ActBlue Fundraising Platform in Turmoil As Executives Resign and the Last Lawyer Has His Email Shut Off

streiff  reporting  for  RedState 

The progressive fundraising powerhouse ActBlue, which has funded Democrat candidates and causes for two decades, has entered a death spiral as executives flee and investigations mount.

ActBlue, the online fund-raising organization that powers Democratic candidates, has plunged into turmoil, with at least seven senior officials resigning late last month and a remaining lawyer suggesting he faced internal retaliation.

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According to the letter from the ActBlue unions, which has not been previously reported and was confirmed as authentic by three people briefed on its contents, the senior staff departures began on Feb. 21. That day, ActBlue’s customer service and partnerships directors, who had both worked at the group for more than a decade, left, according to the unions’ letter.

“Now, my primary mission is rest,” Alyssa Twomey, ActBlue’s departing vice president for customer service, wrote on social media. “After 14+ years of living and breathing all things ActBlue, it’s time for a reset. I’m taking an intentional pause before setting course for my next adventure.”

The next week, several other senior officials left, including the associate general counsel — who was the highest-ranking legal officer at ActBlue — the assistant research director, a human resources official, the chief revenue officer and an engineer who had spent 16 years building and maintaining the electronic pipes through which the group’s donations flow.

As these people left, Zain Ahmad, who was the last remaining lawyer in the ActBlue general counsel’s office, wrote in an internal Slack message on Feb. 26 that his access to email and other internal platforms had been cut off and that other messages he had posted in Slack had been deleted, according to a screenshot obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Ahmad is now on leave from ActBlue, according to a person briefed on the group’s staffing.

What could be happening that would cause most of the executives and all but one of the lawyers to flee a sweet gig? Former RedState colleague Bill Shipley has some insights.

I have no information on this subject but .... 

In my experience, this kind of thing starts to happen a large businesses with shady operating practices when law enforcement starts to make contact with senior officials about want to ask them some questions.   

That leads to lawyers getting involved. 

That leads to lawyers telling their clients that it would be in their interest to part ways with the enterprise.

During the 2024 campaign, we began to see a lot of suspicious activity that indicated federal election campaign violations on a Biblical scale. 

People who never contributed to any campaign suddenly discovered they had sent hundreds of dollars to Democrat candidates.

ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform that has collected millions of dollars for Kamala Harris, has been named in a bombshell racketeering lawsuit by a Wisconsin Republican strategist who alleges his identity was stolen to make at least 385 fraudulent donations to left-wing causes — including to the Harris Victory Fund.

Mark Block, former chief of staff to Republican 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain, alleges that a total of $884.38 given in his name and without his knowledge between May and October was designed to circumvent federal election law and may be part of a larger scam involving tens of thousands of unwitting donors.

The individual donations were all under $200, meaning that they did not have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

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Experts working for the committee used AI to analyze more than 200 million FEC records spanning the last 14 years and identified suspicious trends, including hundreds of $2.50 donations from the same individual, donations in amounts far greater than the donor could afford, and unusually frequent donations from elderly people or first-time contributors.

Further investigation revealed that ActBlue accepted donations from prepaid credit cards and foreign credit cards. They even accepted contributions from countries under sanctions.

Nineteen Republican attorneys general launched an investigation into ActBlue's fundraising practices.

For more details on the background, read Vise Tightens Around Democrat Fundraising Site ActBlue As Evidence Mounts of Foreign Interference – RedState.

There is another interesting twist: the exodus of senior staff began on February 21.

ActBlue probably will not survive this. The flight of its senior staff and legal department indicates potential felony indictments on the horizon. A lot of hostile eyeballs will be watching ActBlue's donations very carefully using sophisticated data analysis tools. ActBlue's brand will be associated with fraud and lawbreaking far beyond what we associate with the usual Democrat-run organization. I'm sure WinRed, the less effective Republican clone of ActBlue, will be found to have similar problems. All of this is sure to lead to increased monitoring of online fundraising by the FEC and the Department of Justice. And in November 2026, we'll see just how many real people donate to Democrats.