EXCLUSIVE — A Republican group investigating Democratic fundraising operations said it has discovered thousands of instances of potential donor fraud and has turned over its findings to GOP prosecutors.
The Fair Election Fund, a national election integrity watchdog group that former House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins helped launch in May, is alleging it has found more than 60,000 potential discrepancies in donations made to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris‘s campaign through ActBlue, a nonprofit organization that provides Democrats with a fundraising platform.
During its investigation, conducted from late July to early August, the Fair Election Fund identified 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July Federal Election Commission report but did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.
“Fighting for fair elections means a lot more than just ensuring the American people can have confidence in the voting process, and that’s why the Fair Election Fund is expanding to this new frontier of election integrity,” Collins, a former Georgia congressman, told the Washington Examiner. “If the Democrat money machine is secretly stealing the identities of unsuspecting Americans in order to launder money to Kamala Harris, then it will be the biggest scandal in modern presidential history and the perpetrators will be held accountable.”
“We must get to the bottom of these irregularities to give the public peace of mind that the fundraising landscape in this election is free from fraud and we will not rest until we do,” he said.
ActBlue did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. The Washington Examiner has also reached out to the Harris campaign.
The Fair Election Fund, which spent $250,000 on these initial findings, will continue vetting Biden-Harris donors in the coming weeks but has already shared information regarding verified leads to Republican attorneys general for their own investigations, including Steve Marshall, the attorney general of Alabama.
“We are grateful to Fair Election Fund for sharing these concerning findings with us, as we explore whether any of our constituents have been defrauded by ActBlue,” Marshall told the Washington Examiner. “Any donor fraud whatsoever compromises the fairness of our elections and cannot be tolerated. Our republic depends upon Americans trusting the electoral process and we will aggressively pursue any lead that threatens to undermine public confidence.”
Attorneys General Mike Hilgers of Nebraska, Kris Kobach of Kansas, Jason Miyares of Virginia, and Ken Paxton of Texas have been contacted by the Fair Election Fund as well.
“My office takes election integrity very seriously,” Paxton told the Washington Examiner. “We are actively monitoring various allegations of fraud across many related issues, and we will evaluate this information quickly with every effort to uphold the law.”
Paxton’s own investigation into ActBlue resulted in the organization this month starting to require a CVV code for credit card donations.
New: Texas’s Ongoing Investigation Into ActBlue Yields Cooperation On Donor Credit Card Identification
In December 2023, we opened an investigation into the major fundraising platform ActBlue to determine whether their operations are compliant with all applicable laws.… https://t.co/PaxCeUKD2v
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) August 8, 2024
Miyares similarly sent a letter to ActBlue this month regarding what he described as “hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions through individual donors in the Commonwealth in volumes that are facially implausible and appear suspicious.”
“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,” Miyares wrote. “Alternatively, these circumstances may indicate that contributions via ActBlue are being made without the reported donors’ consent or awareness. Accordingly, these contributions and ActBlue’s facilitation thereof may violate multiple provisions of Virginia charitable and criminal law.”
Some of the responses the Fair Election Fund received when it contacted Biden-Harris donors during its investigation included:
- “I didn’t know how to send a donation.”
- “I don’t give money out for any political reason.”
- “I don’t have money to donate to any campaign.”
- “I have changed credit cards though because of fraudulent charges. “
- “I have never and will never donate.”
- “Never authorized anything for anyone’s campaign.”
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As part of an expanded investigation, the Fair Election Fund plans to also probe why ActBlue did not have certain security protocols and donor verification processes until recently, including not having the CVV code requirement for credit card contributions.
The Fair Election Fund has promised to spend more than $5 million in 2024 to counter election fraud, including through its whistleblower protection fund and campaigns against election officials such as one in North Carolina against three Democrats on the state’s elections board who declined to certify ballot access for independent candidate Cornel West’s presidential campaign.
