Scoop: Congress eyes ramping up pressure on ActBlue: Democrats should cut off ActBlue “until we can figure out what the hell is going on”
Democrats have raised almost $500 million on the Democratic Party’s go-to online fundraising platform ActBlue since President Joe Biden bowed out of his reelection campaign. Now, Democrats should distance themselves from the site, which has in the past faced increased scrutiny from state and federal lawmakers for hosting organizations tied to Palestinian terrorists, and for questionable accounting practices “until we can figure out what the hell is going on,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) told the Washington Reporter.
Republican attorneys general such as Virginia’s Jason Miyares have questioned the platform for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions “in volumes that are facially implausible and appear suspicious” based on his investigations.
Issa’s remarks to the Reporter are his strongest salvo yet against the Democrats’ platform, and they build on years of scrutiny he’s applied to the fundraising giant. Starting in 2023, Issa — a longtime GOP oversight hawk — began working to force the platform to oust from its site organizations like the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). According to reports in the Washington Examiner, PACBI is “linked to Palestinian terrorism and violating federal law.” Although the organization was ultimately removed from the platform, Issa wanted to discover how it was listed on the platform in the first place.
Last year, Issa wrote to the FBI and the Treasury Department demanding that the agencies investigate whether ActBlue or PACBI broke the law. “The undeniable and continued collaboration between these two entities raises serious concerns of the enabling of terror-related activity and may also constitute money laundering crimes as well as violations of international law,” he wrote to Treasury’s Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Undersecretary Brian E. Nelson and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
More than six months after Issa sent the letter, the Treasury Department and FBI responded to his concern, saying that “the FBI may not address more specifically those of your questions directed to the FBI.”
