ActBlue and other campaign donation platforms are at the center of an investigation being conducted by at least 20 State’s attorneys general, as well as the House Administration Committee in Congress. It is also the subject of a lawsuit in Waukesha County, where earlier this month a judge allowed limited discovery into ActBlue to proceed.
The colloquial term used to describe this alleged operation is “smurfing.” Peter Bernegger, Chris Gleason, and their team discovered this suspected campaign money laundering operation and went public with it in 2023 when James O’Keefe’s OMG published videos interviewing suspected victims of this scheme.
According to the FEC.gov website, there are potentially thousands upon thousands of individuals whose identities are being stolen to launder millions of dollars to political campaigns and PACs across the country. This scheme can be verified by anyone:
- Simply go to FEC.gov.
- Under “Campaign Finance Data”, select “Look up contributions from specific individuals.”
- Put “ActBlue” as the “Recipient Name”
- Select a zip code or city you’d like to search
- Under “Occupation” put “retired”
- Uncheck the Report Time Period box or expand it to the date range you’d like to check
The last step is to click “Export” in the top right hand corner. This will download the data in a spreadsheet format. When you open it up, sort the data by name. Each contribution in this alleged scheme is typically under $5.
On Friday, Bernegger joined the Why We Vote podcast to discuss the recent reports that have come out of Congress via Rep. Bryan Steil and Rep. Jim Jordan. According to subpoenaed records from ActBlue, Just The News reported that ActBlue updated its policy on Sept 9th to “automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined,” by its solution provider, Sift.
Bernegger had several crucial updates regarding their own investigation into this money-laundering scheme regarding an automated process to make the donations, why ActBlue’s policy update likely won’t have any impact on any accounts established before the change, and whether or not the incoming Trump administration will engage in this investigation.
New Smurf Evidence
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) raised approximately $30.9 million in her 2018 campaign. Her 2024 campaign, however, trounced that number, nearly doubling it to $59.6 million. From July 25, 2024 to September 30, 2024, she raised $11 million with $9.4 million coming from individual ‘donors,’ according to WPR.
By comparison, her opponent, Eric Hovde, raised just $29.3 million with $20 million of that being a personal loan he made to his campaign. In that same July to September timeframe, Hovde raised $2.8 million from individual donors.
Using state and federal government data, Bernegger has publicly accused Baldwin of benefiting from the illegal smurfing operation. According to his data and investigation, Baldwin has received $27,850,750 via the smurfing operation since 2017, including 69,433 donations since 2017 from a single donor, “Sonia.” “Sonia” lives in an assisted living facility, but that didn’t stop her from allegedly donating 7.5 times per day, every single day, for 7.5 years.
Exclusive: I accuse United States Senator Tammy Baldwin of criminally laundering $27,850,750 into her campaigns since 2017, including the current one. She is committing illegal Smurfing, i.e. structured money laundering. We have documented this in extreme detail using state and… pic.twitter.com/STN7r4kpsK
— Peter Bernegger (@PeterBernegger) May 28, 2024
It is unlikely an elderly woman in an assisted living facility made these types of donations. So how is it done? New evidence provided during the podcast may be the strongest yet that this is some sort of computer program that is making these donations.
In what Bernegger called “the Roberts,” he discovered donations being made by people named “Robert” in an impossible fashion. In the example provided, 12 people named “Robert” all donated the same exact number of times (1,786) and the same exact dollar amount ($200,963.87). And at the same exact time. The “Roberts” are spread out across the United States.
The below data provided by Bernegger is captured from the FEC spreadsheet that you can verify using the method described above:
According to a report from the Washington Free Beacon, Baldwin received 60 percent of her donations from out-of-state donors.
The 12 “Roberts” above account for over $2.4 million in “grassroots” donations to Senator Baldwin’s campaign. “Small dollar donations” is often a way to deploy a narrative suggesting a candidate is popular with ‘everyday Americans.’ In 2016, Baldwin sent a campaign email stating, “Today, dark money spending is 10 times what it was at the same point in the 2012 election cycle. And in 2012, it ended up topping $308 million” while asking for a contribution of $5 or more, according to Politifact.
ActBlue, et al Campaign Money Laundering Thread (the one being investigated by Congress)
Now, lets break some news:
In the past few weeks (and overall, the last year), @RepBryanSteil @RepJamesComer and @Jim_Jordan as well as @marcorubio have been looking into ActBlue, among… pic.twitter.com/aoySVZSwMh
— CannCon (@CannConActual) December 14, 2024
The “Fix” That Wasn’t
As mentioned above, ActBlue changed their policy to require CVV numbers for donations in September 2024. However, Bernegger disclosed that he hasn’t seen any drop off in the number of smurfing donations since the implementation. He also said that ActBlue was “very misleading” about the policy change.
According to Bernegger, ActBlue is only going to be requiring the CVV capture on new accounts opened after the policy implementation. He said that he has made the 20 State’s attorneys general aware of this. ActBlue would then have hundreds of thousands of accounts that would not be subject to this new policy.
This past week, @JustTheNews published an article about Rep. Steil’s investigation.
In it, ActBlue claimed that in September, they changed their data capture to require the CVV numbers on credit cards be submitted.
But did that make a difference?? Nope. It was a semantics… pic.twitter.com/MH7SNhbVvv
— CannCon (@CannConActual) December 14, 2024
It’s Not Just “Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela”
Rep. Steil has previously disclosed an investigation into four countries that they are investigating to determine whether or not they’re using ActBlue to fund campaigns illegally. The countries mentioned specifically were Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela. Bernegger, however, thinks there’s another country that is deliberately left off the list: Ukraine.
“The reason Ukraine is not on that list, I can guarantee it, [is] because that money is coming from the U.S. Treasury,” said Bernegger. “US Congress is obviously approving that: to send the billions of dollars to Ukraine.” He then said that the money ends up being laundered back into the United States through offshore accounts and into dark-money PACs, which disburse it to organizations like the DNC.
“I’ll tell you who started some of this: John McCain and Lindsey Graham. And Lindsey Graham is still doing it today,” Bernegger said. “This is why they’re so deathly afraid of having Ukraine exposed and why they just, beyond all reason, keep sending money and begging them to lower their [conscription] rate for soldiers from 25 to 18 to send more young men to slaughter: because they don’t want all of this to come out.”
Rep. Steil has voted in favor of the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, the 2022 Ukraine Supplemental Appropriation, the Ukraine Security Assistance and Oversight Supplemental Appropriation of 2023. This paired with three votes against Ukraine funding in 2024 have earned him a “mediocre” report from the “Republicans for Ukraine” coalition.
It’s not just “Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela,” as is constantly the only countries referenced by Congress.
It’s not just those four. One of them will shock you! (or maybe not) pic.twitter.com/fgrqo1nNr9
— CannCon (@CannConActual) December 14, 2024
President Trump Knows About Smurfing
Bernegger also seems to believe that not only is President Trump aware of the smurfing activities, but that Rep. Steil is going to refer this investigation to President Trump’s appointee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi. Bondi, as Florida’s Attorney General, has criticized the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for not pursuing investigations into ballot handling in Broward and Palm Beach counties during a 2018 election. She has also supported President Trump in his legitimate claims of election fraud after the 2020 election.
“President knows about smurfing. He’s retweeted two of my tweets about smurfing. He’s commented about The Gateway Pundit article on smurfing…But the news I have is that [Rep] Bryan Steil is referring, for criminal prosecution to Pam Bondi…to prosecute and at least investigate ActBlue for criminal money laundering.”
When asked about whether he believes the FEC is aware of this scheme or if there’s safeguards to detect this, Bernegger cryptically suggested that there is “at least one honest” member of the six panel FEC board.
