cocaine and cash was seized.

Kincade, 46, was one of three people arrested Sept. 4 when Brattleboro police assisted the Vermont Drug Task Force in executing a search warrant at an apartment at 69 Elliott Street at about 9:15 AM, according to a Brattleboro Police Dept. statement. She pleaded innocent Tuesday to trafficking, manufacturing and sale of crack cocaine and fentanyl, and conspiracy to sell drugs.

In her arraignment Tuesday, Judge John Treadwell set bail at $ 50,000 for Kinkade, saying she allegedly recruited “young people from Connecticut to come to Vermont to manufacture and distribute regulated drugs in this community,” according to a Brattleboro Reformer report.

The other two people arrested were 18-year-olds from Connecticut: Darrius Tatum of Darien, and Xavier Burgos of Meriden. 

Keep reading

Arkansas Democrat Hallie Shoffner: ‘We’d Trade Five Americans’ for One ‘Undocumented Immigrant’

Hallie Shoffner, who is running to unseat Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), defended “undocumented” farm workers as exceptionally hardworking, after previously saying she grew up around “undocumented” farm workers, discussing Mexican H-2A employees on her family farm, defending farmers’ reliance on foreign-born labor, and leading a nonprofit that assisted “undocumented Hispanics.”

“Every farmer will tell you at one point, we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people,” Shoffner said on Free Arkansas with host Andy McNeill. “They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”

“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” Shoffner said.

“We’re acting like all Republicans like what’s happening with ICE, and Tom Cotton’s basically saying you, Andy, if you’re a Republican and you disagree with my position on ICE, or if you’re asking any kind of questions about it, well, you must be anti-American and anti-safety,” Shoffner said. “And I’m like, I have a seven-year-old boy. All I think about is safety.”

Laura Loomer highlighted the interview on X, writing, “The facts are clear: Farmer Hallie loves putting illegal aliens first, which is why she is UNFIT to serve in the U.S. Senate.”

Keep reading

Abdul El-Sayed Refuses to Return Donations From Groups Linked to Terrorism.

WHAT HAPPENED:Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed defended accepting campaign contributions from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), rejecting calls from Republican opponent Mike Rogers to return the money. On Tuesday, El-Sayed was asked whether he would give back donations from CAIR-linked individuals, and insisted he would not.

 DETAIL: El-Sayed’s campaign received more than $115,000 from at least 41 people who have worked for, previously worked for, or held leadership positions with CAIR. Rogers has argued that the contributions should be returned, citing CAIR’s history of alleged ties to Hamas and its designation as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as Florida and Texas. CAIR was also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. El-Sayed claims CAIR is a civil rights organization and accused Rogers of attempting to make the Senate race about his ethnicity and Muslim faith. The controversy comes as El-Sayed also faces scrutiny over his association with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who has previously said “America deserved 9/11” and openly supported the terrorist Houthis. 

 KEY QUOTE: “That civil rights organization [CAIR] exists because people like Mike Rogers want to make this race about the color of my skin or how I pray.” – Abdul El-Sayed IMPACT: The controversy could intensify scrutiny of Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign financing and his relationships with Islamic advocacy groups as the Michigan Senate race moves toward its fall debates. It also gives Republicans an opportunity to focus the campaign on questions surrounding terrorism-related allegations and associations.

Keep reading

Twin Brothers Acquitted in FBI’s Whitmer “Kidnap Plot” Sue Dana Nessel, FBI Agents, and Michigan State Police — Allege They Were Framed in a Manufactured Fednapping Hoax

Twin brothers Michael John Null and William “Bill” Null, two of the Michigan men a jury cleared in 2023 after the FBI and Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel spent years painting them as terrorists, have now taken the fight to federal court.

They filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan on September 15, 2026, Null v. Nessel, naming leftist Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, disgrace-ridden former FBI Special Agent Richard Trask II (who was fired after domestic assault charges), agent Henrik Impola, former Detroit FBI chief Steven D’Antuono, along with the Michigan State Police and a parade of Deep State actors.

In October 2020, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged the Null brothers (along with Eric Molitor and several others) in state court with:

  • Providing material support for terrorist acts (related to an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and attack the state Capitol).
  • Possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

Prosecutors alleged they acted as lookouts during nighttime surveillance of Whitmer’s vacation home in Elk Rapids and participated in militia training and planning meetings tied to the Wolverine Watchmen and other groups. The kidnapping plot was manufactured by the FBI.

The case against the Michigan militia members plotting to ‘kidnap’ Governer Whitmer fell apart when it was revealed that Chris Wray’s FBI was behind the scheme, the FBI paid for training, Governor Whitmer was in on the planning, and the FBI even had an agent sleeping with the militia leader during the planning and training.

Did you catch that… Governor Whitmer was also involved in planning the plot to kidnap herself!

Keep reading

Democrat Roy Cooper Was Sued for Defamation and Forced to Apologize in First Statewide Campaign

North Carolina Democrat U.S. Senate candidate and former Gov. Roy Cooper was forced to pay $75,000 and issue a formal apology to a Republican opponent in his first statewide campaign to settle a defamation lawsuit.

After serving 14 years in the North Carolina General Assembly, Cooper set his sights on becoming the state’s Attorney General in 2000. With the race considered to be close, Cooper’s campaign — led by the same consultant in this year’s race, Morgan Jackson — decided it needed to “hit Boyce and hit him soon.”

Not only that, Cooper personally made the false claims in the attack worse and said so himself in a deposition. From a Charlotte Observer report:

Cooper said in the deposition that he scratched out “demanding $1,200 an hour” and wrote in “charged $28,000 per hour.” The ad told voters that a judge said the fee “shocked the conscience.” The hourly fee, the ad went on to explain, was more than a police officer earned in a year. The commercial was broadcast across the state in the days leading up to the election. Boyce’s campaign urged Cooper to stop running the ad; it didn’t. Boyce lost the race, winning 46 percent of the votes to Cooper’s 51 percent.

According to Cooper’s deposition, it was he who took a draft campaign ad accusing Republican opponent Dan Boyce of “demanding $1,200 an hour,” scratched it out, and replaced it with the explosive claim that Boyce had “charged $28,000 per hour.”

The ad wasn’t true, and Cooper knew it.

The case referenced in the defamatory ad had been handled by Boyce’s father, Gene Boyce. The elder Boyce was never paid $28,000 an hour. The figure came from a judge’s calculation and he had been awarded a fraction of it. The underlying lawsuit had actually resulted in more than $1 billion being returned to North Carolina taxpayers.

Cooper fought the lawsuit against him and the case spent more than a decade in both state and federal courts. Not wanting to take accountability for his own actions, Cooper unsuccessfully asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. But as the case finally approached a public trial in 2014, Cooper caved.

In the settlement, Cooper paid $75,000, mediator fees, and delivered a written apology to the Boyces.


Keep reading

“You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About! Get Away From Me!” – Nancy Pelosi Loses it on Reporter Asking About Her January 6 Lies

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lost it on a Lindell TV Reporter on Wednesday, shouting, “Get away from me,” when pressed on her security failures and lies about January 6. 

The House Oversight Committee released footage in 2024 that shows Nancy Pelosi taking responsibility for the January 6, 2021, protests and rioting at the US Capitol.

“I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,” Pelosi said, admitting that she was responsible for not having more National Guard present during January 6.

LindellTV’s Allison Steinberg asked Pelosi two years after the video was published: “You admitted on January 6 when your daughter was filming you that you were responsible for security failures. Will you admit that now? Why are you denying that, Congresswoman Pelosi? You also blamed former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund for his role in it when you denied the National Guard, I think it was 71 times. Your sergeant-at-arms denied the National Guard 71 times. Why is that? If this was a so-called insurrection, why did you refuse the National Guard? Please answer to the American people. They would like to know.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! Get away from me!” Pelosi snapped as she got into her vehicle.

Keep reading