Trump to Investigate Democrat Fundraising Platform Under Scrutiny for Alleged Money Laundering

President Donald Trump will sign a presidential memorandum Thursday launching an investigation into ActBlue for potentially illegal methods of fundraising for Democrats, The Daily Signal has learned.

The memo directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate and take appropriate action concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make “straw” or “dummy” contributions and to make foreign contributions to U.S. political candidates and committees.

ActBlue is currently under congressional investigation for alleged laundering of foreign money. 

Federal Election Commission records show that in recent elections, some elderly Americans made thousands of small donations to Democrat fundraising political committees through ActBlue, The Daily Signal previously reported.

Individuals may have made numerous donations through ActBlue without their consent or knowledge that their names, addresses, and money were being used for these donations, Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., co-chair of the Election Integrity Caucus, told The Daily Signal. 

The presidential memorandum notes that a congressional investigation revealed significant fraud schemes using ActBlue and, over a 30-day period during the 2024 election cycle, hundreds of ActBlue donations from foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards, despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to U.S. elections.

ActBlue came under fire on Oct. 29 because of its donor-verification policies. In a letter that day to ActBlue, House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said foreign actors from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China could use the platform to launder illicit money for use in U.S. political campaigns. 

The Democratic fundraising platform admitted in 2023 to Steil that it didn’t require contributors to use a card verification value, or CVV, to donate on its website with a credit card. Those security codes are meant to ensure that the person making a purchase physically possesses the credit card. 

The memo instructs Bondi to report the results of the investigation to Trump through the Counsel to the President. 

ActBlue may have raked in millions through fraudulent donations, according to the testimonies of elderly Americans who said federal election records do not reflect their giving, The Daily Signal has reported.

Eighteen registered Democrats in Connecticut, all over the age of 70, appear to have donated $1.9 million to Democratic causes, including ActBlue, through hundreds of thousands of small donations from 2016 to 2024, according to a review of Federal Election Commission filings by Dominic Rapini, cybersecurity company CEO and a former Connecticut Republican candidate for office. 

Curious about the donation patterns, Rapini tracked down some of the Connecticut residents and asked them if they really did make thousands of small donations, sometimes multiple in a day, through ActBlue.

Several of the supposed donors told Rapini they did not make any of the reported donations, nor did they know anything about how their names were being used, Rapini told The Daily Signal.

ActBlue did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the forthcoming investigation.

ActBlue CEO and President Regina Wallace-Jones sent an email to Democrats on Wednesday warning about rumors of the executive order.

“The current strategy of distraction and exhaustion is effective. We see this across the country and are not immune to this ourselves,” her email said, according to Punchbowl News. “The flow-on effect from the initial innuendo of the EO caused many in the ecosystem anxiety and distress.”

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