On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, strongly criticized Republican attempts to investigate a Democratic fundraising group. She described the ongoing fraud investigation as the latest example of Republican retaliation against influential Black women.
“Time and again, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has targeted Black women with unfounded lawsuits,” Sewell declared on Wednesday morning.
Her remarks come amid a Republican-led inquiry into ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising and campaign platform, along with its CEO and president, Regina Wallace-Jones. The investigation is exploring whether the organization received illegal contributions.
House Republicans are demanding ActBlue provide international communications, scrutinizing if the group intentionally misled lawmakers and avoided subpoenas to conceal flaws in its system for filtering out unlawful foreign donations.
This legislative review aligns with a request made in April by President Donald Trump to investigate the organization.
“Evidence suggests that foreign nationals may be attempting to exploit online fundraising platforms to improperly influence U.S. elections,” stated the White House in a press release.
Wallace-Jones has called the investigation baseless, maintaining that ActBlue applies high scrutiny for its donations processing.
“Our approach is multilayered, with checks and confirmations occurring throughout the donation process to verify donors and donor information,” she told Fox News Digital in a statement earlier this year.
Among other safeguards, Wallace-Jones said the organization requires Card Verification Values (CVVs) for credit card donations, uses IP addresses, a kind of digital footprint, to identify foreign-sourced contributions, applies an industry-standard Address Verification System (AVS) and manually reviews donations.
To Sewell, the investigation into ActBlue and Wallace-Jones is tainted by other investigations into black women who have crossed Trump in the past.
“This investigation is just one more example of Republicans and President Trump using power of his office to harass and intimidate anyone willing to challenge him. The Trump Department of Justice has used its power to intimidate and victimize communities of color, especially Black Americans,” Sewell said.
“We should not forget the harassment of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, the harassment of the New York Attorney General, Tish James and the harassment of our colleague Congresswoman LaMonica McIver,” Sewell said, listing off a number of similar cases.
“It is not surprising that this Republican-led committee is now attacking ActBlue and its CEO, Ms. Wallace-Jones,” Sewell said.
