(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Roughly $700,000 on a luxury retreat. Nearly $3 million on security and $5 million on travel. And about $800,000 in CEO pay.
Those are some extravagant figures at the center of a new report scrutinizing fundraising giant ActBlue under CEO Regina Wallace-Jones.
The organization now faces investigations from the Justice Department and Congress, while also dealing with internal concerns over its finances, management and safeguards against foreign donations.
The scrutiny intensified after Wallace-Jones took over in 2023.
By 2025, ActBlue’s own attorneys reportedly urged her to seek personal counsel after concerns she appeared to have misrepresented the group’s safeguards to lawmakers regarding foreign donations.
A new Wall Street Journal report on Monday detailed the spending and raised fresh questions about Wallace-Jones’s leadership and potential legal exposure.
Months after President Donald Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, ActBlue spent roughly $700,000 on a retreat at the InterContinental San Francisco.
The event included hundreds of hotel rooms, while Wallace-Jones stayed in a two-story presidential suite under heavy security.
Security costs have surged to at least $2.8 million since 2023, compared to less than $16,000 between 2020 and 2022, according to The Journal.
Travel expenses also spiked, with ActBlue plowing through $4.9 million in travel costs since 2023, including $2.7 million in 2025 alone. That’s up from less than $400,000 in 2022.
New policies allow executives and board members to book first-class flights and receive largely uncapped accommodations.
Operating costs followed the same trajectory. ActBlue spent $87 million during the 2024 presidential cycle, up from the $42 million spent in 2020. ActBlue has already spent $72 million ahead of the 2026 midterms.
In a statement, Wallace-Jones defended the changes.
“We have been able to steer the organization from a single-service startup into a diversified technology platform supporting campaign operations well beyond fundraising,” she said. “Change on this scale isn’t easy, but neither is protecting the integrity of small-dollar democracy.”
As reported by Headline USA, concerns over foreign donations date to 2023, when Wallace-Jones told the Republican-led House Administration Committee in a letter that ActBlue used a “multilayered” system.
She also told lawmakers that the group required a U.S. passport number for certain foreign-address donations. However, a leaked letter from law firm Covington & Burling — previously retained by ActBlue — suggested those safeguards may have been overstated. Knowingly false statements to Congress can carry criminal liability.
The DOJ investigation remains ongoing.
