Matt DeBergalis had every constitutional right to take the Fifth Amendment Thursday. The ActBlue co-founder and director also had every chance to answer congressional investigators trying to determine whether foreign money and fraud slipped through the Democrat Party's massive fundraising pipeline.
He chose the Fifth.
🚨 BREAKING: ActBlue cofounder Matt DeBergalis just PANICKED and PLEADED THE 5TH in a closed-door deposition with House committee investigators — Fox News
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 20, 2026
This comes after ActBlue is accused of allowing FOREIGN DONATIONS that INFILTRATE US politics for Democrats, without proper… pic.twitter.com/YJihal7YTK
His closed-door deposition before three House committees lasted less than 30 minutes. Investigators wanted answers about ActBlue's fraud controls, possible illegal foreign contributions, and what company leaders knew about weaknesses inside a platform that has moved billions of dollars into Democratic campaigns and left-wing organizations.
From Fox News:
ActBlue is prolific across Democratic campaigns, being used by the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, among others.
Pleading the Fifth Amendment is not evidence of wrongdoing. ActBlue has repeatedly denied running afoul of the law during the course of Republicans’ probe.
The Committee on House Administration, which has jurisdiction over US election laws, first opened a probe into ActBlue in 2023.
Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., accused the group of potentially accepting foreign or fraudulent donations for not requiring a credit card CVV number for contributions.
ActBlue has since updated its donation requirements with a CVV mandate.
A report released by the committees in April 2025 claimed that “ActBlue executives and staff are aware that both foreign and domestic fraudulent actors are exploiting the platform but do not take the threat seriously.”
Pleading the Fifth doesn't make DeBergalis guilty of anything. The Constitution protects him, and conservatives should defend that protection even when the person invoking it works for the other side.
But good grief, look at the pattern.
Before DeBergalis appeared, five current or former ActBlue employees had already invoked the Fifth Amendment 146 times during congressional depositions.
From Rep. Brian Steil:
WASHINGTON – Today, the Committee on House Administration, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a joint interim staff report titled, "Fraud on ActBlue, Part II: Illicit Foreign Donations and a Cover-Up Spur Mass Resignations and Firings on ActBlue's Legal and Compliance Team."
The report details the mass exodus of the Democrat fundraising platform's legal and compliance teams in the months following the 2024 election. The report also reveals that the five current or former employees at ActBlue who appeared for depositions all invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during questioning - for a total of 146 times.
Excerpts from the report read:
"Documents produced pursuant to the Committees’ subpoenas show the collapse of ActBlue’s legal and compliance team in the months after the 2024 election. By March 2025, every member of ActBlue’s legal and compliance team resigned, was fired, or went on extended leave from the platform."
"According to subsequent media reports, this mass exodus was a direct consequence of ActBlue’s failure to deter illegal foreign political donations—which the Committees first uncovered in April 2025—and CEO Regina Wallace-Jones’s previous misstatements to Congress."
"Put simply: every member of ActBlue’s legal and compliance team appears to have left the platform after the 2024 election because of its 'knowing and willful' acceptance of illegal foreign contributions, and the subsequent cover-up."
"The Committees conducted five depositions with key ActBlue fraud-prevention and legal personnel to obtain more information about the fraud-prevention failures detailed in the Committees’ first report and the cover-up detailed here. The employees invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to every single one of the Committees’ substantive questions—146 times in total."
The release of the full staff report comes after the Chairmen sent a follow up letter to Ms. Wallace-Jones last week demanding the organization fully comply with past subpoenas.
ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones repeatedly invoked it during a public House hearing in June. Congressional investigators also identified at least 22 significant fraud campaigns detected inside ActBlue's system. Nine had what investigators described as a foreign nexus.
My spidey sense isn't tingling anymore: it's banging pots together in the kitchen.
Foreign nationals are prohibited from making contributions connected to U.S. elections. Federal law also prohibits knowingly soliciting, accepting, or receiving those contributions. The rule applies to federal, state, and local elections.
ActBlue insists Republicans are conducting a partisan investigation and says its current safeguards are extensive. The organization says its fraud system examines more than 140 factors and now blocks political donations tied to foreign mailing addresses, foreign IP addresses, and foreign bank identification numbers.
ActBlue has been candid and cooperative
We understand our responsibility in this ecosystem. When we say something publicly about how ActBlue operates, it has to be true — for our donors, for the campaigns we serve, and for public trust in small-dollar Democratic fundraising. We do not take that lightly. This is the timeline of events:
- ActBlue voluntarily produced non-privileged documents beginning in May 2025;
- We complied with July 2025 congressional subpoenas — despite legitimate separation-of-powers concerns — and produced additional documents;
- We responded to follow-up requests in October 2025, including proactively disclosing categories of privileged material;
- And we are currently collecting and reviewing documents responsive to the Committees’ two new April 2026 requests.
In 2025, ActBlue also raised a legitimate concern: after President Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the Committees announced they would work “collaboratively” with the DOJ on the same investigation. Congress cannot conduct criminal investigations — that’s a core separation-of-powers principle. We asked the Committees to clarify that relationship and offered to meet. They declined and issued subpoenas. We complied anyway.
That is what good-faith cooperation looks like.
“An entity that voluntarily produces documents, complies with subpoenas, responds to follow-up requests and then hears nothing for half a year has not disengaged from this process or suspended cooperation.” — ActBlue’s response letter, April 2026
Good. Those protections should exist.
Congress still deserves to know why they weren't always there, what got through before stronger controls arrived, and why so many people with firsthand knowledge suddenly become devoted students of the Fifth Amendment when Republicans start asking questions.
There's an old joke that Bill and Henry Clinton could find a loophole in a stop sign. Somewhere along the way, the Democratic fundraising machine seems to have developed the same talent for locating every inch of daylight around a rule.
Maybe everything at ActBlue has a perfectly innocent explanation.
Wonderful.
Put witnesses under oath, produce the records, trace questionable donations, and prove it.
Republicans also need to remember what happens if they lose the House majority. Investigations disappear, subpoenas disappear, and hearings disappear.
Democrats certainly aren't going to spend 2027 investigating the financial machinery that helps elect Democrats.
Keeping the Republican House majority isn't simply about passing President Donald Trump's agenda. Oversight is part of governing, too.
When billions of political dollars are moving through a system and legitimate questions arise about fraud and foreign money, somebody needs to keep asking questions.
Especially when the answers keep coming back:
On the advice of my attorney, I invoke my Fifth Amendment right.
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