Once Kamala Harris started facing Donald Trump head-to-head it caused the 2024 election season to heat up at break-neck speed.
As both parties attempt to raise more and more funds for their campaigns the scrutiny only increases.
And now James O’Keefe’s bombshell reporting on potential criminal acts by Democrats’ ActBlue platform just spurred this Attorney General to action.
South Carolina AG investigating ActBlue
Months after notorious investigative journalist James O’Keefe began exposing undercover reports that appeared to indicate that Democrats’ top fundraising platform, ActBlue, is possibly engaging in a potential “money laundering scheme,” South Carolina Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson is now starting to publicly question whether the platform is engaging in fraudulent, deceptive, or other illegal activities to benefit Democrats.
Wilson wrote a letter to the CEO of ActBlue about the allegations, asking for answers about where the bulk of the money was coming from.
Part of the letter reads, “It has come to my attention that these alleged activities may include ‘smurfing,’ a money laundering technique where large sums of money are ‘donated’ to a political candidate (or committee), and are broken down through smaller, less conspicuous amounts.”
He also noted that some individual donors in his state of South Carolina “have purportedly donated funds through ActBlue in prolific volumes that appear implausible and highly suspicious” – as O’Keefe has shown is seemingly the case in most every state.
Wilson states that these allegations are “based on publicly accessible information.”
The AG said that this raises the question of whether the contributions made by ActBlue are really from straw donors, and whether those contributions were made in the donors’ names without their knowledge or consent.
If the allegations are true, they could violate campaign finance laws in South Carolina and several provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act.
Wilson asked the CEO of ActBlue to provide his office with a “detailed description” of its “processes and procedures for verifying the legitimacy and accuracy of donor and contribution information.”
He also asked for any information the PAC has reported to “South Carolina’s regulatory bodies.”
The AG said the organization has the right to raise campaign funds for its preferred candidates, but they “must remain as transparent as possible so that the public can be reassured of the integrity of our electoral process.”
The clock is ticking
Wilson’s letter to the CEO of ActBlue is dated August 22, 2024, and he has formally asked the organization to respond and provide the requested information by September 6, 2024.
Virginia’s Attorney General and the Secretary of State of Wyoming have also launched investigations of their own.
According to an article from Fast Company, the allegations lodged at ActBlue are at-best a simple misunderstanding of how federal campaign contributions should be reported, and at worst, “a bad faith attempt by conservatives to cast doubt on a tool that has become essential to Democratic campaigns with just months to go before Election Day.”
The magazine received a statement from an ActBlue spokesperson who said, “Unfortunately, in 2024, it is all too commonplace to see attempts to spread disinformation from the far-right and our organization is prepared to address the bad actors.”
However, people investigating the Democrat fundraising platform claim that it’s simply a matter of what’s legal and what isn’t when it comes to campaign contributions.
US Political Daily will keep you updated on any developments to this ongoing story.
