The chief executive of ActBlue, whose lawyers warned her that she might have misled Congress about how the Democratic fund-raising organization vetted its foreign donations, invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer questions from a Republican-led House committee on Wednesday.
Over and over, the chief executive, Regina Wallace-Jones, declined to engage with questions from Republicans on the House Administration Committee. She had agreed to appear on Wednesday morning to discuss the committee’s investigation into the operations of ActBlue, which serves as the small-dollar financial engine of the Democratic Party and its candidates.
She invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify 22 times in response to questions from House Republicans, including when Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia asked whether she went by Ms. Wallace-Jones or Ms. Jones.
The Democrats at the hearing posed no questions to Ms. Wallace-Jones but instead attacked WinRed, the Republican fund-raising platform, and Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Senate nominee who has mounted his own investigation of ActBlue.
Ms. Wallace-Jones became a target of the House Republican investigation in April, when The New York Times reported that ActBlue’s lawyers had warned her that she might have misled Congress about how ActBlue vetted its foreign donations. For weeks, she had been in negotiations about how much she is willing to say about ActBlue’s internal discussions.
ActBlue has grown to become the dominant Democratic fund-raising platform, building a donor database with millions of credit card numbers. Nearly 23,000 candidates and groups used the site in 2025, ActBlue has said, raising almost $1.8 billion from 52 million contributions.
Federal election law prohibits foreign citizens or people who are not permanent residents from donating directly to federal candidates or political action committees.
In a video posted online earlier Wednesday, Ms. Wallace-Jones was defiant and sought to rally Democrats to support her.
“Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission or even an insinuation of guilt,” she said. “It is the only reasonable response to a highly partisan proceeding that is about harassing its largest political opponent’s fund-raising platform.”
Democrats at the hearing criticized the Republican effort to investigate ActBlue.
“This hearing is part of a political vengeance and vendetta campaign,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
The Republicans at the hearing posed a series of questions to Ms. Wallace-Jones about ActBlue’s operations, vetting practices and personnel decisions. She declined to answer them during the 65-minute session.
In an interview after the hearing, Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, the committee’s chairman, said he still hoped that ActBlue would provide more documents he had requested and that ActBlue board members who have been asked to appear for interviews behind closed doors would cooperate with the committee. He dismissed Democratic concerns that the committee was working to aid a separate Justice Department investigation ordered by President Trump.
“I don’t know if ultimately ActBlue will provide information to the Department of Justice that they didn’t provide to us,” Mr. Steil said. “I think the best scenario is ActBlue provides answers to all of our questions and provides the documents that we’ve requested.”
In an exchange of letters this week, Ms. Wallace-Jones had signaled that she might not be as cooperative as House Republicans hoped.
She would not, her lawyer wrote, discuss memos that The Times reported on from ActBlue’s previous law firm, Covington & Burling, that detailed inconsistencies in what Ms. Wallace-Jones said in a 2023 letter to Congress and how the organization operated. She would also not get into the resignations of ActBlue’s own legal and compliance staff or how ActBlue handled screening of overseas donations or its antifraud protections, the lawyer wrote.
At the heart of the House Republicans’ investigation into ActBlue is reporting from The Times that detailed how Covington’s lawyers warned ActBlue in early 2025 that Ms. Wallace-Jones might have misled Congress in a 2023 letter explaining its vetting of donations from other countries.
The committee has gleaned little information from a group of former ActBlue employees it has compelled to testify about the organization’s internal workings. Five former ActBlue officials have refused to answer more than 160 questions during interviews conducted behind closed doors. Ms. Wallace-Jones was to be the first ActBlue official to appear at a public hearing.
ActBlue has long maintained the Republican-led congressional investigation is a political witch hunt. A document circulated to allies on Tuesday called the Wednesday hearing “political retribution” and asked Democrats to ask questions about WinRed, the leading online fund-raising platform for Republican candidates.
Democrats on the House panel said on Wednesday that they would seek documents and testimony from WinRed, though they have little authority to enforce such a request while Republicans hold the House majority.
ActBlue’s lawyers and Ms. Wallace-Jones have long maintained that she did nothing wrong. In April, Ms. Wallace-Jones and other ActBlue officials blamed Covington for what she called “more than a year of navigating tardiness, unpreparedness, and counsel that bordered on malpractice.”
A Covington spokesman declined to address ActBlue’s specific claims about its representation.
