ActBlue CEO invokes fifth amendment repeatedly in testimony to Congress
WASHINGTON — The chief executive of ActBlue, whose lawyers warned her that she might have misled Congress about how the Democratic fundraising organization vetted its foreign donations, invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer questions from a Republican-led House committee Wednesday.
Regina Wallace-Jones declined to engage with questions from Republicans on the House Administration Committee. She had agreed to appear Wednesday morning to discuss the committee’s investigation into the operations of ActBlue, which serves as the small-dollar financial engine of the Democratic Party and its candidates.
She invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify 22 times in response to questions from House Republicans, including when Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia asked whether she went by Wallace-Jones or Jones. No Democrat at the hearing posed a question to Wallace-Jones.
Wallace-Jones became a target of the House Republican investigation in April, when The New York Times reported that ActBlue’s lawyers had warned her that she might have misled Congress about how ActBlue vetted its foreign donations. For weeks, she had been in negotiations about how much she is willing to say about ActBlue’s internal discussions.
ActBlue has grown to become the dominant Democratic fundraising platform, building a donor database with millions of credit card numbers. Nearly 23,000 candidates and groups used the site in 2025, ActBlue has said, raising almost $1.8 billion.
Federal election law prohibits foreign citizens or people who are not permanent residents from donating directly to federal candidates or political action committees.
Wallace-Jones explained her strategy earlier Wednesday in an opinion essay published in The Washington Post. She wrote that invoking her constitutional right against incriminating herself was “the only reasonable response to a proceeding that from the beginning has been about harassing a political opponent’s fundraising platform, not genuine oversight.”
On Monday, a lawyer for her wrote to the committee asserting that attorney-client privilege applied to most of the topics that House Republican investigators wished to discuss with her.
She would not, her lawyer wrote, discuss memos that the Times reported on from ActBlue’s previous law firm, Covington & Burling, that detailed inconsistencies in what Wallace-Jones said in a 2023 letter to Congress and how the organization operated.
The committee responded Tuesday by issuing a formal subpoena to Wallace-Jones to appear in person at the hearing, scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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