ActBlue Is a Scam, and We Have the Receipts (Sort Of)

If you have ever wondered how the Democrats raise so much money compared to Republicans, there is no better place to look than ActBlue, the Democrats’ scammy fundraising platform. 

The platform is designed specifically to enable fraud, which presumably is the opposite of what it should be designed to do. After all, the Democrats love to primp and preen about how they are the great defenders of democracy, right?

Any sane person knows that this claim is a complete sham, assuming they know more than a bit about how the Democrats roll. But because the Pravda Media doesn’t want you to know, most people have at least until recently bought the line that the Republicans are the party of big money and billionaires. 

Donations made via domestic gift cards are an obvious sham too.

I do hope the new and improved FBI chases this immense campaign finance scandal to the bitter end.

— Big Screen D (@NoOne23131214) December 10, 2024

There’s been lots of coverage of how much more money Harris spent than Trump, but that is only part of the story. What was truly shocking about Harris’ fundraising was how FAST they raised the money, and ActBlue is a massive part of that story. 

Wow. ActBlue announced that small-dollar donors have raised over $27.5 in the first 5 hours of Harris’ presidential campaign pic.twitter.com/4IAdCwYh6P

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 22, 2024

This isn’t the time for me to do a deep dive into the corruption at the heart of ActBlue–I am still reading up on the many ways in which the organization facilitates fraud, but Just The News reported on one of the many methods they use to hide the origin of the contributions they collect. 

Because ActBlue doesn’t use traditional verification methods to ensure that the person making the contribution is the same as the one whose name is on it, lots of money gets washed through the system without any check on its origin. Many of the donations are made with gift cards with no names attached, and until a few months ago, those gift cards could originate anywhere in the world, and did. 

ActBlue, the massive online fund-raising platform for liberal causes, has informed Congress it did not automatically block donations made with foreign-bought gift cards until recently, a potentially significant revelation in an ongoing investigation into whether China, Russia, Iran or Venezuela routed illicit money to Democrat candidates.

House Administratrion Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., whose panel oversees election integrity, told Just the News on Tuesday that ActBlue turned over documents under subpoena showing a major change in September to its donor verification policies designed to protect against illicit money flowing into political campaigns. 

ActBlue disclosed that it updated its policies on Sept. 9 to “automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined,” by its solution provider, Sift.

The change occurred just three days after  Steil introduced the Secure Handling of Internet Electronic Donations (SHIELD) Act on Sept. 6 to ensure foreign money stayed out of online political fundraising. Before the change, Steil said, donations made with foreign gift cards were not automatically rejected by ActBlue before the change.

This is the other half of the smurfing scam, in which sums of money are donated in the name of some people without the money actually coming from them. In fact, the people whose names are used are unaware that fraud is being committed in their name. 

The money from gift cards can come from anybody and anywhere, including foreign countries. 

Does the influx of money from foreign countries explain the size and speed of the fundraising for the Harris campaign? I don’t know, but I can guess. All those proud announcements of massive sums coming from small donors could easily be the result of massive sums coming from a few donors here and around the world. 

Kash Patel, I am looking at you.