New York Times coming in hot about Act Blue Fraud

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Act Blue reportedly LIED to Congress about vetting foreign donations.

Per the New York Times:

Foreign donors “who paid through third-party apps like Apple Pay, PayPal or Venmo were not asked for passport information.”

As the NYT notes:

“Federal election law prohibits foreign citizens or people who are not permanent residents from donating directly to federal candidates or political action committees. Lying to or obstructing Congress is a crime.”

quote:

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The Democratic fund-raising group is facing investigations from the Justice Department and congressional Republicans ahead of the midterm
elections. In early 2025, a law firm working for ActBlue, the Democratic fund-raising behemoth, delivered the
organization a startling warning. The firm concluded that ActBlue's chief executive had given a potentially misleading response to congressional Republican investigators in a 2023 letter explaining how the organization vetted donations to ensure that they were not illegally
coming from foreign citizens. The letter from the chief executive, Regina
Wallace-Jones, said ActBlue carried out "multilayered" screenings of contributions that helped "root out" those from overseas. In fact, the law firm found, some of the steps she had
described were not always followed. "This presents a substantial risk for ActBlue," the law firm, Covington & Burling, wrote in one of two memos expressing legal concerns. One memo raised the specter of a criminal investigation if prosecutors believed that ActBlue had tried to conceal facts about its efforts to prevent foreign
contributions.

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quote:

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Federal election law prohibits foreign citizens or people who are not permanent residents from donating directly to federal candidates or political action committees. Lying to or obstructing
Congress is a crime. The memos instigated a meltdown at the highest levels of ActBlue, one of the Democratic Party's
most vital financial organs. A series of top officials resigned in quick succession. The New York Times revealed those departures last year, but a key cause of the tumult at ActBlue - the legal warnings about potentially misleading Congress over vetting foreign donations - is being reported here for the
first time. ActBlue is now all but declaring war on its own past lawyers, an extraordinary turn of events at a moment when President Trump has already ordered a Justice Department investigation into the organization. Democrats are nervous that any additional upheaval at ActBlue could destabilize the party's critical fund-raising apparatus ahead
of the midterm elections.

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