☕️ NO COMMENT ☙ Friday, August 21, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

ActBlue co-founder takes the Fifth; corporate media says nothing; debt crosses $40 trillion and Bessent says something; FBI seizes Swalwell's devices and he says nothing too.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Time flies. The week is almost done, and next week will wrap up August. Your TGIF roundup includes: ActBlue's co-founder takes the Fifth while corporate media takes the day off; the national debt cracks $40 trillion and the Vice President assures us there's a plan, which is a secret; the DOJ requests a friendly chat with the FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago; and the FBI relieves Eric Swalwell of his phone. Nobody, anywhere, had anything to say about any of it.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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News blackout alert! Yesterday, only a handful of conservative platforms reported this fascinating Fox story: “ActBlue co-founder pleads Fifth Amendment in closed-door House GOP grilling.” Nothing in the NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, or the rest, which is odd, because you would think they’d at least cobble together a spirited “retaliation” or “political persecution” narrative, compare it to the Fauci case, or something. Well, that’s fine! Their silence lets me choose the frame: we are now entering the everybody’s taking the Fifth stage.

Yesterday, ActBlue’s founder and Co-Director Matt DeBergalis appeared before Congress to help clear up misunderstandings about the Democrat fundraising platform’s security procedures. So he helpfully took the Fifth Amendment, refused to answer a single question from lawmakers, and counted the minutes till he could flee the chamber with his small herd of lawyers. In other words, the Ouchie Fauci strategy!

Matt Margolis is a minor deity in the “tech bro” pantheon and obviously a pretty partisan guy. The institutional fable goes that Matt once ran for Boston city council while he was an engineering student at MIT in the early aughts. According to the story, he became so frustrated at trying to manage small donations that he sat down, shotgunned 26 Red Bulls, and created ActBlue Version 1.0 in a paroxysm of progressive bonhomie.

Yesterday, Matt became the sixth ActBlue official to take the Fifth. On June 10th, the committees hauled in ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones. She invoked the Fifth Amendment 22 times and declined to answer any questions from Republican members— including what name she goes by. The Hill:

According to a committee report, by the time Matt sat down in front of the microphones yesterday, five current or former ActBlue employees who gave similar depositions had collectively invoked the privilege 146 times, refusing every substantive question.

In other words, nobody’s talking. In order to properly invoke the Fifth, a witness must hold a good-faith belief they are at risk of criminal prosecution. In some of my cases, judges have grilled parties who took the Fifth, asking what exactly do you think you could be prosecuted for?

Apparently, everybody involved in running the Democrats’ main fundraising platform thinks they could be criminally charged. Weird! Is it just me, or does it seem like a whole lot of Democrats suddenly worry they could be charged with crimes?

In an interview with Fox yesterday, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan said the fundraising giant “took 40-some million dollars that came into ActBlue from foreign origins.” That, my friends, is called election interference. And you know what that means: insurrection.

🔥 ActBlue’s universal non-cooperation was unsurprising, on-brand for Democrats these days, and barely more newsworthy than the Oneida story about some miscreant tossing a chicken into a children’s playground. Fifth Amendment? Yawn. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. But Fox’s story accidentally buried the lede.

See if you can catch the real story as it shoots by. Fox reported: “The Committee on House Administration, House Oversight Committee, and House Judiciary Committee are conducting a joint investigation into ActBlue over allegations that lax fraud prevention standards may have allowed foreign donations to seep into U.S. campaigns.”

Catch that? Three separate House committees are concurrently running joint ActBlue investigations. The House Administration Committee (CHA) enforces federal election and campaign finance laws. Oversight can investigate virtually anything that could be subject to legislation or regulation. Judiciary hauls in the DOJ, FEC, and other law-enforcement agencies that pursue criminal conduct.

Let’s connect the dots. From CHA’s website, we learn they’ve also been feeding a pipeline of evidence to five red-state attorneys general since 2024:

That is an investigative pincer movement, not a routine committee inquiry. We are talking about a massive, coordinated effort to get ActBlue.

At the least, it seems fair to describe ActBlue as a high-priority item for this Republican Congress. All the obvious activity is what makes corporate media’s silence so surprising. It would be trivial for media to frame this coordinated effort as a politically motivated witch hunt against the minority party’s critical fundraising infrastructure, as some committee Democrats complain.

So, where are all the once-inevitable “revenge!” stories, the hysterical denunciations of selective political prosecution, and the parade of indignant Democratic operatives? Imagine all the salty quotes the New York Times could easily line up. If it wanted to.

Democrat members of the committees keep complaining in the official record, but the broader political and media ecosystem has kept the volume turned mysteriously low. The retaliation narrative is obvious; yet it has not caught fire.

Maybe it’s because ActBlue’s own leadership is not giving its defenders much usable material by taking the Fifth all the time.

Or, maybe nobody wants to climb out on a branch while it is being sawn off.

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Yesterday’s stack delivered some good news for debt hawks. The Hill reported, “Vance: Bessent has ‘very discreet plan’ to shrink $40 trillion national debt.” That would be super helpful.

Last night, Vice President JD Vance told Newsmax, “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has had a very discreet plan, of course, supported by the president of the United States, to get the United States to a point where our economy is growing faster than our debt.”

Most of us think about the $40 trillion US debt figure, if we think about that painful subject at all, as literally inconceivable. You might as well say “one thousand million billion dollars.” Not even Rain Main can count that high. I doubt AI could do it.

Yesterday, Secretary Bessent told Squawk on the Street co-host Sara Eisen, “There’s nothing magic about the $40 trillion number, and we can grow our way out of that.”

That does sound a little odd. If the debt were divided among US residents, it would amount to $115,000 per person. Divided by tax returns, it’s $240,000 each. By household, it climbs to $305,000. I don’t know about you, but without magic, it’s hard to imagine how my household will “grow itself” out of $305K in debt. Maybe steroids.

The Congressional Budget Office —the nerds who crunch the numbers— projects a $1.9 trillion deficit this year, rising to $3.1 trillion by 2036. Those ‘deficits’ are the shortfall between estimated tax receipts and planned expenses. That sounds like a lot.

Which explains why some conservatives are extremely exercised about the debt, so the fact that Secretary Bennet at least says he has a plan should be reassuring. I’m not any fan of debt, but I do hold a credential (a B.A. in Economics), and I once slept in a hotel next to a Holiday Inn Express.

Here’s the counter-argument. I’m not endorsing it, so don’t roast me in the comments. I’m just telling it to you. The eye-watering $40 trillion sounds like a lot, but it is “only” 133% of GDP— the nation’s annual income. Most American households —like any with a home mortgage or student debt— carry more debt than that, when measured against their annual incomes.

The other defensive argument you’ll often hear is that, since the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, there’s not really any material consequence (apart from inflation) of carrying a large debt. This is correct. It is like saying true, I owe a lot of money, but I also own the bank.

Debt hawks dismiss these arguments and point to mandatory annual interest payments on bonds consuming ever greater proportions of the federal government’s budget, a trend that seems unsustainable, in the same way that even “low interest” student loan payments can eventually become unaffordable.

Put simply: something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

This may not be immediately obvious, but it is unsurprising that Bessent would be “discreet” about his debt-reduction plan. If Treasury leaks its schemes, investors will scramble to best-position themselves, which creates what economists call “market distortions.” So here, as ever, discretion is the better part of valor. Frustrating, but uncontroversial.

Thus, the “news” was pretty thin— somebody said something. But, between the two quotes, we at least can see that the President, Vice-President, and Treasury Secretary have a plan, and it is almost certainly more substantial than just “grow our way out.”

And even that thin promise is 1,000 times more concrete than anything Democrats have offered.

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How about an accountability update? I have two stories for you. Yesterday, Reuters reported, “DOJ seeks to question FBI officials tied to search of Trump Mar-a-Lago estate, sources say.” I’m not betting any spousal vehicles the Fifth Amendment won’t soon be involved.

According to “multiple people familiar with the matter,” DOJ investigators have requested voluntary interviews with FBI officials involved with the 2022 search of President Trump’s Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago. This was enough, apparently, to generate a sandstorm of media hysteria.

Reuters said the requests came from an investigation started earlier this year under Joe diGenova, “a Trump ally.” Mr. diGenova, 81, is a former Trump campaign lawyer who worked on the 2020 election cases. So.

NBC said diGenova is working with U.S. Attorney Jason Quiñones of the Southern District of Florida, and the effort splits time between a Miami grand jury and a second grand jury in Fort Pierce. That second grand jury in Fort Pierce sits under U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who dismissed the classified-documents case against him in 2024.

Critics, including Lawfare Media, have focused on the admittedly ‘unusual step’ of establishing a second grand jury only 130 miles from the first one in Miami, especially since it is in Judge Cannon’s courthouse.

The investigation sprouted from a House Judiciary referral of former CIA Director John Brennan over his 2023 congressional testimony about the Steele dossier’s role in the RussiaGate scandal. Last month, the Miami Herald reported that Brennan’s lawyers complained the office had been “weaponized” by diGenova’s team, which is now also examining whether Brennan and other Obama/Biden-era officials violated Trump’s rights by pushing investigations of him both after his 2016 win and 2020 loss. CBS, earlier this week:

Since the interviews are voluntary rather than subpoenaed, legal experts speculated that, by examining conduct that occurred specifically in Florida, such as the Mar-a-Lago search, the DOJ may be trying to establish the jurisdictional anchor needed for any eventual prosecution in Florida.

I see it as a little bigger.

Requests for ‘voluntary’ interviews seem to me like a first step. See who wants to talk. A voluntary witness provides the best evidence. In round two, DOJ can offer immunity in exchange for testimony— the prisoner’s dilemma. Those witnesses are slightly less useful, because they can be challenged by defense lawyers who ask pointed questions like you only said that so you could get immunity, right?

Then, in round three, you issue subpoenas to hostile or reluctant witnesses, who won’t be as forthcoming as witnesses in the first two groups. These are more likely to resist by, say, invoking the Fifth Amendment. Ahem.

What nobody outside the DOJ knows is whether any of this is limited to former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and the rest of the crew, or part of a mushrooming case into the attempted overthrow of the U.S. government.

All I can tell you is that, while Brennan and Comey did their best to compartmentalize everything, muddy their movements, and hide their activities behind legal devices of various kinds, it seems unlikely a grand jury of average Americans will agree this kind of thing was “law enforcement as usual.”

That’s even without considering the old maxim, “Any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.” Somebody leaked this. My guess is that the DOJ’s requests for voluntary interviews got back to Brennan and Comey, who are inveterate leakers.

The bottom line: the wheels of justice are turning. Those wheels grind slowly but inexorably. And the people whose hands are on the wheels are the people guilty Democrats least want to be turning them.

But wait. There’s more!

🔥 It seems like just the other day (it was) that I blogged about how Eric Swalwell was driven out of Congress and the California governor’s race in a single day by a new ethics committee investigation. Well, Eric, you didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? Yesterday, CBS reported, “FBI seizes Swalwell’s devices, executes search warrants in sexual misconduct probe.” He just got the Mar-a-Lago treatment. Payback is a (you know what).

No criminal charges or even a formal investigation were announced, so the searches took everyone by surprise. Here’s the timeline from various public reports. On Saturday, FBI agents snagged Swalwell as his plane arrived in San Francisco. They seized his iPhone and MacBook Pro. The next day —Sunday— FBI agents executed a second search warrant and tossed Swalwell’s DC residence (his second home).

Media quickly found the case, but the search warrant and related affidavit are sealed. “Sources” suggest the charges relate to possible violations of 18 U.S.C. § 242, deprivation of rights under color of law. That charge is usually associated with abuse of governmental power. Swalwell’s storied history is a target-rich environment. There’s no telling what they might be looking at. The mind boggles.

🔥 The Mercury News noted that a search warrant is a major step, since a California judge had to be convinced there was “probable cause” to believe a crime was committed:

Remember— Eric was in the news on Monday (hence my prior report) because FBI Director Kash Patel (through the White House) released declassified documents on the FBI’s investigation into Swalwell, regarding his alleged relationship with suspected Chinese spy ‘Christine’ Fang over ten years ago.

I don’t know about you, but I find the timing hard to chalk up to coincidence. Weekend—search warrants executed. Monday— declassified docs dumped.

Were they trying to tell us something? Was it a political move to insulate the White House from claims of “weaponization” for searching Swalwell? Who knows.

Swalwell is no bit player. He was a seven-term Congressman, a Democrat fixture on the House Intelligence Committee, one of the House impeachment managers during Trump 1.0, ran for president in 2020, and was the leading candidate for governor in November’s elections. He was winning. In early April, Swalwell polled at 18%, with Republican Steve Hilton second at 17%.

It’s not just a federal investigation either. Eric faces his own little polycrisis. As the New York Times explained, “Mr. Swalwell is also facing investigation based on accounts from his accusers by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state investigators in Los Angeles.” Those cases involve “me-too” allegations including sending unsolicited romantic messages and nudes, and in one case, rape.

The Times slyly hinted that the me-too cases were politically motivated by Eric’s gubernatorial run but … he’s not running anymore. And it’s not likely the DOJ is working those cases since, as The Times helpfully noted in the subheadline, “Most sex crimes are prosecuted by state and local authorities.”

Major outlets have requested comment, but Eric isn’t feeling chatty. The AP said it left a message with his lawyer, and the Times said that Swalwell had “not responded to inquiries at the time of publication.”

What salacious stuff do you imagine they might find on his devices? It occurs to me that the DOJ just acquired years’ worth of political communications from a top Democratic congressman. Meaning that everyone important who texted or emailed him is spending time thinking carefully and searching their own devices for what exactly did I say?

In related news, California progressive and “Bernie” Democrat Aisha Wahab (Afghan-American) won the special election to fill Swalwell’s House term, which ends in January. She’s running in November to snatch a full two-year term in Eric’s seat.

Swalwell’s seat just went to a Bernie progressive who reportedly beat millions in AIPAC money. The Democrats aren’t just losing Eric. They’re replacing him with the opposite. Chalk another one up for the DSA wing.

Meanwhile, Eric Swalwell is spending his time today marking his criminal defense attorneys in his new phone’s ‘favorites’ list. Eric Swalwell couldn’t praise the FBI any more highly after it searched the former president’s residence. So what can he say now? One suspects he’s musing about that famous Sir Thomas Moore quip: “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, the laws all being flat?”

Although I cannot fathom why, some conservatives on X are still complaining that “nothing ever happens.” But there is a whole lot happening. So much, in fact, that it’s become impossible to keep up with.

I’ve never had a better blogging problem than that. That is my comment.

Have a fabulous Friday! Come back tomorrow morning for your Weekend Edition roundup of essential news and caffeinated commentary.

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