Donald Trump Asks DOJ To Do Him Little Favor, 'Investigate' ActBlue Ahead Of Midterms
Oh, hey, he's also making a bundle in a crypto scheme, no relation.
Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to open an investigation of ActBlue, the fundraising platform that processes most small-dollar donations for Democratic candidates, because making it harder for the political opposition to operate is just a basic part of the authoritarian toolkit, duh. The order itself, if you’re interested in knowing the pretext for the DOJ “investigation,” claims that congressional Republicans found evidence of possibly hinky donations to ActBlue that are very criminal, you bet! An ActBlue spokesperson called Trump’s attempt to sic the power of the government on the platform a “brazen attack on democracy in America,” and said ActBlue intends to challenge Trump’s order in court.
Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into Republican claims that ActBlue took insufficient precautions to prevent “straw donations” — donations in someone else’s name, to avoid individual donation limits — and maybe even illegal donations from foreign parties, made using gift cards to hide their origin. The order and an accompanying “fact sheet” offered no solid evidence of anything improper, but that’s not the point anyway: The goal is to smear the fundraising platform and maybe even make up charges that could limit Democrats’ fundraising going into the 2026 midterms. Trump’s memo asks Bondi to prepare a report on her findings in 180 days, just in time for the midterm races to start going into full gear.
Say, speaking of “Pam Bondi” and “fundraising,” do you all remember that time back in 2013 when Pam Bondi was running for reelection as Florida AG, and her campaign happened to get an illegal $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation, and then somehow Bondi happened to decide to close an investigation into Trump’s scammy “university” because she claimed there was “no evidence”? Yes, we are very mean to drag up old history like that just because our ADHD brain makes silly connections between words.
As Politico points out, Americans’ disgust with Trump has translated into record donations to ActBlue, because giving money is one very concrete way we can resist That Man and his fascist cronies, along with getting into the streets and saying HELL NO.
ActBlue raised $400 million in the first three months of 2025 alone, the biggest fundraising total in the first quarter of a non-presidential or midterm election year ever, the organization said. […]
“There are alternatives, yes, but there’s no platform that has the integration and the reach of ActBlue that you could replace tomorrow,” said Tim Lim, a Democratic digital consultant.
The congressional GOP fishing expedition hasn’t turned up any actual evidence of wrongdoing, and ActBlue has complied with their requests for data. But that didn’t stop the White House from alleging that the “investigators” saw something nasty in the Blue-shed. In his memo to Bondi, Trump says that ActBlue’s own success in blocking attempted fraudulent donations actually suggests a lot of fraud was going on, although of course he didn’t frame it that way. The memo said that ActBlue
detected at least 22 “significant fraud campaigns”, nearly half of which had a foreign nexus. During a 30-day window during the 2024 campaign, the platform detected 237 donations from foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards, indicating that this activity remains a pressing concern.
See what he did there? ActBlue detected potentially hinky donations and didn’t process them, so shame on ActBlue. It’s all supposition and speculation about what might happen if ActBlue were to not actually monitor where possibly suspicious donations come from.
Even if Bondi’s politically motivated investigation doesn’t result in any criminal charges, Republicans are already hoping they can just yell “fraud” a lot and scare away donors, or at least go on Fox News and yell “fraud” more. After all, when Trump tried to blackmail Ukraine into “investigating” Joe Biden years ago, he didn’t care whether it turned up any results; just the accusation would be plenty for him and Republicans to run with.
But there’s little reason to think a federal probe of ActBlue would stop at records requests or trying to damage the platform’s reputation; federal law enforcement tools can be applied to directly fuck with Democrats’ ability to raise campaign funds. Several Democrats fear that the administration would find a pretext to freeze ActBlue’s bank accounts to stop the “frauding.”
Kelly Dietrich, CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, which helps get Democratic candidates ready to run for office, warned that “Everything from payroll to health insurance could be affected by a bank freeze, which is certainly a looming concern — everyone will get the money out eventually, but if you lose a week or even three or four days to a freeze, that would really affect how campaigns function.”
The memo to Bondi doesn’t call for such a freeze, but we’ve already seen that the administration is happy to try freezing bank accounts to prevent groups it doesn’t like from accessing funds, even if there’s no legal justification for it.
DOJ Prosecutor Won't Use Project Veritas Fever Dream Sequences To Open Fake Invesigations, Resigns
Also loads of fun is the fact that even as Trump is trying to sic the Justice Department on ActBlue, he’s raking in money from a scheme to boost sales of his fake cryptocurrency with an exciting contest promising a special exclusive dinner with Trump for the top 220 investors who pump money into the grifty “$TRUMP meme coin.” Wednesday’s announcement of the chance to buy access to the president of the United States set off a feeding trading frenzy in crypto markets, which was great for the two Trump-owned companies that run the TRUMPcoin market. The contest boosted the price of the coin by some 60 percent, and the companies earn money every time the price goes up. More importantly, those companies get a tiny percentage of every single transaction, so the high trading volume meant that a lot of money will go straight to Trump’s crypto companies. In the 24 hours following the announcement, those transaction fees came to around $1.6 million, most of it being collected by those two companies.
Oh, and unlike campaign contributions like those processed by ActBlue, there’s no legal prohibition on foreign persons or entities pouring money into the Trumpcoins to win face time with Trump, although if foreign purchases were proven, that would run afoul of the Constitution’s ban on emoluments, if anyone were to actually prosecute it.
For folks whose eyes go blank at the mention of the word “crypto” — that is, most normal healthy humans — here’s MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle to explain what an amazing scam this is.
The money, once again, doesn’t go to any Trump political campaign, but directly to Great Leader’s companies. Maybe somebody should investigate that.
[NBC News / White House memorandum / WaPo (gift link) / Wired]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d prefer a one-time donation, here’s your button. No crypto allowed!
George Santos sentenced to seven years in the pokey.
“Fuck you. See you in court” is the best response.