A joint report from the House Judiciary Committee, the Committee on House Administration, and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee alleges that ActBlue’s director of information technology deleted a whistleblower’s request within five seconds. The report, released Wednesday, includes Slack screenshots and donation‑review logs that suggest possible retaliation and a pattern of approving contributions flagged for foreign indicators.
Alleged retaliation and deleted messages
According to the report, ActBlue legal counsel Zain Ahmad posted in an internal IT support Slack channel on February 26, 2025, after his access to email, Confluence, and other systems was revoked. Ahmad asked colleagues to restore his access and cited the company’s leave policy. Five minutes later, Hanna Bonin, ActBlue’s director of IT, deleted Ahmad’s first request. Ahmad posted additional requests, invoked the company’s anti‑retaliation and whistleblower policies, and attached three policy documents. Logs reproduced in the report show Bonin deleted six messages in total, including a message at 11:05:53 p.m. that read, “Please stop deleting my requests. You are violating the laws and policies of our company,” which was removed at 11:05:58 p.m.
Whistleblower claims and internal concerns
Committee staff described Ahmad as a whistleblower who alerted ActBlue’s board and executive leadership to alleged campaign‑finance violations and false statements to Congress. Another employee later told ActBlue’s human‑resources chief that the sequence “looked like blatant retaliation.” The report also notes that ActBlue’s passport‑check system performed only a “very basic validation” of entries, checking merely the correct number of characters rather than authenticating numbers against a government database.
Employees could enter the placeholder “ACTBLUEXX” in the passport field after obtaining a legal review, allowing contributions to proceed without a verified passport number. Review logs covering flagged transactions from October 9, 2022 through October 31, 2024 show supervisors instructing analysts to “give the donor the benefit of the doubt.” The committees highlighted approvals involving foreign IP addresses, foreign credit‑card use, mismatched billing information, and social‑media profiles used to support donor identities.
Specific foreign‑indicator cases
One donor’s information pointed to Canada while the billing address was in Missouri; a supervisor recommended accepting the contribution because the donor maintained an active Twitter account. In another case, a supervisor approved a foreign‑flagged donation after citing the donor’s LinkedIn profile. While the report states these indicators do not prove the donors were foreign nationals, the committees argue the warning signs should have triggered more rigorous verification.
ActBlue’s response
ActBlue disputes the committees’ central claims, asserting that its own review supports its donor‑screening practices. In a statement released the same day, the organization said Republicans were attempting to undermine the fundraising infrastructure used by Democratic campaigns and that “the results completely debunk the claims made against us.”
ActBlue’s accompanying white paper reported that 99.87% of nearly $990 million in 2023 political contributions came from donors with domestic addresses, and 99.99% came from donors who provided either a U.S. address or a passport number. The organization emphasized that eligible Americans living or traveling abroad—including service members, students, and diplomats—may legally contribute, and that its review focused on whether a U.S. address or passport number was collected.
Legal context and next steps
The Federal Election Commission states that federal law bars foreign nationals from contributing to federal, state, or local elections and prohibits knowingly accepting or providing substantial assistance for such contributions. The agency defines the knowledge standard as awareness of facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire about the source of funds, followed by a failure to conduct a reasonable inquiry.
The three House committees said they will continue investigating ActBlue and will use their findings to consider potential changes to federal election law. The congressional findings add to an ongoing dispute in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton sued ActBlue on April 20, 2026, alleging the platform misled Americans about its donation screening and allowed fraudulent and foreign contributions. The House report is separate from the Texas lawsuit.
Original reporting: The Dallas Express — read the source article.
