Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares joins former president Donald Trump at a rally in Chesapeake on June 28, 2024. Charlotte Rene Woods/ Virginia Mercury
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced Friday that he’s going after the online Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue for potentially improper activity, without offering detailed evidence of what he believes the organization has done wrong.
ActBlue rejected the attorney general’s allegations as “false” and politically motivated.
In a letter posted to X , Miyares made broad accusations of questionable donations made through the service that acts as a conduit between small-dollar contributors and a variety of Democratic candidates and causes.
“This includes hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions through individual donors in the Commonwealth in volumes that are facially implausible and appear suspicious,” Miyares wrote. “Some of these Virginia donors are reported as making multiple daily contributions over the course of multiple years amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in aggregate.”
The attorney general demanded “a detailed description of ActBlue’s processes and procedures for verifying the legitimacy and accuracy of donor and contribution information as well as the processes and procedures used in verifying information reported to regulatory bodies.”
“Given the seriousness of these allegations, I expect to receive your substantive response by August 12, 2024,” Miyares concluded.
In a statement , ActBlue said Miyares was perpetuating misinformation in order to attack political opponents.
“This investigation is nothing more than a partisan political attack and scare tactic to undermine the power of Democratic and progressive small-dollar donors,” ActBlue said. “We welcome the opportunity to respond to these frivolous claims.”
ActBlue has faced similar accusations from conservative activists in the past, but campaign finance experts contend the claims are overblown and based partly on quirks in how the Federal Election Commission reports small donations made through ActBlue and WinRed, its counterpart for GOP fundraising.
It’s unclear what inspired Miyares to target ActBlue. The attorney general’s letter didn’t point to specific donors or contributions made via ActBlue that he felt were problematic.
“The letter the AG released today speaks for itself,” said Miyares spokesperson Ian Lichacz. “Our office has reviewed allegations involving donor information of many individuals. No single donor or single allegation inspired this action.”
The announcement follows conservative social media chatter about an unusually high number of political donations from one person who apparently lives in the Richmond suburbs.
Miyares amplified social media posts pointing to that particular donor, but federal campaign finance records show most of the contributions from the donor went to Republicans, not Democrats.
While a few of the donations seemingly did occur through ActBlue, vastly more were made through WinRed.
Miyares reposted a social media message by hard-right figure Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative group Talking Points USA, which incorrectly implied thousands of small donations from the Richmond-area contributor were going to Democrats via ActBlue.
“My office is aware of these allegations and rest assured, we are looking into it,” Miyares said as he reposted Kirk’s misleading allegation a few days before announcing he had sent the letter to ActBlue.
Former President Donald Trump also reposted Kirk’s message on social media, with commentary added by another user suggesting Miyares would suffer politically if he failed to prosecute “money laundering” involving ActBlue. The donor whose high frequency of contributions inspired Kirk’s post made numerous donations to Trump, according to campaign finance records.
The Mercury is not naming the donor identified on social media because there is no indication yet that the person was a victim of identity theft or did not intend to make the donations Kirk and others deemed suspicious.
The attorney general’s office did not comment on why the inquiry was focused only on ActBlue and not WinRed.
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