House Committees Threaten ActBlue With Contempt Charge to Gain 400 Documents on Potential Misconduct

Three House committees have threatened to hold the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue in contempt of Congress for withholding hundreds of subpoenaed documents.

The three committees have investigated ActBlue for more than a year, primarily focusing on whether the organization that solicits and accepts online campaign donations screens for potential foreign donors.

“For more than a year, the committees have conducted oversight regarding ActBlue’s ‘fundamentally unserious approach to fraud prevention,’ which may allow bad actors—including foreign nationals—to make large-scale fraudulent donations on Democrats’ top fundraising platform,” stated the letter signed by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis.

“ActBlue continues to obstruct this inquiry by making expansive assertions of attorney-client privilege in an attempt to improperly shield documents that are responsive to the committees’ subpoenas and essential to our oversight,” the letter to ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones continued. The letter says ActBlue has withheld 422 requested documents under the claim of attorney-client privilege.

Wallace-Jones invoked her 5th Amendment rights when she was called to appear before the House Administration Committee on June 10. The organization has denied any wrongdoing.

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“ActBlue has and will continue to fulfill its legal obligations. We have produced a large volume of relevant materials for the Committees on a rolling basis for months. Unfortunately, the Committees are now engaged in an abuse of their oversight authority by demanding disclosure of certain confidential attorney client privileged documents,” an ActBlue spokesperson said in an email response for this story. “Despite the highly partisan nature of these investigations, we will continue to cooperate with the Committees while exercising our well-established rights to protect sensitive privileged information.”

An ActBlue spokesperson didn’t respond to an inquiry from the Daily Signal by publication time.

Last October, ActBlue counsel Vincent Cohen responded that the organization produced “all non-privileged documents with responsive, relevant information.”

This was in response to congressional subpoenas last July for communications referring to alleged misconduct and whistleblower retaliation at ActBlue, and mass departures in the organization’s legal department.

In April, The New York Times reported on documents that included ActBlue’s former interim general counsel Aaron Ting’s resignation letter, as well as an internal message in which former legal counsel Zain Ahmad alleged that he faced retaliation for blowing the whistle on internal misconduct at ActBlue.

“On June 5, ActBlue belatedly produced a log of responsive materials that it deemed privileged, but refused to produce Mr. Ting’s resignation letter or Mr. Ahmad’s message,” the chairmen’s letter says. “Instead, ActBlue claimed attorney-client privilege over the entirety of these and 420 other documents.”

The chairs say it is “implausible that all 422 documents listed in ActBlue’s privilege log are ‘entirely privileged.’” The letter concludes by calling for the production of records no later than June 26 and adds, “The Committees remain prepared to enforce our subpoenas through all available mechanisms.”

This story was updated to include a statement from an ActBlue spokesperson.