☕️ ACTING UP ☙ Tuesday, April 21, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

ActBlue’s gift-card scandal gets uglier with new Texas lawsuit based on New York Times claims; Fifth Amendment tactics; Kash Patel sues The Atlantic for $250 million for defamation; and lots more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: ActBlue finding out that prepaid-card politics leaves fingerprints; telling timeline of doom for the Democrats’ fund-raising arm; Texas sues using Times’ own ammo; Kash Patel suing The Atlantic after a whisper campaign built from anonymous anti-happy-hour witnesses who somehow couldn’t produce one name, one clip, or one receipt; historical echoes; everybody is acting up.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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Like a frozen meat-lover’s pizza pulled out for Wednesday dinner —right on the C&C midterm schedule, I might add— last summer’s ActBlue “smurfing” scandal has emerged from the deep freeze and is quickly thawing out in preparation to be served. April’s third week has delivered a slew of stories, all bad news for the Democrats’ fund-raising engine. First, yesterday’s Texas Tribune reported, “Ken Paxton sues Democratic donor platform ActBlue.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued ActBlue yesterday under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. He roped them in like a herd of diseased cattle. Officials from ActBlue testified late last year that, in response to viral videos exposing donation fraud, the organization had “stopped” accepting gift cards and burner credit cards. They pinkie-swore that the fundraiser now uses “robust safeguards” to block illegal and foreign donations.

So Paxton’s team tried it out. They waited a couple of months. Then they tried making donations using prepaid credit cards and gift cards. I’ll give you one guess what happened.

Despite all the new “robust safeguards,” Texas investigators were still able to make donations using fake names, gift cards, and prepaid cards, including to the DNC itself and various Texas candidates. Weird! The lawsuit also alleged the platform “allows improper donations from people outside the United States and those who have already hit the mandated donor limit,” in part because prepaid gift cards and similar loopholes bypass identity checks.

Amusingly, the petition argued that ActBlue is deceiving its donors, by falsely advertising that it runs a lawful system compliant with election laws. In other words, and ironically, Paxton is suing to protect Democrat donors. His petition asks the court to fine ActBlue $10,000 per violation —which could add up to a lot— ban it from accepting anonymous payment methods, and lock ActBlue’s lying officials in the Alamo’s stockade for a week of public shaming.

Okay, I added that last one. They haven’t brought back the stocks, and aren’t letting citizens toss vegetables at fraudsters and scofflaws. (They should, though.) But here’s the actual ActBlue timeline, a disturbing tale of creeping doom, which you will enjoy:

• In October 2023, the Republican Congress launched its first investigation into ActBlue’s foreign and “straw” donations

• In December 2023, Paxton launched his own investigation.

• In August, 2024, James O’Keefe published viral “smurfing” videos, in which he went door-to-door while elderly Democrat donors denied they gave large amounts (like $839,000) in sometimes thousands of small donations.

• In late 2024, Paxton passed the problems he found to Biden’s Federal Election Commission, requesting rule changes. (It had the same effect as the proverbial tree falling in the forest when no one’s around.)

• In 2025, President Trump ordered the DOJ to investigate ActBlue, which is ongoing.

• Around the same time, every single member of ActBlue’s legal and compliance team quit, was fired, or went on extended leave.

• Early this month, the New York Times (!) threw ActBlue under the bus, in a long-form exclusive, headlined, “ActBlue May Have Misled Congress on Vetting Foreign Donations, Its Lawyers Warned.”

• One week ago, Politico reported, “House GOP ramps up pressure on ActBlue.” The House Oversight Committee sent new document demands to the fundraiser— based on the Times’ story.

Now, in the same month as the Times’s ActBlue article, Paxton launched his new lawsuit. Get this: Paxton’s lawsuit’s allegations also cited the Times article, which is turning out to be as helpfully influential as I wrote at the time.

Paxton’s suit was just the first thrust in what Democrats probably perceive to be a coordinated attack. In public, Democrats deflected and ducked behind whataboutism. “If Attorney General Paxton and his Republican allies actually cared about donor fraud, they would work to strengthen security standards across the board, including within their own operations, rather than targeting ActBlue,” ActBlue spokeslady De’Andra Roberts-LaBoo said. (I did not make that name up.)

Behind the scenes, Democrats are freaking out. In a parallel story this morning about Paxton’s lawsuit, the far-left Washington Post observed, “The closure or restrictions on ActBlue would be devastating for the Democratic Party and its candidates as they try to regain control of Congress this year and win the White House in 2028.”

Imagine that.

🔥 Yesterday, the New York Post reported, “ActBlue employees took the Fifth in House depositions 146 times in probe on alleged donor fraud.” Not just 146 times. Every time. Five former ActBlue officials took the Fifth on every single question that Representatives asked them. (Ironically, in a recent statement, ActBlue insisted it has “always been forthcoming with Congress.”)

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed five former ActBlue officials —including members of the legal team who had abruptly quit (or were fired) early last year— to testify under oath. Yesterday, every single one invoked the Fifth Amendment—the constitutional prohibition against being forced to testify against yourself, commonly called “self-incrimination.”

Under criminal law, a defendant’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment cannot be used as evidence against them. But under civil law —like Paxton’s Deceptive Trade Practices suit— a Fifth Amendment invocation can establish a presumption of consciousness of guilt, and witnesses can be ordered to testify anyway, unless they can specify which crime they are worried about.

In criminal cases, Fifth Amendment invocation is common, and depending on which side people are on, it is either perfectly harmless and totally natural— or damning. It avoids the question, but it doesn’t do anything to help.

Looking at the timeline, one cannot avoid a sense of dreadful momentum, a mounting signal of pending mayhem. ActBlue obviously played the rules fast and loose, for a long time. Now it’s being attacked from multiple directions— including from inside the progressive house. It probably feels like it got shoved into a dark utility closet with a family of annoyed badgers.

Tick, tock, ActBlue. The prepaid gift card is expiring.

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It’s not like Democrats aren’t trying to fight back. But it’s blowing up in their faces. Last night, NBC reported, “Kash Patel sues The Atlantic over report alleging excessive drinking and absences.” He’s suing them for $250 million dollars. Wait till you hear this story. And hold in your mind the fact that the FBI will be the one making any arrests based on pending Grand Jury indictments or ActBlue investigations. That might be a motive.

Four days ago, the Atlantic ran an exclusive “exposé” originally headlined, “Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job.” The Atlantic stealth-edited the headline yesterday, after Kash sued them. It now reads, “The FBI Director Is MIA,” which is even dumber than the original, because he’s obviously not MIA. He’s right there, suing the pants off you morons.

Anyway. By “Erratic Behavior” that “Could Cost Him His Job,” the story claimed Kash Patel is a notorious drunk. Its author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, further claimed, both directly and through insinuation, that the FBI Director often goes on benders and then fails to show up for work, presumably drying out someplace. Fitzpatrick repeatedly connected this alleged conduct to a “national security crisis.”

What might happen, Fitzpatrick wondered, if there was a terrifying domestic attack and Kash was off lying face down in a gutter somewhere?

Fitzpatrick’s “logic,” if you can call it that, is hard to follow. Was she saying it would be better if a notorious drunk were in the office, and available to lead the response to a terrorist attack? Or would it be better if he was absent and sleeping it off? She never picked a lane.

But far beyond the article’s logical problems were its sourcing problems. C&C readers would have caught this immediately. Fully one hundred percent of at least seventy people claiming Kash Patel is a notorious drunk were anonymous. Over and over, the article cited sources like, “nine people familiar with his outreach,” “two people familiar with the matter,” “multiple current officials,” “two people close to the White House,” and so on, and so forth. No names.

None of 70+ people were willing to go on record. Not one.

🔥 For a bumbling guy who’s supposed to be intoxicated most of the time, Kash Patel sure tweets a lot. Problem is, his tweets don’t show any drunkenness. In fact, he tweeted pretty quickly and rationally about the Atlantic’s dumb hit piece. The same day, in fact. I guess he wasn’t drunk then:

The FBI Director also appears in countless interviews and video clips— far more often than Chris Wray ever did. And reporters follow him around everywhere, hoping for a slip. But I can’t recall a single example of Kash slurring his words or even seeming tipsy on video. Can you?

Given how ubiquitous cameras are in D.C., Las Vegas clubs, and on government trips —and how many enemies and disgruntled subordinates the article itself admits he’s made— the absence of even one leaked clip of him slurring or stumbling is a notable, well, “gap.” Here are the three things you should notice about this “exposé:”

• No hard evidence. The Atlantic article offered zero documents, zero photos, zero videos, and zero logs that could let readers independently verify the allegations of “conspicuous inebriation,” missed meetings, or security emergencies; everything rested on people “familiar” with things. (Apparently, it’s so “conspicuous” that it’s never been captured on a cell phone video.)

• No dates and times. Aside from a few vague references (“early in his tenure,” “on multiple occasions in the past year,” “while on official travel to Italy in February”), the article never connected any of its key allegations to specific dates, times, or locations where an outside observer could cross‑check or rebut them.

• No named complainants. As noted, every single damaging claim about Patel’s drinking, absences, mismanagement, and supposed “national‑security vulnerability” came from anonymous officials, former officials, staff, hospitality workers, or political operatives; not one person was willing to attach their name and job to the accusations.

Compare this story to the New York Times’s exposé on ActBlue, which referenced specific memos, named involved officials, provided dates, and listed the many people (at least by title) that it interviewed. This story is garbage. It is a classic, maximalist, anonymous-oppo narrative dressed up as an investigative feature. It relies only on sweeping character assassination built almost entirely from unattributed anecdotes, asserted patterns, and authority‑signaling phrases rather than a single concrete, verifiable fact.

🔥 An anonymously based story like this is egregious journalistic malpractice. Any FBI Director accumulates countless enemies. It’s part of the job (assuming a director is doing the job). So there’s simply no way to weigh the value of anonymous gripers. It could just be a bunch of gloomy malcontents. Anonymous whispering is cheap.

And for a major news platform, making this kind of career-destroying accusation against a top, sitting official should never be founded on a whispering campaign.

Ironically, as one of the only three quotes defending Patel, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fitzpatrick, “Anonymously sourced hit pieces do not constitute journalism.” He was 100% correct.

Democrats have used this narrative script before. In the 1860s, they mounted a campaign to smear Ulysses S. Grant as a useless drunk. Yet this supposedly “perpetually intoxicated” general crushed the Confederacy, forced Lee’s surrender, and saved the Union. As a “drunk,” Grant then won the presidency— twice. As an allegedly inebriated president, he helped stabilize Reconstruction, fought the early Ku Klux Klan, and presided over the peaceful reunification of a country that had just torn itself apart in civil war, which is even harder than it sounds.

When Democrats and disaffected Republicans once confronted President Lincoln about General Grant’s drinking habits, Lincoln is said to have answered, “Please find out where General Grant gets it, and I will send a barrel of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army.”

Somehow, through the alcohol-induced fog, Kash managed to get a whole lawsuit together and filed in two days— a lawsuit that has muscular legs. If the Atlantic can’t produce any of its anonymous witnesses or cough up more specific evidence that it left out of its own story, it will have serious legal problems. The Atlantic can hide behind journalistic privilege all its wants, and refuse to name its sources. But it must pay for that privilege, and the cost is losing the lawsuit.

Somebody find out what Kash Patel drinks, and send cases of it to the rest of the DOJ. Don’t pay for it with prepaid gift cards, either. And quit acting up.

Have a terrific Tuesday! Return tomorrow morning for another caffeine injection and even more essential news and commentary.

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