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Chairman Steil's full opening statement as prepared for delivery:
Thank you, Ranking Member Morelle, members of the committee, and our witness, for participating in today’s hearing.
Let me also thank Chairman Jordan and Chairman Comer for joining us today and for their partnership in this investigation.
We believe in a principle that only Americans should decide American elections.
ActBlue has violated that principle.
Ms. Wallace-Jones is here today because there is significant concern that ActBlue may have allowed foreign donations on their platform, lied to Congress, and withheld responsive documents from a Congressional subpoena.
All three of those actions are illegal.
In 2023, I opened an investigation into ActBlue following reports that foreign actors were exploiting the platform to funnel money to American political campaigns.
As a part of that investigation, I sent this letter to ActBlue asking basic questions about its fraud prevention practices.
In response, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones wrote to me in this letter, claiming that ActBlue had a "robust" approach to rooting out potential foreign contributions.
However, according to the New York Times, ActBlue’s outside counsel reviewed Ms. Wallace-Jones’s response and found that it posed “a substantial risk for ActBlue.”
Specifically, the concern was that Ms. Wallace-Jones’s letter may have been “false or misleading.”
In her letter, Ms. Wallace-Jones identified three steps ActBlue takes to prevent foreign donations:
One: Donors using a foreign address must provide U.S. passport information.
Two: “If a contribution appears to be from a foreign address, ActBlue contacts the donor to request U.S. passport information.”
And three: “The contribution is refunded if [ActBlue is] unable to contact the donor.”
The New York Times reported that ActBlue’s outside counsel determined those three steps are not always followed.
In fact, outside counsel warned that passport information was never requested for transactions made through third-party apps like PayPal and Venmo.
Outside counsel also warned ActBlue that “some of the funds received were impermissible contributions from foreign nationals.”
This Committee issued subpoenas for documents related to fraudulent and foreign donations and alleged misconduct by ActBlue staff.
The documents provided by ActBlue revealed alarming directives from its leadership to lower fraud prevention standards.
In ActBlue meeting notes turned over to this Committee, staff were instructed: “Remember that we want to look for reasons to accept contributions...Do not reject contributions for a single suspicious characteristic. Look for the forest and not the trees.”
According to those same notes, ActBlue staff was told that this guidance was “a bit antithetical” to prior feedback about contributions deemed “highly suspicious.”
Further, an ActBlue memo titled Fraud Prevention 101 for New Associates in the Workflow advises that “if an otherwise legitimate donor uses a fake name, we would want to accept their donation.”
We have additional evidence of ActBlue detecting “at least 22 significant fraud campaigns.”
9 of those fraud campaigns “had a foreign nexus.”
After receiving this information, we deposed and interviewed five former ActBlue employees.
When deposed, ActBlue employees refused to answer a single question.
Instead, they invoked the Fifth Amendment 146 times.
We gave ActBlue employees an opportunity to answer our questions, but they refused.
But now, Ms. Wallace-Jones, you have a real opportunity to explain how this occurred.
Ms. Wallace-Jones originally agreed to appear voluntarily before us this morning.
But late Monday afternoon, her lawyers requested a subpoena in order for her to appear.
A subpoena was provided.
Ms. Wallace-Jones is now before us.
I look forward to your answers to our questions.
Congress – and the American people – deserve the truth.
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