by Michael Hollister
Exclusive published at Michael Hollister on August 09, 2026
2.108 words * about 10 minutes readingtime
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The Fundraising Machine
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On June 10, 2026, the CEO of the largest Democratic fundraising platform in the United States sits before Congress and refuses to testify 22 times – including in response to a question about her name. Not a single Democratic committee member asks her even 1 question. That same day, 3 senior Democratic members of Congress demand the questioning of the head of the largest Republican fundraising platform. The committee’s Republican majority ignores the request. Each party investigates only the platform on the other side. No one investigates the system. And the agency responsible for doing exactly that – the Federal Election Commission – cannot act because it has been incapacitated for more than a year.
This is not a partisan scandal. It is a systemic failure. ActBlue, the Democrats’ fundraising machine, which processed $3.5 billion in donations in 2024 alone, knowingly accepted foreign-donation risks and misled Congress about them, according to the findings of its own outside counsel. WinRed, its Republican counterpart, used prechecked boxes to drain the savings of people with dementia and older Americans – producing $122.7 million in refunds from the 2020 Trump campaign alone. The regulator that should have overseen both was disabled by a president who simultaneously directed the Justice Department to investigate only the opposing party’s platform. The FEC, the only institution with genuine campaign-finance enforcement authority, has lacked a quorum since April 2025: 161 enforcement cases are frozen, and the agency can neither investigate nor impose penalties. Three findings, 1 pattern. Anyone who sees only 1 side has not understood the story.
ActBlue: What Its Own Law Firm Found
ActBlue is the Democratic Party’s central online fundraising platform. Around 23,000 candidates and organizations used it in 2025 alone, with an average contribution of $50 or less. In late 2024, ActBlue retained the major Washington law firm Covington & Burling – led by Dana Remus, former White House counsel under Biden – to review its fraud-detection practices. According to the New York Times, the findings were devastating: because of ActBlue’s weak security standards, there was a “significant risk” that some donations in the 2024 cycle consisted of “impermissible contributions from foreign nationals.” More serious still, ActBlue’s own personnel knew that the systems were not robust enough. The violations therefore appeared “knowing and willful” (Congressional Report Part II, April 2026).
CEO Regina Wallace-Jones had assured Congress in writing in 2023 that all donors with foreign addresses had to provide passport information and that foreign donations were reviewed manually. Neither claim was true. Donors who paid through Apple Pay, PayPal, or Venmo were never asked for passport details. Donations from around 170 countries received no additional screening at all – only 28 countries were included in the review system. The board chair later acknowledged that as much as $38 million in donations during the 2024 cycle showed indications of originating abroad. ActBlue’s own law firm advised Wallace-Jones to correct the record with Congress and warned of the risks of failing to do so. Wallace-Jones fired the firm instead (NYT, April 2, 2026).
What followed was the complete collapse of ActBlue’s legal and compliance team. Between November 2024 and March 2025, every attorney and compliance employee left the platform – through dismissal, resignation in protest, or amid allegations of retaliation after whistleblowing. The ActBlue union told the board that the legal and compliance functions had been “compromised” (Congressional Report Part II, Exhibit 14). In 5 sworn depositions, former and current employees subsequently refused to answer every substantive question – invoking the Fifth Amendment 146 times in total. On June 10, 2026, Wallace-Jones herself invoked the Fifth Amendment 22 times before the committee (Congressional Report Part II, pp. 20–26; Roll Call, June 10, 2026).
Context is necessary here – context that is naturally absent from the congressional report. Invoking the Fifth Amendment is a constitutionally guaranteed right and legally implies no guilt. In an opinion article published by the Washington Post on the morning of her hearing, Wallace-Jones said the investigation had “never been real oversight from the start, but harassment of a political opponent’s fundraising platform.” The Fifth Amendment, she wrote, was “the right tool for this moment – an American constitutional right built for moments when power overreaches.” That argument stands and must be considered. But the Covington memoranda, internal emails, resignation letters, and union letter are not Republican speculation. They are documents from ActBlue’s own internal communications.
WinRed: $122.7 Million in Refunds and an 82-Year-Old in Torn Pajamas
Anyone who now concludes that the problem is confined to the Democratic side has not read the other half of the story. WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform, has its own documented crisis – it simply looks different. While ActBlue exhibits a control failure involving foreign donations, WinRed systematically extracted money from its own donors.
In September 2020, the Trump campaign and WinRed implemented a system of prechecked boxes that converted one-time donors into weekly recurring donors without their knowledge. Anyone who failed to read the fine print and manually uncheck the box was automatically charged again every week. A second prechecked box, known internally as the “money bomb,” additionally doubled the individual donation. As the campaign continued, the notice explaining the opt-out became increasingly obscured, with bold promotional messages overwhelming the fine print. RNC chair Ronna McDaniel boasted to Fox News about record fundraising without mentioning the method (NYT, April 3, 2021).
The refund figures tell the story. Before the double-box system was introduced, the Trump and Biden refund rates were both around 2.2 percent. Afterward, Trump’s rate exploded to 12.29 percent, while Biden’s remained at 2.24 percent. In total, the Trump campaign and the RNC had to refund $122.7 million – 10.7 percent of all money raised. By comparison, the Biden campaign refunded around 2.2 percent. The Trump operation and its joint accounts issued more than 530,000 individual refunds worth over $64 million – 11 times as many as the Biden campaign and Democratic committees combined (Raskin statement, June 10, 2026).
In October 2024, CNN documented the system’s human scale. Reporters found hundreds of older Americans, many diagnosed with dementia, who had repeatedly donated small amounts through both platforms to dozens of political groups without understanding the scale. An 82-year-old woman who wore torn pajamas during the interview because she did not want to spend money on new clothes had lost $350,000 of her life savings through WinRed. An 81-year-old man in Fort Worth lost $11,000 and wrote to Attorney General Paxton: “I am 81 years old and I was taken advantage of.” He is still waiting for a response. The Federal Trade Commission received more than 800 complaints against WinRed – 7 times as many as against ActBlue. The FTC said it lacked jurisdiction. In 2023, the FEC recommended that Congress ban prechecked boxes for recurring donations. Congress did nothing (CNN, October 22, 2024; Raskin statement, June 10, 2026).
Two points must be recorded. The prechecked-box practice affects both platforms – ActBlue also uses comparable mechanisms, although the available figures indicate a considerably smaller scale. And unlike ActBlue, WinRed is a for-profit company: it keeps 30 cents plus 3.8 percent of every donation, even when that donation is later refunded.
The Dead Referee: Who Controls the Money?
The question arising from the first 2 findings is not which party is worse. The question is: Who makes it stop? As of July 2026, the answer is no one.
The Federal Election Commission – created after the Watergate scandal to protect the integrity of campaign finance – has lacked a decision-making quorum since April 2025. The agency needs at least 4 of its 6 members for practically every consequential decision. In February 2025, President Trump fired Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, who had served since 2002, without naming a successor. Weintraub told NPR: “He fired me for no reason, without precedent. What I didn’t expect was that no one would be put in my place.” Three Republican commissioners also resigned over the course of the year. Since April 30, 2025: 3 of 6 members, no quorum, 161 frozen enforcement cases. FEC chair Shana Broussard said: “Others say we’re paralyzed. I hate to agree, but we are paralyzed”. The Trump administration has still nominated no one to fill the vacant seats (NPR, October 4, 2025; NOTUS, September 26, 2025).
At the same time, Trump issued a presidential memorandum in May 2025 directing the Justice Department to investigate online fundraising platforms. The memorandum referred to “other platforms” but named only 1: ActBlue. WinRed did not appear. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche – Trump’s former personal defense attorney in his New York criminal trial – called ActBlue “a priority of this administration and this DOJ” in April 2026. Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas and also a Republican Senate candidate, sued ActBlue over donation fraud while ignoring more than 800 complaints from his own Texas constituents against WinRed. A federal judge halted Paxton’s lawsuit in June 2026, finding that it was retaliation over fundraising for his political opponent.
The picture is structural. The FEC can investigate neither ActBlue nor WinRed because it lacks a quorum. The Justice Department selectively investigates only 1 side. Courts are used as campaign instruments. And the president who could fill the regulatory vacancies has failed for more than a year to nominate a single successor – neither for the fired Democrat nor for the 3 Republicans who resigned. In July 2026, he also fired the remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, which advises states on election administration, just months before the midterm elections (NOTUS, July 10, 2026).
The Bottom Line: Vulnerability From Within
The 2026 midterm elections are approaching. ActBlue processed almost $1.8 billion in donations during 2025. In March 2026, WinRed said it had processed more than $6.4 billion since its founding. Together, 2 platforms control the digital fundraising infrastructure for practically every federal campaign. The problem does not belong to 1 party. It belongs to the system. Some Democratic campaigns have already begun integrating alternative platforms into their fundraising operations – not because they are abandoning ActBlue, but because they fear the concentration risk created when a party’s entire digital fundraising infrastructure runs through a single channel (Campaigns & Elections, December 2026). No comparable discussion has yet emerged on the Republican side.
ActBlue knowingly accepted the risk of foreign donations and made misleading statements to Congress. When its own law firm exposed the problems, the CEO fired the firm, the compliance team collapsed, and the CEO refused to testify under oath. WinRed implemented a system of prechecked boxes that drained the savings of people with dementia and collected fees on donations that were later refunded. The FTC received 800 complaints about WinRed and said it lacked jurisdiction. And the FEC, the only institution with enforcement authority, was paralyzed by the same president who directed the Justice Department to investigate only the opposing party’s platform.
Anyone who believes American elections are threatened primarily by foreign hackers is overlooking the greater vulnerability within: deliberately weakened security standards, the systematic exploitation of older donors, and an intentionally paralyzed regulator. The next elections are only months away. The referee is gone. And both teams are playing with a stacked deck.
Read the full analysis – including the chronology of ActBlue’s compliance collapse, the Paxton case, and WinRed’s foreign donations – here:
The Fundraising Machine
About the Author
Michael Hollister
is a geopolitical analyst and investigative journalist. He served six years in the German military, including peacekeeping deployments in the Balkans (SFOR, KFOR), followed by 14 years in IT security management. His analysis draws on primary sources to examine European militarization, Western intervention policy, and shifting power dynamics across Asia. A particular focus of his work lies in Southeast Asia, where he investigates strategic dependencies, spheres of influence, and security architectures. Hollister combines operational insider perspective with uncompromising systemic critique – beyond opinion journalism. His work appears on his bilingual website (German/English) www.michael-hollister.com and in investigative outlets across the German-speaking world and the Anglosphere.
If you value independent analysis on geopolitics, international relations, and global affairs, consider supporting this publication. Your contribution helps keep this Webpage open and accessible to everyone.
Sources
- Fraud on ActBlue, Part II: Illicit Foreign Donations and a Cover-Up Spur Mass Resignations and Firings on ActBlue’s Legal and Compliance Team – Interim Staff Report, Committee on House Administration, Committee on the Judiciary, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, April 20, 2026: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/2026-04/04-20-26-FRAUD-ON-ACTBLUE-PART-II.pdf
- Reid J. Epstein and Shane Goldmacher, ActBlue May Have Misled Congress on Vetting Foreign Donations, Its Lawyers Warned – The New York Times, April 2, 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/us/politics/actblue-congress-foreign-donations.html (paywalled; accessible in a browser)
- Regina Wallace-Jones, Why I Will Invoke My 5th Amendment Rights Before Congress – Washington Post, op-ed, June 10, 2026: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/06/10/actblue-ceo-why-i-will-invoke-my-5th-amendment-rights-before-congress/
- Shane Goldmacher, How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations – The New York Times, April 3, 2021; republished by The Seattle Times: https://replica.seattletimes.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=3f893df8-e0b6-44b7-ae79-dac60b1b255f
- Kyung Lah, Yahya Abou-Ghazala et al., How Elderly Dementia Patients Are Unwittingly Fueling Political Campaigns – CNN investigation, October 22, 2024: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/10/politics/political-fundraising-elderly-election-invs-dg/
- Ranking Member Raskin Slams Republicans’ Vindictive and Partisan Investigation of ActBlue, Cover-Up of WinRed Fraud – House Judiciary Committee Democrats, June 10, 2026: https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ranking-member-raskin-slams-republicans-vindictive-and-partisan-investigation-of-actblue-cover-up-of-winred-fraud
- The FEC Hasn’t Had a Quorum for Months, Halting Its Work – NPR, October 4, 2025: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/04/nx-s1-5559763/fec-no-quorum-campaign-finance
- “Hobbled” Campaign Finance Regulator Cancels Public Meetings Until 2026 – NOTUS, September 26, 2025: https://www.notus.org/2026-election/federal-election-commission-fec-quorum-shut-down-trump-nominees
- Trump Orders Probe Against Democratic Fundraising Platform ActBlue – Democracy Docket, May 1, 2025: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-orders-probe-against-democratic-fundraising-platform-actblue/
- Todd Blanche: ActBlue Allegations a “Priority” of New DOJ – Townhall, April 2, 2026: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scott-mcclallen/2026/04/02/todd-blanche-actblue-allegations-a-priority-of-new-doj-n2673898
- Ken Paxton’s ActBlue Lawsuit Halted by Federal Judge – The Hill, June 11, 2026: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5920896-texas-ken-paxton-actblue-fundraising-lawsuit-halted/
- ActBlue CEO Invokes Fifth Amendment to Lawmakers – Roll Call, June 10, 2026: https://rollcall.com/2026/06/10/actblue-ceo-invokes-fifth-amendment-to-lawmakers/
The complete source list and additional documentation are available in the full analysis.
© Michael Hollister – All rights reserved. Redistribution, publication or reuse of this text requires express written permission from the author. For licensing inquiries, please contact the author via www.michael-hollister.com
