Schweizer: "Foreign Money in Campaigns? They Don't Care."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/10/08/schweizer_foreign_money_in_campaigns_they_dont_care.html

Money in politics is troublesome enough, but when it knowingly comes from foreign sources, it's also illegal. That is the problem for ActBlue, the official fundraising platform for Democratic Party candidates that has been under investigation for doing exactly that. It just got worse.

This week, ActBlue's lawyers told the House of Representatives this week the platform will now actively verify US passport numbers that are input by online donors as part of its "ongoing investment in the security of contributions processed from donors located abroad," Fox News reported. Unfortunately, that is an admission ActBlue has not done so for years.

The news startles Eric Eggers, co-host of The Drill Down podcast: Imagine if your employee came to you and said, 'Hey boss, good news! I quit drinking whiskey at lunch,' Eggers says. You'd say, 'That's great, but does that mean you've been drinking whiskey at lunch for the last several years?'

Host Peter Schweizer quips, That could also mean they've switched to vodka!

Republicans on the oversight committee have for years accused ActBlue of having insufficient verification standards for weeding out illegitimate campaign donations. Under US election law, foreigners may not contribute to US political campaigns.

ActBlue collected billions of dollars for Democratic candidates without doing rudimentary safety checks that ensure online donations come only from valid US givers. For years, ActBlue did not even check for a valid CVV number, a basic security measure followed by all online merchants. Several senior ActBlue officials resigned and its CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, Schweizer noted in a media appearance at the time (https://thedrilldown.com/newsroom/schweizer-maps-the-foreign-donation-fraud-case-on-the-bottom-line/), took the Fifth Amendment 22 times when she was called to answer questions.

None of this surprises Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and bestselling author of several books on foreign interference in American politics. At GAI, we've been on this for more than a decade, Schweizer says. GAI did an investigative report in 2017 (https://thedrilldown.com/newsroom/isc_investigations/america-vulnerable-foreign-fraudulent-online-contributions-influencing-u-s-elections-taking-another-look/) that found the percentage of Congressional Republicans with active donation pages requiring CVV verification was 91.3 percent in 2016. On the other hand, CVV usage by Democrat members of Congress with active donation pages in that election year was just 8.3 percent.

Schweizer notes the new interim joint report (https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/2026-09/FINAL%20ActBlue%20Staff%20Report%20III%20%2B%20Exhibits.pdf) from the Oversight, Judiciary, and House Administration committees highlighted internal ActBlue email threads. ActBlue repeatedly instructed its fraud prevention analysts to give the donor the benefit of the doubt and to ignore red flags about contributions with foreign indicators. In addition, ActBlue previously did have a passport number textbox on its online donation form, the committee found, but all it did was count that the input contained the correct number of digits.

In one email thread, an analyst rejected a donation with several 'red flags,' Schweizer notes on the show. The supervisor reviews it and says, 'I disagree with this reject. You are right that their IP [internet address] and billing are mismatched and a Romanian IP definitely raises some questions, but you wrote in the case comment that their name on their X profile is different, but when I click it, it looks like the same name.'