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Speaker Mike Johnson is calling for expanded House probes into ActBlue, the Democrats’ behemoth fundraising platform, amid new concerns about foreign funding in U.S. elections. 

Rep. Bryan Steil, chairman of the House Administration Committee, this week announced the findings from documents the committee obtained through a subpoena of ActBlue issued days before last month’s election. The records revealed that the fundraising platform continued to accept donations using “foreign prepaid/gift cards” into July, when Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign reported record-shattering donation figures. 

“ActBlue was accepting foreign gift cards until September. This is ILLEGAL,” the speaker wrote Wednesday on his X account. The Louisiana Republican assured Steil’s committee would “continue this important investigation into ActBlue next Congress.”

“Our work here is just getting started,” Johnson added. 

Reached Wednesday by The Federalist, the speaker’s office declined to comment further. 

Elon Musk, who is working with Vivek Ramaswamy in leading President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to cut spending from the bloated federal government, chimed in, too. 

“Wow, extremely illegal,” Musk posted on X in reaction to Johnson’s post.  

Steil said the documents released through the congressional subpoena show ActBlue, as of Sept. 9, had updated its internal policies 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 “AI-powered fraud platform” Sift.

“While this is a positive step forward, there is still more work to be done to ensure our campaign finance system is fully protected from fraud and unlawful foreign interference,” the Wisconsin Republican said in a statement to The Federalist. 

Remember all of that corporate media gushing about the Harris-Walz campaign’s massive contribution hauls? The New York Times headline on Oct. 21 proclaimed, “Harris Sets Record for Biggest Fundraising Quarter Ever.”

“Donald Trump is raising less money than he did during his run in 2020, building a far smaller campaign than Kamala Harris,” the Times proudly boasted. 

Well, there may have been a troubling, perhaps nefarious, reason for such unprecedented fundraising. 

‘Money Laundering Operation’

Steil and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, now want answers from Sift, ActBlue’s “fraud detection and prevention services” provider. The lawmaker’s letter to the company demands the release of documents and communications “related to reports made to ActBlue or Sift by U.S. citizens alleging unauthorized or fraudulent transactions in their name and all documents and communications between or among Sift and the Executive Branch referring to potentially fraudulent transactions on ActBlue.”

As The Federalist has reported, ActBlue has been accused of being a “money laundering operation,” suspected of serving as a conduit for smurfing. In campaign finance land, smurfing entails “breaking up large-scale donations in a way that disguises who the money is actually coming from, so the contribution limits on how much money can be donated to a particular candidate can be skirted,” explained former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky in column for Fox News. 

“It may involve widespread mail and wire fraud and the fraudulent use of the identities of unwitting members of the public to violate federal and state campaign finance laws,” von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation election law expert, notes. 

In their letter to Sift, Jordan and Steil note that recent reporting shows ActBlue “has maintained poor anti-fraud practices that have allowed bad actors to make fraudulent political donations, including from foreign sources.” 

“Fraudulent political donations corrupt American elections and could amount to interstate criminal conduct,” the letter warns. “Because Sift has provided ‘fraud detection and prevention services’ for ActBlue, we write to request your cooperation with our oversight.”

Steil has said his committee is looking into whether major U.S. adversaries — particularly China, Iran and Russia — have used to platform to push illegal foreign cash into Democrat campaigns. 

ActBlue officials did not return The Federalist’s request for comment. 

Closing ‘Vulnerable Loopholes’ 

Concerns about just what has been happening behind the multi-billion dollar fundraising machine have been growing for years. In late October 2023, Steil sent a letter demanding ActBlue answer questions about its practices. ActBlue acknowledged it was accepting political contributions without card verification value (CVV) codes. 

On Sept. 6, 2024, Steil  introduced the Secure Handling of Internet Electronic Donations (SHIELD) Act, prohibiting committees from accepting online contributions without a CVV and billing address tied to the card. It also would ban accepting online contributions from prepaid cards. On the “smurfing” front, the legislation urges the Federal Election Commission to bar individuals from “aiding or abetting a person making a contribution in the name of another person.” 

The bill passed the Administration committee five days later by a voice-vote, just a couple of days after ActBlue reportedly updated its policies on donations via prepaid and gift cards. The bill has moved little since. 

“We must keep working to ensure that no foreign funds were illegally funneled into U.S. political campaigns during this election cycle. It is also critical that we enact lasting reforms to prevent illicit contributions in future election cycles,” Steil said in the statement. “Advancing legislation like the SHIELD Act will permanently close these vulnerable loopholes and safeguard the integrity of our campaign finance system.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.