ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis pleaded the Fifth Amendment on Thursday during a closed-door deposition before three House committees, cutting off questions after less than half an hour. saw him entering and exiting the committee room within roughly 25 minutes.
The deposition put a name and a face on an investigation that has moved steadily from document requests to direct questioning. The Committee on House Administration, the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee are examining allegations that lax fraud prevention standards may have allowed foreign donations to seep into U.S. campaigns, and DeBergalis was scheduled to appear Thursday morning as part of that joint probe.
ActBlue has become central to Democratic fundraising, with figures including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed among those who use the platform. The House Administration Committee first opened its probe in 2023, and Chairman Bryan Steil accused ActBlue of potentially accepting foreign or fraudulent donations because it did not require a credit card CVV number for contributions.
That detail matters because it is one of the few concrete changes ActBlue has made under pressure. The platform later updated its donation requirements to include a CVV mandate, but it has continued to deny wrongdoing while Republicans kept pressing the case. In April 2025, the committees released a report saying ActBlue executives and staff are aware that both foreign and domestic fraudulent actors are exploiting the platform but do not take the threat seriously.
The gap between those findings and ActBlue’s response has only widened with each new round of testimony. Earlier in 2026, the platform’s current CEO also invoked the Fifth Amendment during a public congressional hearing, and DeBergalis’s refusal to answer questions shows the committees are now getting the same wall of silence from the company’s co-founder. What he was asked, and what he declined to say, has not been made public.
