For many years, Republican officials looked at ActBlue with envy. The more the donation platform positioned itself as an effective and successful tool that fueled the Democratic Party’s fundraising, the more GOP insiders wished they had something comparable.
But more recently, Republicans didn’t see ActBlue just as a tool to emulate, they also saw it as a target to attack.
On Capitol Hill, GOP lawmakers have launched dubious investigations into ActBlue. Online, prominent Republican voices such as Elon Musk have peddled a variety of allegations intended to undermine public confidence in the platform.
It was against this backdrop that Donald Trump took matters one step further, signing an executive memorandum aimed at investigating his political opposition’s infrastructure. NBC News reported:
The memorandum directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to ‘investigate allegations regarding the unlawful use of online fundraising platforms to make “straw” or “dummy” contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates and committees, and to take appropriate action to enforce the law.’ It specifically names ActBlue as an online fundraising platform being used ‘to improperly influence American elections.’
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, issued a compelling written statement soon after the president’s move, describing it as “a striking development.”
“Donald Trump pocketed millions of dollars in unlawful payments from foreign governments during his first term, his Administration shut down a probe into whether his campaign received an illegal and urgent $10 million bribe from Egypt, and foreign nationals are spending millions on Trump-owned cryptocurrencies right now in apparent hopes of buying their way out of federal criminal investigations through undisclosed payments. The Trump Administration has also systematically dismantled crime-fighting efforts at the Department of Justice aimed at foreign corruption of our politics and actually announced its indifference to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“So it’s rich indeed for Americans to read now that Trump has launched a big initiative to ‘crack down on foreign influence’ in American politics with one purpose — crippling the fundraising platform of his political opponents.
“Today’s presidential decree targeting the campaign infrastructure of the Democratic Party with precisely zero evidence of wrongdoing is the kind of edict you’d expect from a power-mad dictator in a Banana Republic. This president, with his approval ratings underwater and sinking like a stone, is desperately seeking to undermine his political opposition by cutting off their access to funding.”
Ideally, the president would respect the independence of the Justice Department, especially on matters related to criminal investigations, and further still on matters related to criminal investigations of his political opponents. Trump, however, continues to take truly radical steps — to target his perceived foes and to attack his opponents’ infrastructure. It comes on the heels of the Republican also directing his politically aligned attorney general to investigate a former administration official who refused to go along with his conspiratorial lies in the wake of his 2020 election defeat. I’m also reminded of a recent New York Times analysis — published weeks before the directive related to ActBlue — about the scope and direction of Trump’s efforts against Democratic politics. Executive actions intended to cripple top Democratic law firms. Investigations of Democratic fund-raising and organizing platforms. Ominous suggestions that nonprofits aligned with Democrats or critical of President Trump should have their tax exemptions revoked. Mr. Trump and his allies are aggressively attacking the players and machinery that power the left, taking a series of highly partisan official actions that, if successful, will threaten to hobble Democrats’ ability to compete in elections for years to come.
Sometimes, Trump’s authoritarian tactics are subtle. The new offensive against ActBlue was far more overt.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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