Taking a page from authoritarians around the world, Trump is targeting his political opposition with criminal investigations.
Donald Trump issued a memorandum on Thursday ordering the Department of Justice to investigate online political fundraising platforms with the intent of targeting Democratic Party fundraising platform ActBlue.
The memorandum specifically mentions ActBlue while using broader language in ordering an investigation into “online fundraising platforms.”
This is the latest in a series of targeted attacks by Trump against his perceived enemies, including law firms, nonprofits and former government officials. This, however, is the first time that he has taken aim at a part of the machinery of the Democratic Party. It is the clearest effort yet by Trump to use the power of the presidency to destabilize and hobble his political opposition. This follows his actions to eliminate or delegitimize all civil society entities that oppose, or could, oppose him.
Trump ordered the DOJ to open an investigation into whether online political fundraising platforms ― that is, ActBlue ― facilitated contributions by straw donors and foreign donors into the campaign committees of Democratic candidates and party organizations. This follows separate investigations by congressional Republicans and state attorneys general alleging that ActBlue had loose anti-fraud measures that helped facilitate potentially fraudulent donations to Democratic campaigns and organizations, but did not accuse the platform of violating any laws.
Maybe ActBlue did this, but now I know Trump has done it.
We know Eric Adams did something similar with Turkish donors in New York. There was also a ton of reports of this happening during Trump’s first campaign.
Maybe they should also investigate that 2016 (and onwards) intel about Russian interference and backing of far right elections…
Unless this isn’t actually about justice and holding corruption accountable, of course.
Yet technically the dept can go after Republican fundraising platforms… And ignore actblue…
They won’t with Pam at the helm…
Why is it that both Trump and progressives on lemmy want the DNC to not have fundraising?
I don’t see any comments from progressives arguing that this is a good thing or that Democrats shouldn’t have effective fundraising.
I see progressives on here everyday attacking democrats for fundraising.
It’s a bit different criticising a party for courting thinly disguised bribes from oligarchs and plutocrats, and wanting to remove all funding a party.
The comments on here don’t reflect those differences.
What comments specifically? Care to link any of them since you claim to see them every single day?
Oh, okay fair enough. I meant in this comment section in particular.
One of those “we’re not the same” sort of things I wager.
Progressives see the established DNC as the vehicle trump used to get into power and install a fascist dictatorship today. So they’re pretty useless.
They would rather the funds go to progressives than establishment DNCs, as progressives typically fight against shit like this rather than being a part of the neoliberal group like many incumbent DNC leaders are.
Taking down Act Blue is probably not a good idea, but I think progressives are upset that there’s not something like that for less entrenched democratic/progressive candidates to use.
