House Republicans are summoning ActBlue attorney Ronald Machen for a closed-door interview before Oct. 9, escalating an investigation into whether the Democratic fundraising platform failed to properly screen out foreign donations.
A letter sent to Machen Monday morning by three GOP committee chairs — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Wis., Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. — argues that information Machen previously gave investigators contradicts other documents the committees have collected, particularly on how ActBlue verifies that donors are U.S. citizens.
The letter states that on Sept. 11, 2026, Machen briefed the House Administration, Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform Committees on the accuracy of statements ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously made to Congress about the platform’s donor and passport collection processes.
“Your review appears to be nothing more than an after-the-fact sugarcoating of ActBlue’s misconduct and Ms. Wallace-Jones’s misrepresentations to the House Administration Committee.”
ActBlue is the dominant fundraising platform for Democratic campaigns, used by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and the party’s leadership in both chambers. Republicans have long questioned the rigor of its donor verification systems, a criticism ActBlue says it has addressed with improvements since the GOP probe began.
A report released earlier this month, first reported by Fox News Digital, indicated ActBlue employees approved donations despite unresolved questions about their origin. Central to the GOP’s concern is the platform’s passport verification field, which the report says only checks that an entry has the correct number of characters for a U.S. passport number rather than verifying the number itself is valid.
What the letter alleges
The chairs’ letter cites a 2024 review conducted by ActBlue’s then-outside counsel, former Biden White House Counsel Dana Remus, which allegedly found “a substantial risk that some of the funds” raised for Democratic campaigns and causes through ActBlue “were impermissible contributions from foreign nationals.” That review reportedly found passport checks “did not always happen” and were “never conducted” for donations made through third-party payment platforms such as Apple Pay or PayPal.
According to the letter, Machen’s own prior comments to Congress acknowledged his “forensic” review found ActBlue processed and accepted donations bearing foreign indicators even where a passport number or other proof of eligibility was missing. Despite that, the letter says, Machen defended Wallace-Jones’s congressional testimony by arguing ActBlue’s vetting policy was “as close to 100 percent as it could be.”
The committees say documents produced to them undercut that defense, showing that when a donor lacked a U.S. passport or U.S. address, an ActBlue employee could still determine an “alternative method of verifying the [donor’s] citizenship” — including entering a placeholder such as “ACTBLUEXX” in the passport number field. That placeholder, the letter says, allowed ActBlue to accept all subsequent contributions from that donor without ever requiring an actual U.S. passport number.
The letter also faults Machen’s review for covering only 2023, arguing it therefore missed changes made during the 2024 election cycle. It states that documents produced to the committees show ActBlue relaxed its vetting practices twice in 2024 — activity the narrower review did not capture.
ActBlue’s response
ActBlue has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. In a statement to Fox News Digital, the organization dismissed the latest findings:
“There’s nothing to see here. After we released findings of a third-party forensic analysis that completely undermined a central claim that they have made against ActBlue, Republicans are refusing to move on. Instead, they are orchestrating another political stunt before rushing out of town weeks early to go campaign. This coordinated campaign against ActBlue isn’t about the facts, or legislating, it’s about Republicans’ efforts to silence organizations they believe threaten their agenda.”
A closed-door interview summons is not legally binding in the way a subpoena is. The development follows another ActBlue-linked figure previously invoking the Fifth Amendment during a closed-door House GOP session, part of a broader ongoing investigation that has also included a lawsuit ActBlue filed against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleging political retaliation.
