Congress probes allegations of ActBlue money laundering and 2020 election interference by CCP
The Democrat online fundraising platform ActBlue has been under investigation by the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration Committees.
For good reason, the Democrat online fundraising platform ActBlue has been under investigation by the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration Committees. You probably saw James O’Keefe’s videos of “citizen journalists” visiting the homes of older, modest-income people whose names had apparently been used, unbeknownst to them, to provide fake identities for “dark” Democrat donations that were being laundered a little at a time.
But according to Just The News, top current and former officials for ActBlue who had initially agreed to testify voluntarily for transcribed interviews before these committees pulled back earlier this month. The reason for their sudden hesitancy? Well, it appears to be because President Trump signed an order instructing the attorney general, in consultation with the treasury secretary, to investigate “Unlawful ‘Straw Donor’ and Foreign Contributions in American Elections,” and to report back to the White House in 180 days.
Trump doesn’t even mention ActBlue until quite far down in the order. Still, they probably recognized themselves right away, because it notes that “press reports and investigations by congressional committees have generated extremely troubling evidence that online fundraising platforms have been willing participants in schemes to launder excessive and prohibited contributions to political candidates and committees.”
Among the various concerns included in the order is the one that “malign actors are seeking to avoid Federal source and amount limitations on political contributions by breaking down large contributions from one source into many smaller contributions, nominally attributed to numerous other individuals, potentially without the consent or even knowledge of the putative contributors.”
Uh-oh.
Then the order gets specific about who is being targeted, saying that “there is evidence to suggest that foreign nationals are seeking to misuse online fundraising platforms to improperly influence American elections. A recent House of Representatives investigation revealed that a platform named ActBlue had in recent years detected at least 22 ‘significant fraud campaigns,’ nearly half of which had a foreign nexus.”
Gosh, why wouldn’t ActBlue officials be eager to testify about all this?
The chairmen of these three House committees wrote letters in May to the prospective witnesses, outlining the allegations against ActBlue, saying, “Fraudulent political donations corrupt American elections [and] could amount to interstate criminal conduct.” The letters even helpfully pointed out the flip-flops these witnesses have had in previous testimony. Uh-oh again.
Here’s the basic letter. Obviously, the committees have gotten serious.
Witnesses were informed of a May 29 deadline to schedule an interview or risk being subpoenaed. That deadline passed weeks ago, and if the subpoenas haven’t gone out yet, they soon will. Personally, we like President Trump’s approach to deadlines, such as the one he gave Iran. He gave them 60 days, and when they hadn’t complied by Day 61, well…….
Just The News has some must-read details on ActBlue’s activities regarding foreign donors. To cite one example, internal communications already reviewed by the committees show that during the 2024 election cycle, ActBlue issued new standards encouraging staff to “look for reasons to accept contributions.”
In more election interference news, FBI Director Kash Patel has turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee, at Chairman Chuck Grassley’s request, a newly-declassified intel report from August 2020 raising suspicions that China had a scheme to mass-produce U.S. drivers licenses to hijack the election with fake mail-in ballots. One guess as for whom these ballots would be marked, and, hint, it wasn’t Trump.
According to Just The News, the reports “weren’t corroborated or fully investigated and instead were recalled from intelligence agencies at about the time that then-FBI Director Chris Wray testified there were no known plots of foreign interference ahead of the 2020 election…” Curious.
Among the “alarming allegations” (Patel’s words) were “plans from the CCP to manufacture fake drivers licenses and ship them into the United States for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail-in ballots --- allegations which, while substantiated, were abruptly recalled and never revealed to the public.”
Until now.
Oh, and around the time this intelligence came in from the FBI’s confidential human source, U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted around 20,000 fake drivers licenses. Coincidence?
Not only does the CCP try to influence our elections, but according to national-security watchdog group State Armor, they appear to be working with non-profits, particularly one called Energy Foundation China, that coordinate with U.S. climate groups to influence American climate policy in ways that undermine national security and “advance the interests of the CCP.”
By pushing alternative technologies as opposed to fossil fuels, this group, State Armor explains, works to create economic and geopolitical advantages for China by undermining U.S. energy dominance and leaving us dependent on Chinese supply chains.
Does this surprise ANYONE? All the details about Energy Foundation China are here in this excellent, must-read report.
Now, here’s another story about sabotage, but this time from within. Remember our reports about the Global Engagement Center (GEC), the State Department’s special group that fought “disinformation,” funding outside groups that existed to starve conservative outlets (like ours) of advertiser revenue? (Yes, we were on that list, the “Global Disinformation Index,” which is why we went advertiser-free and depend on your subscriptions to cover the news as we do.) Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared in April that this group was no more, but Senior District Judge for San Francisco Susan Illston (a Bill Clinton appointee) has blocked the Trump administration from dismantling it.
As reported by The Federalist (which, including Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway and CEO Sean Davis, also was on the list), “The argument continues over whether the President has the authority to reorganize the federal workplace and trim excess employees or if only unelected federal judges have that authority for the entire nation.”
“If the State Department has any question about whether the planned actions fall within the scope of the Court’s injunction,” she wrote, “the Court ORDERS [emphasis hers] the Department to first raise those questions with the Court before taking action.” Well, it looks as though Judge Illston runs the State Department, or thinks she does. Honestly, we’ve tried hard not to use the words “God complex” when talking about these judges, but they might apply here.
Here’s another take, from the Independent Sentinel. They report that Judge Illston has blocked “about 20 federal agencies” (!) from carrying out Trump’s plans to downsize and restructure them.
https://www.independentsentinel.com/clinton-judge-says-state-dept-cant-overhaul-layoff-staff/
RECOMMENDED READING: Don’t miss this analysis from RealClear Investigations about the evidence concerning judge- and venue-shopping.
(Note: we anticipate a big update on judiciary overreach on Wednesday. Stay tuned.)
RELATED STORY: Finally, speaking of James O’Keefe undercover videos, there’s a new one featuring CNN stage manager Pablo Parada on a “date” with an undercover journalist, talking openly about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. “Yeah, everybody knew,” he said, that Biden’s condition was in severe decline. And, yes, “everybody” would include his CNN colleague Jake Tapper, who as you know just released a book called ORIGINAL SIN about how he was deceived about this and didn’t know until...afterwards.
The good-natured Parada told his date he’d met Biden twice, once when he was Vice President and again when he was running for President. In answer to her question, he said Biden was “sharper, for sure” the first time, implying the decline had already started by the time Biden was campaigning. Another implication from his story: that CNN hosts who later called Biden “sharp as a tack” were lying.
It’s a wide-ranging conversation and quite an entertaining presentation by O’Keefe, as you’ll see at the link, but the biggest point for us remains Parada’s assertion that everybody in the media knew Biden had a problem. Where was THAT story, CNN?