By Nate Raymond<\/p>\n
BOSTON, May 1 (Reuters) – Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday in an effort to block the Republican from pursuing \u200cinvestigations and litigation against it as part of what the lawsuit calls an unlawful retribution campaign.<\/p>\n
ActBlue’s \u200clawsuit in federal court in Boston asked a judge to prevent Paxton from moving forward with a separate case \u200bhe filed last month that accused it of misleading Congress and the public about its donation practices.<\/p>\n
“Paxton’s decision to use his government office to target ActBlue with legal sanctions as retribution for its protected speech and political association is an affront to the Constitution and must not be tolerated,” ActBlue’s lawyers \u200cwrote.<\/p>\n
Paxton’s office did not respond to \u2060a request for comment.<\/p>\n
SEVERAL REPUBLICAN-BACKED INVESTIGATIONS<\/p>\n
His lawsuit against ActBlue stemmed from one of several Republican-backed probes into the organization, which President Donald Trump last year \u2060had directed the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate along with other online fundraising platforms.<\/p>\n
Paxton’s lawsuit, which was filed on April 20 in a state court in Texas, seeks financial penalties and to block ActBlue \u200bfrom \u200bpermitting donations on its platform via gift cards and \u200bprepaid debit cards.<\/p>\n
He alleged such payment methods \u200cenable fraudulent donations by concealing a donor\u2019s true identity, allowing for improper contributions from people outside the U.S. The lawsuit said ActBlue has continued to process gift card donations despite saying in 2024 it would cease doing so.<\/p>\n
In Friday’s lawsuit, the Massachusetts-headquartered group called the case an example of the conservative attorney general using his authority to intimidate and harass political opponents in violation of \u200cthe free speech protections of the U.S. Constitution’s First \u200bAmendment.<\/p>\n
ActBlue said the Texas case is rife with “false and \u200binflammatory allegations,” saying that its investigators’ efforts \u200bto use gift cards on its platform were repeatedly rejected by its automated \u200ctools.<\/p>\n
It accused Paxton of targeting it as \u200bretaliation for its support \u200bfor Democratic candidates. Since its founding in 2004, ActBlue has helped raise $19 billion for Democratic candidates and causes.<\/p>\n
They include Paxton’s Democratic opponent in his current campaign for the U.S. Senate, \u200bJames Talarico, according to the \u200clawsuit. It said that after Talarico announced raising more than $2 million in 24 hours \u200bthrough ActBlue, Paxton, the next day, dispatched investigators to start a case against ActBlue.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Nate Raymond in BostonEditing by Rod Nickel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nate Raymond BOSTON, May 1 (Reuters) – Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101981,101982,1967,27,4479,29,28],"class_list":["post-275448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-actblue","tag-democratic-fundraising","tag-ken-paxton","tag-texas","tag-texas-attorney-general","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}