EXCLUSIVE: Less than two months ahead of the presidential election – with concerns of foreign interference again at the forefront – a conservative political group is raising “serious concerns” about millions of donations reported by a major Democratic fundraising platform.
A preliminary computer analysis by the Take Back Action Fund, obtained exclusively by Fox News, has found that nearly half of all 2019 donations to ActBlue were made by people claiming to be unemployed.
Action Fund President John Pudner questioned the veracity of those donations and called it a loophole that must be closed for the sake of election integrity.
“After downloading hundreds of millions of [dollars in] donations to the Take Back Action Fund servers, we were shocked to see that almost half of the donations to ActBlue in 2019 claimed to be unemployed individuals,” he said. “The name of employers must be disclosed when making political donations, but more than 4.7 million donations came from people who claimed they did not have an employer. Those 4.7 million donations totaled $346 million ActBlue raised and sent to liberal causes.”
The trend is continuing this year: An Action Fund examination of 2020 data from January through August showed an uptick in “unemployed” donations through ActBlue, to 50.1% this year.
ActBlue defends the integrity of its donations and said many come from retirees and people who aren’t counted as employed, such as homemakers.
According to the findings of the Action Fund – a nonprofit that aims to “educate the public on conservative solutions for political reform” – 48.4% of ActBlue donations last year, prior to the massive loss of jobs that came with the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, came from those who did not list an employer or who claimed to be unemployed.
Pudner said the large number is a red flag that some donations may be illicit contributions from foreign interests attempting to impact U.S. elections.
“It is hard to believe that at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was less than 4 percent, that unemployed people had $346 million dollars to send to ActBlue for liberal causes,” Pudner said, adding that “4.7 million donations from people without a job … raised serious concerns.”
