‘Something Is Not Right’: Wisconsin Judge Approves Subpoena to Leftist Fundraising Site ActBlue in Fraud Case

A Wisconsin judge has approved for the first time a subpoena to the leftist fundraising platform, ActBlue, after a Republican strategist claimed his email identity was stolen to make liberal donations.

When approving a limited demand for documents, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad D. Schimel said, “Something is not right,” Just the News reported Tuesday:

Schimel rejected ActBlue’s arguments that it was onerous to require it to comply a subpoena for third-party donations it processed on its platform. The judge permitted GOP consultant Mark Block and his lawyers from America First Policy Institute to conduct discovery to determine if fraud was involved in the use of his identity to make dozens of Democrat donations on his old email address.

“I get the argument that this is an assumption on plaintiff’s part that the donations are fraudulent,” the judge stated in a hearing Nov. 21. “There may be an element of fraud or maybe it is innocent. Plaintiff has set forth enough in their complaint and in support of their subpoena to demonstrate that there may be something here.”

Block is a former chief of staff for Republican 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain, the New York Post reported in October.

He alleged that “a total of $884.38 given in his name and without his knowledge between May and October was designed to circumvent federal election law and may be part of a larger scam involving tens of thousands of unwitting donors,” the article read:

“Block describes the scheme as ‘smurfing,’ a form of money laundering that involves breaking up large-scale campaign donations into smaller amounts to disguise the real donor and allow the bypassing of contribution limits,” the Post stated.

Executive Director of the Center for Litigation at America First Policy Institute Mike Berry told Breitbart News exclusively, “We are very pleased with the progress we have made in this case and we will continue to fight to ensure that this type of criminal activity does not influence our elections.”

In September, Republicans serving on the House Oversight Committee began investigating ActBlue for “potential fraud” connected to donations that went to candidates’ campaigns, per Breitbart News. The outlet noted that ActBlue is the Democrat National Committee’s (DNC) donor platform.

“As Breitbart News has previously reported, at the beginning of August, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares raised concerns to ActBlue over ‘suspicious’ donations that had been made in ‘volumes’ that seemed to be ‘facially implausible,'” the report said.

The case is Block v. Doe, No. 2024-cv-29 in the Circuit Court of Waukesha County, Wisconsin.