Politics

Last year, an opaque group called the Fair Election Fund began promising to pay “whistleblowers” who cited election fraud “with payment from our $5 million fund.” That never panned out, but the same organization found more success with a claim that “60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July [Federal Election Commission] report did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.”

As Mother Jones reported last year, the Fair Election Fund appears to have generated this finding by blasting out ominous-sounding texts and emails telling ActBlue donors that their donations had been “flagged,” then tallying people who responded—accurately or not—by checking a box saying they did not recall making the contribution.

The Fair Election Fund’s findings have nevertheless become part of an array of GOP efforts to attack ActBlue, which the White House’s fact sheet cited, vaguely, on Thursday. “Press reports and investigations by congressional committees have generated extremely troubling evidence that online fundraising platforms have been willing participants in schemes to launder excessive and prohibited contributions to political candidates and committees,” the fact sheet says.