ActBlue in Trouble?

Is the Democrat money program ActBlue a money laundering operation?

“This is not an idle concern. In fact, ActBlue uses a method of processing credit cards that explicitly allows for fraudulent contributions–not collecting CVV numbers (the security numbers on the back of the card). This allows a card to be dissociated from a person. 

Processing cards this way is more expensive but allows for the anonymity of the card owner. A donor can use a gift card with no attached name and then input the name of anybody as the donor. That’s how Mark Block wound up being an unwitting “donor” to Kamala Harris. 

This practice goes back more than a decade, and everybody knows it. As with so much other political corruption, now is the time to shut it down and prosecute the fraudsters. 

Maybe with a real DOJ, this corruption can stop.  Maybe with a real FEC, the corruption will stop.

ActBlue in Trouble?

David Strom, HotAir,  12/3/24     https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/12/03/actblue-in-trouble-n3797550

ActBlue is the Democratic Party’s main fundraising arm, and it is a cesspool of fraud and corruption. 

It’s not like this is a particular secret. It is common knowledge in political circles that the organization facilitates “smurfing,” which is a method of laundering illegal campaign contributions through straw donors. It is a way to break up enormous political contributions that exceed campaign contribution limits into smaller donations that evade scrutiny. 

Over the years the organization has gotten ever more blatant, laundering contributions through the identities of real people by making contributions in their names without their knowledge. By now the amount of money involved is likely in the billions in fraudulent political donations. 

Independent journalists have been tracking down individuals whose identities have been used to launder big contributions, stunning some “donors” with the massive contributions they were supposed to have made. These are generally Democrats who have indeed contributed small amounts. Once ActBlue has their donor information, larger sums are washed through their accounts to enable illegal campaign contributions. 

Several Attorneys General from Republican states have opened up investigations, and now Mark Block, a Republican who discovered that his identity was used to launder campaign contributions to Kamala Harris, is suing ActBlue in Wisconsin. ActBlue was fighting discovery, and a judge just knocked them down. 

For the first time, a Wisconsin court has approved a subpoena to the massive Democrat fund-raising platform ActBlue, saying it owes an explanation to a Republican whose email identity was used to make liberal donations he did not authorize. 

“Something is not right,” Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad D. Schimel declared as he approved a limited demand for documents and opened a new front into a widening fund-raising probe begun earlier this year by Congress and 19 attorneys general.

Schimel rejected ActBlue’s arguments that it was onerous to require it to comply a subpoena for third-party donations it processed on its platform. The judge permitted GOP consultant Mark Block and his lawyers from America First Policy Institute to conduct discovery to determine if fraud was involved in the use of his identity to make dozens of Democrat donations on his old email address.

“I get the argument that this is an assumption on plaintiff’s part that the donations are fraudulent,” the judge stated in a hearing Nov. 21. “There may be an element of fraud or maybe it is innocent. Plaintiff has set forth enough in their complaint and in support of their subpoena to demonstrate that there may be something here.”

ActBlue is and always has been a money laundering operation, and once the investigations into its practices really get going we will see exactly how billions of dollars have gotten laundered into the coffers of Democratic Party campaigns. 

Everybody has been stunned at the scale of Kamala Harris’ spending and how outrageously inefficient the campaign was, but too few people have focused on how ridiculous it is to believe that Harris legally raised $1.4 billion in so little time. It boggles the mind, and more importantly, raises questions. 

James Carville suggested an audit of the Harris campaign to figure out who exactly benefited, and in that I wholly agree. But the audit shouldn’t be just of the spending, but of the money raised. Where, exactly, did it really come from? Were all the people who supposedly donated the real donors?

Ron Johnson, earlier this year, revealed how uninterested the FBI and federal government were interested in pursuing the smurfing issue, even if foreign actors are involved. They seem just fine with campaign finance fraud, at least considering who benefits. 

This is not an idle concern. In fact, ActBlue uses a method of processing credit cards that explicitly allows for fraudulent contributions–not collecting CVV numbers (the security numbers on the back of the card). This allows a card to be dissociated from a person. 

Processing cards this way is more expensive but allows for the anonymity of the card owner. A donor can use a gift card with no attached name and then input the name of anybody as the donor. That’s how Mark Block wound up being an unwitting “donor” to Kamala Harris. 

This practice goes back more than a decade, and everybody knows it. As with so much other political corruption, now is the time to shut it down and prosecute the fraudsters.