ActBlue Asserts Strong Protections Against Foreign Money, as Documents Show Officials Thought it ‘Historically Too Strict’

Though ActBlue officials still claim the Democrat fundraising platform is secure, documents released through a congressional investigation suggest the group has had a “lenient” approach for policing illegal donations.

The Democrat fundraising powerhouse has been the focal point of controversy for years over whether its donation portal has allowed foreign donors to contribute to Democrat candidates and causes. It is currently under investigation by the House committees on Administration, Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform as well as the Justice Department.

ActBlue has consistently denied wrongdoing, said it has a strong screening system for donors, and contends it has been fully cooperative with the congressional investigation, which it has called partisan and meritless.

However, at a recent hearing of House Administration Committee ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones invoked her Fifth Amendment right when she was called to testify.

During the June 10 hearing, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, questioned Wallace-Jones, “Your board chairman said ActBlue accepted up to $38 million in contributions in 2024 that had the signs of foreign origin. How much fraud is too much for all?” Wallace-Jones again invoked her Fifth Amendment right.

ActBlue Board Chairwoman Kimberly Peeler-Allen had told the New York Times in an article published in April that “less than 1 percent” of contributions from the 2024 election cycle had signs that they were from foreign countries. The platform raised $38.2 billion in the 2024 election cycle.

In an April letter to the committee chairs—Jordan, Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., of the House Administration Committee, and Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee—ActBlue lawyer Vincent Cohen asserted that the organization has “built a robust platform with anti-fraud technology.” 

“This has included implementing an industry-leading fraud prevention tool that uses behavioral modeling technology with more than 140 signals to assess credit card transactions automatically for potential fraud; prompting donors to enter their U.S. passport number when any country other than the United States is selected on a contribution form while checking out with their credit card or debit card on the ActBlue website; and reviewing certain contributions for the possibility that a donor provided a foreign address even if the donor selected the United States as their country,” Cohen’s letter said.

“In addition, ActBlue now blocks all political contributions with a foreign mailing address, a foreign IP address, or a foreign BIN number, even though this prevents millions of American citizens living, traveling, or serving abroad from making fully lawful contributions.”

Yet, the House GOP committees contend that documents tell a different story.

An ActBlue staff training guide on fraud prevention, included in the previous House committees’ report on April 2, 2025, stated, “We want to give our donors the benefit of the doubt and think about the reasons why a contribution is legitimate.”

The same manual said, “if an otherwise legitimate donor uses a fake name, we would want to accept their donations and do proactive outreach.”

ActBlue took what it called a “more lenient approach” to flagging suspicious contributions in the 2024 election cycle, according to a summary of changes from fraud prevention tactics in 2023. But it added, “we actually did not increase our exposure to fraud much, if at all.”

“As you will see in the rule changes we have made, we have introduced new rules as we have learned the ways in which we are targeted by fraudsters, but actually, our rules have been historically too strict, and we review too many false positive, good donors, and so we have needed to make adjustments to not interfere with the donation process without opening us up to increased levels of fraud,” the summary says.

The documents show ActBlue used Sift, an artificial intelligence-powered platform that protects businesses from fraud or abuse.

An ActBlue fraud-prevention official laid out the 2024 goals, obtained by the committee, that it wanted no more than 10% more missed fraud.

“Thereafter, optimize our Sift rules to result in a **50 percent** reduction in false-positive volume while not allowing more than 10 percent additional missed fraud,” the goals said. “This should save an estimated 50 additional hours of review monthly.”

The goals memo further talked about diversity, equity, and inclusion for employee resource groups, also known as ERGs, at the organization.

“Focus on DEI work through growing the ActBlue ERG community by being a member of the newly relaunched Pride ERG Leadership team, learning from other ERGs, and working together to host tandem events,” the fraud specialist said in the goals memo.