Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is giving Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue 10 days to provide information about how it verifies the "legitimacy and accuracy" of donor information.
Miyares raised concerns about "hundreds of thousands of dollars" of donations that he believes are "in volumes that are facially implausible and appear suspicious." ActBlue is used by Democrats to raise money for political candidates across the country.
The Context
The decision to investigate ActBlue came days after Republican Senator Marco Rubio flagged concerns about the organization to conservative pundit and Turning Point Action founder Charlie Kirk. While on Kirk's podcast, Rubio said ActBlue "has become a money laundering operation." The senator said that ActBlue doesn't require a CVV code for a person to donate to the PAC.
"It's a deliberate strategy on their part," Rubio said. "If they had to use that code from their credit card, their donations would go."
As of Friday, ActBlue's donation page for Vice President Kamala Harris did have an option to place a CVV when donating.
What We Know
ActBlue responded to the letter in a statement on Friday.
"This investigation is nothing more than a partisan political attack and scare tactic to undermine the power of Democratic and progressive small-dollar donors. We welcome the opportunity to respond to these frivolous claims," ActBlue wrote in a statement.
"The promoters of this disinformation campaign have shown up at the homes of donors and harassed our staff in-person. This must stop. The continued escalation of these lies and their intimidating tactics is dangerous," it reads.
It continues, "Republicans simply cannot accept that millions of Democrats are energized and engaged in the political process, and are instead resorting to political attacks and spreading false accusations."
In his letter, Miyares raised concerns about donors making "multiple daily contributions over the course of multiple years amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in aggregate."
"Furthermore, some of these individuals are senior citizens, list their occupation as 'not employed' or 'retired,' and/or list suspicious addresses," he wrote.
The attorney general questioned whether the donations are being made from "fictional donors or dummy accounts," that "information reported by or through ActBlue may be fraudulent" or these donations could have been made "without the reported donors' consent or awareness."
The letter did not state how many donors may be involved and did not offer a precise total of how much money may be involved.
Miyares requested that ActBlue provide his office with "a detailed description of ActBlue's processes and procedures for verifying the legitimacy and accuracy of donor and contribution information as well as the processes and procedures used in verifying information reported to regulatory bodies."
The information should be provided by August 12, he wrote.
The letter comes after Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign announced that she raised $310 million in July, more than double that of former President Donald Trump.
The allegations leveled against ActBlue stemmed from conservative activist James O'Keefe. However, a June 2023 report from Maryland Matters found that the claims are "difficult to independently recreate and appear overstated."
The report noted that contributions may have been counted multiple times in the way the Federal Election Commission reports data, but does not necessarily mean a donation was made multiple times.
Shaurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, wrote in a thread to X that when somebody donates to either ActBlue or WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform, the donation is recorded twice by the FEC.
Aggregating funds, which are spread out to several candidates, can also be reported twice, he wrote.
"Over a few election cycles, one donor could easily appear to be working night and day making thousands of individual contributions to hundreds of candidates, when in reality, they've just contributed with a few clicks to a few funds supporting many candidates. Nothing unusual," he wrote.
Views
Miyares announcement drew mixed response on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Conservatives praised Miyares for investigating the platform, while others viewed the letter as more political.
Tristan Anderson, a former legislative assistant for Democratic Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds, noted the issues could be with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reporting system.
"The FEC's annoyingly bad reporting website strikes once again I'm not a great expert but I've noticed this with my own donations, actblues can show up as both you giving money to act blue and to a campaign, even though you only gave money once," he wrote.
He continued, "And if you give through a page that splits donations to multiple candidates, then this problem is amplified significantly. And I believe that campaigns are responsible for vetting donations, not ActBlue. It is also odd to go after the conduit and not the campaigns ... or donors."
"So this is what Republicans do - they see that Democrats are raising HUGE amounts of money on @actblue, so they try to tear down ActBlue. All the more reason to strongly support (and donate through) @ActBlue," wrote the X profile @bluevirginia.
"This seems potentially serious," wrote law professor and legal commentator Jonathan Adler.
What's Next
Miyares has not revealed the next steps in the investigation and has not said what would happen if ActBlue does not meet the August 12 deadline.
Update 08/02/2024, 3:10 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
Update 08/02/2024, 5:29 p.m. ET: This headline and article have been updated for clarity.
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About the writer
Andrew Stanton is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in Maine. His role is reporting on U.S. politics and social issues. ... Read more