ActBlue hid individual donation details in "unitemized" category for most of 2025
— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) January 3, 2026
Imagine the Democrats' top fundraising juggernaut scrambling to cover its tracks as federal investigators close in. That's exactly what happened when ActBlue quietly altered its donation reporting… https://t.co/wZTCdylLnQ
Imagine the Democrats' top fundraising juggernaut scrambling to cover its tracks as federal investigators close in. That's exactly what happened when ActBlue quietly altered its donation reporting to the Federal Election Commission in 2025, routing millions of individual contributions into an unitemized black hole before a massive retroactive data dump.
ActBlue made the switch on January 1, 2025. They stopped assigning specific FEC codes to many donations. This sent them straight to an "unitemized" category. Donor names, addresses, and other key details vanished from public view. FEC records showed zero itemized contributions from ActBlue's committee between January and August 2025. But the platform boasted raising $390 million with over 12 million contributions in the second quarter alone. This blackout made it impossible to spot patterns of suspicious activity, like repeated small donations from the same people.
The timing raised eyebrows. President Donald Trump issued a memorandum on April 24, 2025, ordering the Department of Justice to probe ActBlue for possible illegal "straw donor" schemes and foreign money. Trump's directive cited federal laws banning contributions in someone else's name or from overseas actors. House committees had already flagged fraud risks. A staff report from April 2, 2025, blasted ActBlue for lax fraud prevention. It revealed the platform eased rules twice in 2024 despite knowing about foreign exploitation. The report quoted internal guides telling staff to "look for reasons to accept contributions" instead of rejecting shady ones.
Critics saw the reporting shift as a deliberate dodge. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had uncovered suspicious patterns in 2024, like actors using prepaid cards to mask identities and funnel foreign cash. He petitioned the FEC for new rules, warning that without them, "bad actors can – with trivial ease – illegally funnel foreign money into American elections, exceed political contribution limits, and more." ActBlue's move to unitemized reporting seemed tailor-made to bury such trails.
Then came the bombshell. On August 31, 2025, ActBlue flooded the FEC database with about 48 million retroactive transactions totaling roughly $678 million. This sudden itemization dump restored the details – but only after months of opacity during the height of the probe. Investigators and watchdogs cried foul. They argued this delay let potential "smurfing" – splitting big sums into tiny, hard-to-trace donations – slip under the radar. One analysis flagged $3.5 billion across 178 million transactions involving over 281,000 suspected smurfs, with 87% uncoded.
ActBlue defended itself. In a May 2, 2025, post, the platform called the investigation baseless and stressed its security. By November 2025, it touted policy tweaks like banning foreign cards and stricter verification. But these came after staff shakeups, including seven senior resignations in February 2025 amid the scrutiny.
Republicans smelled a rat. House subpoenas in July and September 2025 targeted ActBlue executives. State probes in places like Virginia and Wyoming piled on, echoing Paxton's findings. No charges stuck by year's end, but the saga fueled suspicions that Democrats' vaunted grassroots machine hid something sinister.
This episode confirms what conservatives have long feared: a system rigged to flood elections with questionable cash while dodging accountability. As the DOJ probe rolls into 2026 under Attorney General Pam Bondi, expect more revelations. For everyday Americans tired of elite games, it's a reminder – transparency matters, and the fight to secure our elections is far from over.
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