Can you hear the distant squawks of chickens flapping toward their roosts? Yesterday, CNN ran a story dripping with dire portent, headlined “Trump targets Democratic fundraising powerhouse ActBlue with DOJ probe.”
This could be the single most important development for the 2026 midterms. We’ve discussed a potential ActBlue investigation before, but now the problem is getting presidential attention.
CNN even admitted that when President Trump signed an order yesterday targeting ActBlue, which is the Democrat Party’s main fundraising platform, he was “taking aim at one of the key pillars of the financial infrastructure for Democratic candidates.” The investigation, CNN said, “has raised concerns it could impair the Democratic Party’s fundraising efforts ahead of next year’s high-stakes midterm elections, given its central role in processing donations.”
Yesterday afternoon, the White House posted a “fact sheet” about Trump’s order. The order —a “Presidential Memorandum”— directed Attorney General Bondi to investigate and “take appropriate action” about ActBlue’s involvement with squads of straw donors, sometimes called “smurfs,” as well as large numbers of small-dollar foreign donations.
You may recall the story was originally broken by James O’Keefe, and later confirmed via a House investigation.
The House’s investigation was featured in the fact sheet. “A recent House of Representatives investigation,” the fact sheet explained, “found that ActBlue detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns in recent years—nearly half of which had a foreign nexus.” And it said that “numerous state attorneys general have opened investigations into ActBlue over suspicious donations made through obscured identities and untraceable means.”
The smurfing phenomenon was prominently positioned in the memo:
Papa Smurf was unavailable for comment.
I doubt it’s possible to overestimate the Gargamel-sized threat this poses to the Democrat money machine. And money, as they say, is the mother’s milk that makes the political school bus go around and around. Or words to that effect. You get the idea. The best part is that the Democrats have gotten away with it for so long that they got addicted to it, and as Fury Road’s Immortan Joe warned his serfs about getting addicted to water, the danger is that, when the money is not around, “you will resent its absence.”
I’m just a lawyer, neither a political consultant or an elections crimes prosecutor, but it seems to me the most politically damaging way forward is for DOJ to be very deliberate and take its time, making sure it is on all fours before arresting someone, and pushing the clock as close to the 2026 primaries as possible before pulling the plug. As I often say, this is only going to hurt for a very long time.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
This could be the single most important development for the 2026 midterms. We’ve discussed a potential ActBlue investigation before, but now the problem is getting presidential attention.
CNN even admitted that when President Trump signed an order yesterday targeting ActBlue, which is the Democrat Party’s main fundraising platform, he was “taking aim at one of the key pillars of the financial infrastructure for Democratic candidates.” The investigation, CNN said, “has raised concerns it could impair the Democratic Party’s fundraising efforts ahead of next year’s high-stakes midterm elections, given its central role in processing donations.”
Yesterday afternoon, the White House posted a “fact sheet” about Trump’s order. The order —a “Presidential Memorandum”— directed Attorney General Bondi to investigate and “take appropriate action” about ActBlue’s involvement with squads of straw donors, sometimes called “smurfs,” as well as large numbers of small-dollar foreign donations.
You may recall the story was originally broken by James O’Keefe, and later confirmed via a House investigation.
The House’s investigation was featured in the fact sheet. “A recent House of Representatives investigation,” the fact sheet explained, “found that ActBlue detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns in recent years—nearly half of which had a foreign nexus.” And it said that “numerous state attorneys general have opened investigations into ActBlue over suspicious donations made through obscured identities and untraceable means.”
The smurfing phenomenon was prominently positioned in the memo:
Papa Smurf was unavailable for comment.
I doubt it’s possible to overestimate the Gargamel-sized threat this poses to the Democrat money machine. And money, as they say, is the mother’s milk that makes the political school bus go around and around. Or words to that effect. You get the idea. The best part is that the Democrats have gotten away with it for so long that they got addicted to it, and as Fury Road’s Immortan Joe warned his serfs about getting addicted to water, the danger is that, when the money is not around, “you will resent its absence.”
I’m just a lawyer, neither a political consultant or an elections crimes prosecutor, but it seems to me the most politically damaging way forward is for DOJ to be very deliberate and take its time, making sure it is on all fours before arresting someone, and pushing the clock as close to the 2026 primaries as possible before pulling the plug. As I often say, this is only going to hurt for a very long time.
☕️ SMURF-BLUE ☙ Friday, April 25, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Atlantic blows the lid off mass injury claims—just not how you’d expect; and ActBlue’s probe gets presidential heat, making progressives madder than Papa Smurf when someone paints the mushroom red.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
