While acting as outside counsel for ActBlue, its then-law firm, Covington & Burling, wrote memos to the Democratic payment processor warning that it may have misled Congress regarding its efforts to block foreign donations, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
Back in 2023, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) and then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) raised concerns that ActBlue was not collecting enough information from its customers to guard against fraud and illegal donations made by foreign nationals. Congressional Republicans alleged that ActBlue was not requiring donors to input credit verification values, the three numbers on the back of credit cards, which they claimed increased the risk of fraudulent contributions, and that the platform had insufficient safeguards against illegal foreign donations.
