On August 1, people who had given money to the Democratic presidential ticket began getting ominous messages suggesting their identities may have been stolen. Some received texts from an unknown sender asking them to confirm recent donations. Others told Mother Jones that they received emails warning that their donations had been “flagged” and asking them to click a box to “verify” that they had really contributed the money—or to click “no” if they did not recall doing so.
One donor described the email he received as “mysterious, vague, and somewhat threatening.” That email, similar to the one pictured below, requested that he respond within “the next 24 hours.”
The recipients of these messages have something in common: they’re listed in federal campaign filings as having donated to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris using ActBlue, a ubiquitous online platform that makes it simple to contribute to a vast array of Democratic candidates and liberal causes. ActBlue, a non-profit, has become central to Democrats’ grassroots fundraising efforts. For years, Republicans struggled to emulate its success.
The mysterious emails were sent by the equally mysterious “Fair Election Fund”—a newly formed dark money group that says it is working to uncover supposed electoral malfeasance. When the organization released an initial advertisement in May, it touted a $5 million fund that it said would be used to pay whistleblowers who “expose cheating in our elections.” More recently, it launched a media blitz full of baseless and implausible claims that Kamala Harris’ eye-popping fundraising numbers might somehow be the result of a massive identity theft and money-laundering scheme carried out by ActBlue.
The goal of the Fair Election Fund’s messages to ActBlue users became clear on August 13, when the Washington Examiner reported the conservative group had “identified 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July [FEC] report but did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.” The Examiner said the organization had spent $250,000 to compile these initial findings.
“If the Democrats’ fundraising numbers sound outrageous, unbelievable, it’s because they might be,” the Fair Election Fund charged in a recent video, which displayed a headline about the $310 million Harris raised in July. “The Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue has been accused of stealing our identities to conceal donations from bad actors.” The group says it spent $50,000 to run this ad online.
This line of criticism piggybacks on long-running GOP attacks on ActBlue. Last year, James O’Keefe, a conservative activist previously ousted from the far-right video sting outfit Project Veritas, accused ActBlue of assigning large numbers of donations to the names and addresses of people who did not remember donating so often. Though O’Keefe’s claims of a “potential massive money laundering” scheme went unconfirmed, various GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), have faulted ActBlue for accepting some donations without requiring card verification values—the 3- or 4-digit codes on credit cards used to confirm their validity.
Contrary to the right-wing allegations, there is no public evidence that ActBlue has stolen anyone’s identity or has been involved in money laundering. ActBlue denies engaging in any wrongdoing. “We are aware of recent attempts to spread misinformation about our platform,” an ActBlue spokesperson told Mother Jones, while citing “robust and effective protocols in place to ensure our platform is secure.” The platform says that it now requires all new donors to provide CVV codes, though many longtime users can still make donations without them.
The Fair Election Fund’s recent claims about ActBlue coincided with Harris receiving an outpouring of support from first-time and small-dollar donors in the wake of Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race. In just the first week of her campaign, she raked in more than $200 million dollars, two-thirds of which came from people who hadn’t donated yet this cycle, the campaign announced.
After learning of the messages the Fair Election Fund was sending to contributors, ActBlue published an August 2 tweet warning they appeared to be part of “a dangerous disinformation campaign” targeting “Democratic donors.” ActBlue advised users to avoid replying to the messages and to instead report them as spam.
The August 13 Examiner story didn’t make clear how the Fair Election Fund conducted its research or how it arrived at the 60,000 figure, and the group didn’t answer questions from Mother Jones about its methodology. But it appears that the Fair Election Fund used FEC reports to identify small donors and then purchased commercially available data that allowed the group to contact them. Recipients told Mother Jones they received messages at phone numbers and email addresses that they had not provided to ActBlue or to the Biden or Harris campaigns.
Such a method could easily generate inaccurate results. Clicking a box telling an unsolicited emailer you don’t recall making a donation is not a sworn statement that you got scammed. It’s unclear how the Fair Election Fund ensured that the donor contact information it obtained was correct, or whether it accounted for the possibility that some donors may have simply forgotten signing up to make recurring contributions.
One ActBlue user who contacted Mother Jones, and who asked not to be identified, said she had replied “no” to a text message asking if she recalled donating to Biden in June. That drew a quick follow-up call from a woman who said she worked for the Fair Election Fund and asked for confirmation the user did not recall giving the money. The donor told the caller she did not recall the donation, but later realized she may have been mistaken. She told Mother Jones in an email that she suspected she had inadvertently signed up for recurring monthly contributions when she made an earlier donation.
More significantly, the Fair Election Fund and other ActBlue critics have offered zero evidence of the broader conspiracy they’re insinuating, in which fraudsters are supposedly stealing thousands of identities and using them to make hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illegal donations to Democratic candidates in small increments.
Anyone who wants to secretly bankroll a campaign, after all, has much better options. Super-PACs can accept unlimited amounts of money to spend on a candidate’s behalf with far less transparency. And other dark money groups spending big on the 2024 election, including the Fair Election Fund itself, likewise face significantly less public scrutiny.
Ironically, ActBlue—like its GOP counterpart, WinRed—is actually more transparent than even traditional forms of small-dollar fundraising. Under federal election law, if a person makes a donation of less than $200 directly to a campaign, their identity is never disclosed publicly. But all donations made through conduits like ActBlue must be publicly reported, which creates a detailed paper trail that otherwise would not exist.
Nonetheless, the Fair Election Fund’s claims have had impact. The Examiner story noted that the group had shared its findings with the offices of five Republican state attorneys general, two of whom quickly said in statements they would look into the allegations. “We are grateful to Fair Election Fund for sharing these concerning findings with us, as we explore whether any of our constituents have been defrauded by ActBlue,” Alabama AG Steve Marshall said.
Two of the attorneys general, Ken Paxton of Texas and Jason Miyares of Virginia, have said they were already investigating ActBlue, as has House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican. “Certain features of campaign finance law may incentivize bad actors to use platforms like ActBlue to covertly move money to political campaigns to evade legal requirements,” Paxton said in an August 8 statement.
The Fair Election Fund is working on other initiatives, as well. The group in May announced it would give people who claimed to have evidence of election fraud “payment from our $5 million dollar fund.” It has not explained what criteria it will use to determine payouts. But the effort, four years after Donald Trump used lies and debunked stories of ballot-stuffing to try to steal the 2020 election, appears squarely aimed at generating new election fraud claims that could turn out to be just as unreliable.
The Fair Election Fund used what it said was a “six-figure” ad buy in swing states during the Olympics to tell people who report voter fraud that they “could be eligible for compensation.” The Raleigh News & Observer reported the group also spent $375,000 on ads and billboards attacking North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled Board of Elections for denying ballot access to third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. The group similarly said it spent “six figures” faulting efforts to keep West off the ballot in Michigan. It also recently touted an online ad that claims that efforts to keep West off Pennsylvania ballots would disenfranchise Black voters and represent “the real Jim Crow 2.0.”
Where all the money for these campaigns comes from is not clear. A spokesperson for the Fair Election Fund declined to comment on the group’s funding or to answer specific questions, including where the group is incorporated. Former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who has been identified in press reports as a co-founder as a well as senior adviser to the group, did not respond to repeated inquiries by Mother Jones. He appears to be the only individual publicly declaring an affiliation with the group.
The group claims on its website to be a nonprofit but provides no information about its incorporation or tax status, as most nonprofits do. It also does not appear in a national database of tax-exempt organizations that have registered with the IRS. The group’s spokesperson did not respond to questions about its nonprofit status. In reports it was required to file to the Federal Communications Commission, the group listed the address of a small building in Pittsburgh.
Google’s online Transparency Center for ads indicates that some of the digital ads the Fair Election Fund has run were paid for by another organization, a corporation registered last year in Delaware called “For Which it Stands Fund, Inc.” That group has no evident online presence.
Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer, said Fair Election Fund looks to be following a playbook favored by dark money recipients in recent election cycles. They can start operating without applying to the IRS for nonprofit status, as long as they plan to apply within the year. This delays the need to disclose any information publicly, including the filing of a so-called 990 tax form, until after the election. Some avoid even that belated disclosure by terminating their state registration before having to file a 990, Kappel said.
“Fair Election Fund appears to be a dark money group with very little known about how it’s funded or how it operates,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning watchdog group. “It seems to be trying to build out a conspiracy theory to use against Democratic candidates in the 2024 election. When groups like this pop up, it’s not out of the ordinary for them to hit quick and then disband before anything can be found out about them—or done about them.”
Campaign finance researchers contacted by Mother Jones said it was notable that the Fair Election Fund claimed to have $5 million when it launched but does not appear to be raising money online. That suggests the likelihood of a large preexisting source of money.
FCC filings list a woman named Tori Sachs as an official with the group. That is the name of a political consultant in Michigan who has helped spearhead several dark money efforts in support of Republican candidates in that state. Sachs has worked for multiple organizations funded by the billionaire DeVos family, including by Betsy DeVos, who was Trump’s Education secretary and previously chaired the Michigan GOP.
Sachs did not respond to inquires. A spokesperson for the DeVos family did not respond when asked if the family is providing funding for the Fair Election Fund.
Meanwhile, the Fair Election Fund is charging ahead, dangling cash for election fraud claims. And according to the Examiner, the group plans to “continue vetting Biden-Harris donors in the coming weeks.”
Additional reporting by Julia Lurie.
