Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway is investigating ActBlue over claims the Democratic fundraising platform accepted fraudulent foreign contributions that may have reached state campaigns.
Republican Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office has launched a formal probe into ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s largest online fundraising platform, over allegations it took in fraudulent and potentially illegal foreign political contributions.
Her office issued civil investigative demands seeking records on ActBlue’s donation-processing systems and fraud-prevention practices. The company must turn over the materials by Oct. 8. The inquiry follows information referred by the House Administration Committee and will examine whether tainted money reached Missouri campaigns, committees, or political offices.
The Washington Examiner reported the attorney general’s office is zeroing in on how ActBlue screened donors and whether its controls left the door open to illegal cash.
Just The News reported that Hanaway opened the state investigation after the House Administration Committee forwarded information on ActBlue’s conduct. The probe focuses on weak donation verification and the use of prepaid and gift cards that can mask a donor’s true identity and location.
Hanaway framed the stakes in plain terms.
Catherine Hanaway said:
"When political fundraising is compromised, public trust and the foundations of our democracy are put at risk. Missourians deserve a political system built on honesty and confidence that campaigns are not being financed through unlawful foreign sources."
Federal law already bars foreign nationals from funding U.S. elections. State attorneys general can still dig into whether platforms let unlawful money flow to candidates and committees inside their borders. That is the lane Hanaway is using now.
Internal records described by House investigators show ActBlue did not hold a steady line on fraud controls. The New York Post reported that the platform made its donation standards more lenient twice in 2024, once in April and again in September.
Those changes, according to the documents, meant the system missed 14 to 28 additional fraudulent contributions per month. Up to 6.4% of donations that should have been rejected instead got through. Between September and October 2024 alone, at least 237 donations arrived from foreign IP addresses that used prepaid U.S. debit or gift cards. The platform later moved to ban that practice.
From September 2022 through November 2024, ActBlue logged about 1,900 fraudulent transactions. The flagged activity included traffic tied to Brazil, Colombia, India, Iraq, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia. The platform blocked under 0.1% of the transactions it had already flagged as suspicious.
House Oversight and Administration Committees said in an interim report:
"ActBlue’s internal documents and communications paint a damning picture: despite repeated instances of fraudulent donations to Democrat campaigns and causes from domestic and foreign sources, ActBlue is not demonstrating a serious effort to deter fraud on its platform."
ActBlue’s own internal communications captured the risk in blunt language. Staff noted that if someone coordinated a large attack in which each individual donation stayed below the fraud-review threshold, the money would clear.
Hanaway’s civil investigative demands are not a criminal indictment. They are a formal order to produce documents and information so the attorney general’s office can test the allegations against Missouri law, including potential Merchandising Practices Act violations.
The demands target the practical guts of the operation: how ActBlue processed donations, how it tried to stop fraud, and whether those systems actually worked when foreign IP addresses and prepaid cards showed up. ActBlue now has a hard deadline, Oct. 8, to respond.
If the records show foreign or fraudulent money reached Missouri campaigns or committees, the state will have a paper trail to act on. If the controls were as loose as the House materials suggest, the platform will have to explain why it dialed back scrutiny in a presidential election year.
The pattern described in the internal documents is straightforward. Overseas IP addresses. Prepaid and gift cards issued in the United States. Small-dollar gifts that can slip under automated review. And policy changes that made the net wider, not tighter, at the height of the 2024 cycle.
Campaign finance rules exist so voters know who is paying for the speech they hear. When a fundraising platform relaxes the checks that keep foreign money out, it is not a paperwork dispute. It is a direct hit on the integrity of the system Missourians are asked to trust every Election Day.
Hanaway’s office is now testing whether that failure touched Missouri races. The civil demands put ActBlue on the clock. The House referral gave the state a roadmap. The internal numbers on foreign IPs and prepaid cards give the public a reason to watch the response closely.
Voters should not have to guess whether overseas cash and gift cards helped bankroll the ads in their own state. Transparency is the minimum. Accountability is overdue.
