On April 24, 2025, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing Attorney General Pam Bondi, in consultation with the Treasury secretary, to investigate allegations that online fundraising platforms were used for “straw” or “dummy” contributions or foreign contributions. The memorandum names only one platform, ActBlue, the primary fundraising platform used by Democratic candidates and progressive organizations, citing a House Republican investigation that found ActBlue had detected at least 22 “significant fraud campaigns.” It gave the attorney general 180 days to report the results to the president through the White House counsel.
ActBlue called the directive an “oppressive use of power,” the Associated Press reported, and said in a statement that it was “blatantly unlawful” and “Donald Trump's latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition.” Trump did not target WinRed, the Republican counterpart, in the memorandum. In a June 2025 letter to Bondi, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said the order's singular focus on ActBlue “ignores mounting public evidence of comparable—and in some instances, greater—irregularities on WinRed” and warned that an investigation limited to ActBlue “would constitute a clear violation of the First Amendment.”
ActBlue's CEO said in April 2025, the day before the memorandum, that the platform had raised more than $400 million in the first three months of the year, a record for a single quarter. Three Republican-led House committees, whose investigation the memorandum cites, subpoenaed ActBlue in July 2025 and in April 2026 demanded that it fully comply with those subpoenas.
Correction (October 14, 2026): This entry previously attributed the phrase “mounting evidence of comparable irregularities on WinRed” to ActBlue; it comes from Sen. Blumenthal's June 2025 letter to the attorney general. It said Blumenthal pressed the administration “during congressional hearings”; he did so in that letter. It said ActBlue raised “nearly $400 million more” despite the investigation; the figure ActBlue reported was more than $400 million raised in the first quarter of 2025, before the memorandum was signed, so it does not show anything about fundraising after the probe began. It also said the memorandum's 180-day deadline passed with no public DOJ report or charging decision; no cited source establishes that, and the memorandum required a report to the president, not a public one, so the claim has been removed.