ActBlue’s staff ‘was aware that its system was not as robust as necessary,’ legal memo said
Attorneys for ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising behemoth that has fueled the left’s political machinery by processing more than $7 billion in small-dollar contributions in the past five years, issued a dire warning to the organization’s leadership in early 2025: They may have lied to Congress about their efforts to reject illegal political donations from foreign citizens.
ActBlue chief executive Regina Wallace-Jones told congressional investigators in a 2023 letter that ActBlue had instituted “multilayered” checks to ensure the platform only accepted overseas donations from American citizens. Measures included requiring donors to supply U.S. passport numbers before processing donations from international addresses, according to the letter.
That wasn’t entirely accurate, attorneys for the fundraising platform at the D.C.-based law firm Covington and Burling warned the company’s senior leadership in a pair of 2025 memos. They noted that ActBlue did not verify passport information from donors who paid through third-party apps such as Apple Pay or Venmo, the New York Times reported.
Covington warned ActBlue in its memos that the oversights present “substantial risk” to the fundraising platform, which facilitates online contributions for the vast majority of left-of-center politicians, PACs, and nonprofits across the country. Later, in a video conference call with ActBlue’s leadership, Covington also warned Wallace-Jones that she was at risk of legal liability over her 2023 letter to Congress and needed to retain a personal attorney.
“It can be alleged that ActBlue accepted and/or facilitated the acceptance of foreign-national contributions into American elections,” one of the Covington memos read, according to the Times. “In addition, because ActBlue’s staff was aware that its system was not as robust as necessary, it could be alleged that these violations were ‘knowing and willful,’ a standard that both increases the penalties the F.E.C. might seek and gives the Justice Department jurisdiction for a potential criminal investigation.”
Covington’s memos to ActBlue come to light as the organization faces intense scrutiny from the Justice Department following an April 2025 order from President Donald Trump directing an investigation into allegations the platform had been facilitating political contributions by foreign nationals.
ActBlue chairwoman Kimberly Peeler-Allen in an interview with the Times downplayed the memos, saying that “less than 1 percent” of contributions processed through the platform during the 2024 election cycle had “signs” of coming from foreign countries.
One percent of ActBlue’s fundraising haul during the 2024 cycle clocks in at $38 million, a seismic figure that could have a measurable impact on major elections during the cycle. The ActBlue platform processed $3.8 billion in political contributions to Democratic politicians and groups during the 2024 election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show.
Covington’s warnings appear to have spooked wide swaths of ActBlue’s senior leadership, prompting several senior officials to resign from the organization within weeks in early 2025. That includes ActBlue’s former in-house attorney Aaron Ting, who said he resigned because of the platform’s representations to Congress in its 2023 letter.
“I am concerned that leadership is not fully committed to transparently addressing with the Board the seriousness of our most pressing concerns: the legal compliance of ActBlue’s past practices for screening political donations from abroad and its past representations to Congress regarding foreign donations and related matters,” Ting wrote in his resignation letter, the Times reported.
ActBlue’s remaining leaders say Covington “insufficiently reviewed the 2023 letter to Congress,” according to the New York Times, which reported that Covington “approved the letter.” The fundraising platform parted ways with Covington in the weeks after the law firm issued its memos.
Covington has landed its clients in hot water before, most notably through former attorney general Eric Holder’s exorbitantly priced corporate diversity audits.
Holder, who serves as senior counsel at Covington, has charged as much as $2,295 an hour to conduct “racial equity audits” for corporations such as Starbucks. A 2021 report from Holder urged the coffee giant to tie executive pay to diversity targets, set spending goals for “diverse suppliers,” and launch a mentorship program for “BIPOC” employees. Starbucks was sued a year later for violating non-discrimination laws.
ActBlue denied making false statements to Congress in a statement posted to its website Thursday that called the reporting from the Times a distraction “by those who want to rewrite our history or undermine our mission.” A Covington spokesman, David Schaefer, told the Times that the firm has “complete confidence in the legal advice our lawyers provided to ActBlue.”
Editor’s Note: The Free Beacon is a Covington & Burling client. But the firm, which once represented the Free Beacon in matters of defamation and employment, no longer does so after Covington partner Lindsay Burke and the firm’s Of Counsel, Jason Criss, cited a conflict of interest given their discomfort with the Free Beacon‘s coverage of Holder’s practice. The Free Beacon has not had Covington conduct a racial equity audit.
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