Good day all. One of the things you can bet on in an election is the huge amounts of money being spent. Basically, you will see candidates trying to buy elections. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. While Democrats love to complain about all the money in politics, they are masters are getting it.
I’m not going into all the laws regarding campaign spending, donations, political action committees, etc. It really is to complicated for this teensy little blog. What I am going to write about is one particular organization that may be laundering money for the Democrat Party. That organization is called ActBlue and is being investigated by several state Attorneys General. Here are the details from PJ Media:
Several states across the country have launched simultaneous investigations into the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue for suspected money laundering.
Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey all announced on August 1 that their offices were investigating suspicious donations made to ActBlue.
This is not the first time allegations of criminal behavior have been made against the platform.
I first heard of ActBlue back in 2022 and how they allegedly do things. People tracking political money noted that ActBlue was pulling in thousands of dollars, sometimes 10’s of thousand from people who flat out don’t have that kind of money. Several of these people were startled when told they had donated thousands of dollars to ActBlue and the Democrats.
Last July, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) demanded that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) investigate some of the hundreds of thousands of suspicious small donations made through ActBlue since 2016.
The FEC doesn’t appear to be actually looking into the fundraising activities of ActBlue. This is why the States are now looking into the organization.
Miyeres sent a demand letter to ActBlue over accusations of campaign money laundering that could threaten to interfere with the integrity of the 2024 November elections.
“My office has become aware of multiple serious allegations that ActBlue… [has] engaged in fraudulent, deceptive, and/or otherwise illegal activities in the Commonwealth of Virginia and/or have aided and abetted others in doing so,” wrote Miyeres. “This includes hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions through individual donors in the Commonwealth in volumes that are facially implausible and appear suspicious.”
What appears to have attracted the attention of the state’s attorneys general were those odd donations I mentioned above.
Several individual donors residing in the state suspiciously made thousands of dollars in multiple campaign contributions per day over the past several years, including senior citizens who listed their occupations as “not employed” or “retired,”
That alone should send up red flags, especially with the Internal Revenue Service. If a retired person on a fixed income is able to donate $5000, they would like to know where the money came from. With other donations, there appears to be an issue with the listed address.
Others had addresses that were considered suspect.
“Taken together, these circumstances appear to indicate that contributions via ActBlue are being made from fictional donors or dummy accounts, or that information reported by or through ActBlue may be fraudulent,” he added.
“The citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia deserve to know that nonprofit and political entities are financed in a legal manner and that entities operating in Virginia are legitimately and legally raising funds,” Miyares continued.
Considering the Democrats past history, I would not be at all surprised that something not just fishy, but probably illegal is going on. After all, in the minds of Progressives, Liberals and Democrats, (Not that there is any difference between the groups these days), believe in the philosophy, “The laws apply to thee, just not to me.”
Due to the seriousness of these allegations, the Virginia AG’s office demanded a “substantive response” from ActBlue executives by August 12 and that the organization provide details on the “processes and procedures for verifying the legitimacy and accuracy of donor and contribution information,” as well as those used in “verifying information reported in regulatory bodies.”
I wonder if ActBlue will comply, ignore the request or just flat out refuse? I’m not certain, but I believe that documents sent to federal regulatory agencies, such as the FEC, or generally public records. If this was just Virginia, I suspect they would tell the state to go pound sand. However, Virginia isn’t alone.
Meanwhile, the Missouri attorney general tweeted, “My team is looking into the disturbing allegations surrounding ActBlue. More to come.”
The Wyoming Secretary of State’s office said it is now investigating ActBlue Wyoming, a PAC registered with the state.
“ActBlue faces accusations of stealing individuals’ identities to conceal illegal donations, including contributions from foreign actors,” said Gray in a tweet.
ID theft is being taken a lot more seriously these days then in the past. If ActBlue has been stealing identities to launder money, even if the actual victims suffered no financial loss, then they are in serious trouble.
He accused the organization of filing false statements in violation of the Wyoming Election Code and warned that appropriate steps would be taken to prosecute authorities.
“The widespread allegations against ActBlue are deeply troubling, and we must ensure that political action committees are following the Wyoming Election Code,” said Gray. “Claiming that a person donated to a PAC if that person never donated to that PAC would be a felony under Wyoming law. I am very concerned and remain committed to a thorough review of contributions to ensure compliance with Wyoming law.”
James O’Keefe also spotted the issue a year ago and started digging into it.
James O’Keefe has reported on the massive network of illegal donation-harvesting operations run by the Democrats. In one of his investigations, O’Keefe was able to use public FEC data to track down some of the small donors who gave the suspect donations to Act Blue.
Many of those people told O’Keefe they could not explain the discrepancies between their actual donations and the amounts that they reportedly made on the FEC reports.
In this case, it looks like the GOP counterpart to the Democrats ActBlue. I have a vague memory of this. I think that one of the problems was the credit card verification system. They weren’t using it. That is the 3-5 digit code on the back of a credit card. When you make an online purchase, they ask for that verification code.
As I recall, there is a switch on the system that has to be set to ask for the verification with the third party companies that handle these transactions. (Very few sites do this directly. It’s both complicated and expensive to set up) It isn’t required to be active as I recall. There are some valid reasons not to have the verification system activated, however processing political donations pretty much does require it.
ActBlue has long been accused of using the profiles of regular individual donors to fraudulently launder millions in donations nationwide by splitting up massive contributions into a larger group of smaller donations to illegally fund Democrat political campaigns.
This method would also allow ActBlue to hide the true identities of the big donors, individuals, foreign entities, or organizations that made the original donations.
This is a major issue, especially with regards to foreign donations. Those are flat out illegal. If I recall correctly, there was an issue with one of Obama’s presidential campaigns. The verification switch on the donations page was not set so there was no real way to confirm that the credit cards used belonged to the actual owner or where they were located. (This is all extremely complicated of course and I have no doubt that I’ve made a few mistakes in my explanations. Please feel free to point them out with the correct information in the comments)
One of the things that would be very interesting to see would be a full blown RICO investigation into the Democrat Party and the Democrat National Committee. Watching a train of U.S. Marshal’s and IRS auditors going in and out of the DNC headquarters would be fun to watch. Of course, it won’t happen. However, if the states can prove some sort of criminal conspiracy with ActBlue and some of the big Democrat donors?
Thatisall
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