ActBlue, the largest fundraising platform for the Democratic Party, has made a rather convenient update to its system.
Just days after House GOP investigators accused the organization of accepting foreign donations, ActBlue announced that it will be enacting a new “passport verification program” in line with its “ongoing investment in the security of contributions processed from donors located abroad.”
While the group has long been accused of not doing enough to verify potentially illegitimate donors, they say they paused donations from Americans living abroad in 2025.
“ActBlue has consistently denied wrongdoing in responses to Fox News Digital and communications to House investigators. Ten top figures within the company, including executives and founders, have pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions in both public and private sitdowns with GOP-led committees,” Fox News reported. “But a new report released earlier this month, first reported by Fox News Digital, appears to show employees green-lighting donations despite some questions about where they came from.”
The report indicates that one of the most significant concerns among GOP investigators was the passport number verification, which “only required the correct number of characters for a U.S. passport number rather than a valid code for a donation to be accepted.”
In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital on Monday, the organization claims the new program “adds passport-based identity verification as a further enhancement to ActBlue’s multi-layered approach to fraud and foreign-contribution prevention.”
“In doing so, it also enables U.S. citizens located abroad—who have been unable to contribute on the ActBlue platform since 2025—to resume participating in the political process by supporting the candidates and causes of their choice. The new program uses the best available technology to allow eligible donors located abroad to verify their identity using a valid U.S. passport. It reflects substantial engineering investments by ActBlue to ensure that, as it resumes processing contributions from foreign addresses, its compliance systems can withstand scrutiny,” it added.
While this is definitely a step in the right direction, Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., says it’s more like a confession.
“This decision to implement a NEW passport verification program only confirms what we’ve been saying: ActBlue failed to verify the citizenship of individuals who made donations from abroad. That’s unacceptable. This new policy should have been in place on day one. Right now, far too many questions remain unanswered, including what percentage of the billions of dollars that have flowed through ActBlue came from illegal foreign sources. Chairman Jordan, Chairman Comer, and I will continue to seek answers for the American people,” he said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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