On a Saturday morning last year, several of ActBlue’s lawyers and executives gathered on a video call to discuss a sensitive matter with the fundraising platform’s president and CEO.
A review by an outside law firm had raised questions about whether the organization had always taken the steps to stop illegal foreign contributions that Regina Wallace-Jones had told Congress it had.
Wallace-Jones was urged to alert ActBlue’s board of directors about a potential legal vulnerability. But according to people with familiar with the discussion, Wallace-Jones flatly rejected the idea.
“I refuse to let you go to the board with this information,” she said, according to one person.
The confrontation led to the rapid departure of several key ActBlue employees and a chain of events that reverberates through Democratic campaigns more than a year later. It has given new life to probes by Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have sought to cast ActBlue as a conduit for foreign money.
