Congressman Steil, a Wisconsin Republican (1st congressional district: Kenosha, Racine, Walworth, Rock) and chairman of the House Administration Committee, launched the congressional investigation into ActBlue in 2023.
The inquiry began after concerns were raised about the platform’s approach to verifying online political donations, including its decision not to require credit-card CVV security codes and its acceptance of prepaid and gift cards, which can be more difficult to trace.
The investigation later expanded to include the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, and the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer.
For Steil, the central question has remained relatively straightforward: Are America’s campaign-finance laws strong enough to ensure that only Americans are funding American elections?
ActBlue has processed an estimated $16 billion to $20 billion in political contributions since its founding in 2004, overwhelmingly benefiting Democratic candidates, political committees and progressive organizations. Because of that scale, Steil and other investigators argue that even weaknesses affecting a relatively small percentage of transactions could have broader implications.
What Investigators Are Looking At
Republican committee staff reports and other reporting have raised a series of allegations about ActBlue’s fraud-prevention practices.
Investigators have examined instances in which ActBlue reportedly identified significant fraud campaigns, including transactions with potential foreign connections. They have also scrutinized internal communications concerning how employees handled suspicious donations, including whether staff were sometimes encouraged to find reasons to approve questionable transactions rather than reject them.
The committees have also examined statements ActBlue made to Congress regarding its screening of foreign contributions. According to investigators, outside counsel at Covington & Burling warned that some statements may have been incomplete or inaccurate, particularly when third-party payment processors such as PayPal and Venmo were involved.
Investigators have also examined changes to fraud-prevention procedures during the 2024 election cycle and the subsequent departures of members of ActBlue’s legal and compliance teams.
Those issues remain allegations and subjects of congressional investigation, rather than established findings of criminal wrongdoing.
ActBlue Pushes Back
ActBlue has strongly disputed the allegations and characterized the congressional investigation as politically motivated.
The organization says it has sophisticated systems designed to identify suspicious transactions, using more than 140 behavioral, geographic and payment-related signals. It has also pointed to IP-address screening, bank identification number checks, manual reviews and additional verification procedures.
ActBlue has tightened some policies as the investigation progressed, including requiring CVV information and blocking transactions that show indicators of foreign involvement.
The organization has said it turned over thousands of pages of non-privileged documents while asserting attorney-client privilege over other materials.
ActBlue has emphasized that the Fifth Amendment is a constitutional protection and should not be interpreted as an admission of wrongdoing. Its board chair has also said less than 1 percent of contributions during the 2024 election cycle showed foreign-country indicators.
There have been no reported criminal convictions or formal Federal Election Commission findings establishing systemic illegal activity by ActBlue based on the allegations under investigation.
Steil Has Taken the Investigation Beyond ActBlue
While the latest headlines center on DeBergalis and the Fifth Amendment, the broader story is Steil’s effort to use the investigation to push changes to federal campaign-finance law.
Steil has argued that the rules governing political contributions were largely written before online fundraising became a dominant part of American elections.
In 2024, he advanced the SHIELD Act, which sought stronger verification requirements for online political donations, including CVV and billing-address verification and restrictions on prepaid and gift-card contributions.
Then, in May 2026, Steil introduced two additional pieces of legislation designed to address what he views as weaknesses exposed by the ActBlue investigation.
The Campaign Finance Transparency Act would require the name associated with a credit or debit card to match the donor’s identity, mandate CVV or CVC and billing ZIP-code verification, prohibit gift-card contributions and strengthen reporting requirements surrounding suspected straw-donor schemes.
A second measure, the Preventing Foreign Interference in American Elections Act, would expand restrictions on foreign funding of certain election-related activities, including voter-registration drives, ballot collection and get-out-the-vote efforts.
Steil’s argument is that the problem is bigger than one organization.
If online fundraising platforms can be exploited by foreign nationals, straw donors or individuals using fraudulent identities, he argues, federal law needs to catch up with the technology being used to raise political money.
Why the Investigation Matters
The stakes are significant because ActBlue has become one of the most important fundraising platforms in modern Democratic politics.
Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to U.S. federal candidates and political committees. It also prohibits straw-donor arrangements designed to conceal the true source of a contribution or evade campaign-finance limits.
Critics argue that weaknesses in online verification could create opportunities for those laws to be circumvented.
ActBlue and its defenders counter that sophisticated fraud attempts occur across virtually every online payment system and that suspicious transactions do not establish that the platform knowingly facilitated illegal contributions.
Finding fraudulent transactions is one question. Determining whether those transactions were knowingly accepted, whether internal controls were deliberately weakened, and whether illegal foreign or straw contributions actually entered the political system is another.
Those are among the questions Steil’s investigation is attempting to answer.
The Investigation Isn’t Over
Thursday’s deposition is unlikely to be the final chapter.
With additional document disputes, potential contempt proceedings, state-level litigation and reported federal scrutiny still developing, investigators have several avenues remaining.
For Steil, however, the investigation appears to be about more than determining what happened at ActBlue.
His proposed legislation suggests that he wants to use the inquiry to change the rules governing online political fundraising, regardless of what the final investigation ultimately concludes about ActBlue itself.
The controversy has exposed a broader problem facing American campaign finance: Political fundraising has moved into a digital world, but many of the laws governing it were written for an era of checks, envelopes and traditional financial institutions.
As online donations continue to grow, Congress will have to decide whether existing safeguards are sufficient—or whether stronger identity and payment verification requirements are necessary to ensure that the money influencing American elections actually comes from the people legally permitted to provide it.
For now, one thing is clear: Bryan Steil’s investigation of ActBlue remains active, and Thursday’s decision by a co-founder to invoke the Fifth Amendment has put that investigation back in the national spotlight.
