ActBlue CEO Will Invoke Fifth Amendment At Congressional Hearing
The chief executive of Democratic fundraising giant ActBlue vowed to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when she appears before congressional investigators on Wednesday morning.
In an op-ed published Wednesday by the Washington Post, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones railed against the ongoing investigations into the donation processing platform, accusing House Republicans of acting in bad faith throughout the probes, which are now in their second year.
Jones was called to testify before the House Administration Committee after a bombshell New York Times report revealed that ActBlue’s lawyers had previously warned Wallace-Jones that she may have misled congressional investigators looking into the platform’s donation vetting practices.
In the Wednesday op-ed, Wallace-Jones insisted that her plan to plead the Fifth before the committee was her only choice, give House Republicans’ plans to “question me about communications protected by attorney-client privilege – confidential communications between ActBlue and its lawyers that play a critical role in our commitment to complying with the law.”
“Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission, or even an insinuation, of guilt,” Wallace-Jones wrote. “It is not a retreat. It is the only reasonable response to a proceeding that from the beginning has been about harassing a political opponent’s fundraising platform, not genuine oversight. Now it has become something far more dangerous.”
The op-ed came just two days after Wallace-Jones’ attorneys sent a letter to the House Administration Committee raising concerns that most of the topics House Republicans intended to question her on violated attorney-client privilege. In turn, the committee issued a formal subpoena on Tuesday requiring Wallace-Jones to appear at the Wednesday hearing.
In an interview with The New York Times, House Administration Committee Chairman Brian Steil (R-Wis.) said that he has “real concerns about the lack of fraud prevention measures at ActBlue.”
“If there’s nothing to hide, there is no reason she should have any concerns about answering these questions,” he said.
–Updated at 9:53 a.m. ET.
