Another ActBlue leader pleads Fifth as House investigates alleged foreign donations
Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a board member of the ActBlue Democratic fundraising organization, invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself while testifying during a House probe into alleged foreign donations to ActBlue, sources familiar with the testimony told Fox News.
Allen's appearance on Capitol Hill came amidst a joint probe by the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight Committees into allegations that ActBlue accepted illicit foreign donations and failed to prevent fraud.
Allen's decision to plead the Fifth follows suit with ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis, who pleaded the Fifth during his closed-door deposition in front of the same three committees on Aug. 20.
The Committee on House Administration first opened a probe into ActBlue in 2023. Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., claimed the group could be potentially accepting foreign or fraudulent donations by neglecting to require a credit card CVV number for contributions.
Steil, in a Tuesday interview with Fox News' Mark Meredith, expressed consternation over the ActBlue-affiliated individuals' refusal to cooperate with the investigation.
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"I've been frustrated, that individuals [in] ActBlue haven't answered our questions on the record," he told Meredith.
"We've had individuals come, in public testimony, and plead the Fifth. They have a right to do that. And I understand why they did that. But I think the American people deserve to know exactly what's going on. We have an entity here with ActBlue, that has raised roughly $20 billion since its creation. And moved that into Democratic campaigns and Democratic causes. We want to make sure that they have the fraud preventions. We want to make sure that they have the fraud prevention protocols in place to make sure that foreign funds are not coming into U.S. elections," he said.
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Responding to allegations that the investigation into ActBlue is partisan in nature, Steil rebuked the notion.
"This investigation began is a review of online fundraising platforms and a determination whether or not those platforms had fraud prevention programs in place to prevent foreign funds from coming into U.S. elections. One of those, ActBlue, has been called out by The New York Times [for] having misled or lied to Congress. We're trying to get to the bottom of that exactly what has been taking place inside Act Blue, per the public reporting," he told Meredith.
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In an April investigative report, The New York Times revealed that ActBlue's legal counsel advised the organization that, in a letter to House Republicans, ActBlue's chief executive Regina Wallace-Jones may have misled lawmakers.
Responding to a congressional inquiry, Wallace-Jones characterized the organization's screening process to ensure its donations were not foreign as "multilayered," according to the report.
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The Times, however, noted that ActBlue's counsel advised them that they didn't always follow the steps Wallace-Jones described in her letter, calling her response "a substantial risk for ActBlue."
Wallace-Jones, in her own deposition to Steil's committee in June, also pleaded the Fifth.
Fox News Digital contacted ActBlue for further comment.