ActBlue’s Own Lawyers Sounded Alarm Bells About Illegal Foreign Contributions
'not just as a false statement but as an effort to conceal'
Several super PACs linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee reportedly poured over $20 million into multiple House primary races in Illinois in hopes of advancing favored candidates or at the very least kneecapping candidates critical of Israel.
Some of the groups' investments paid off.
'There’s no gray lines as it relates to their beliefs.'
For instance, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller — a beneficiary of nearly $4.5 million in ad spending from the AIPAC-linked group Affordable Chicago Now — defeated former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in the Democrat primary for the state's 2nd Congressional District.
In the Democrat primary for the 8th Congressional District, former Rep. Melissa Bean, another beneficiary of spending by an AIPAC-aligned group, also came out on top, beating Junaid Ahmed, a leftist whom AIPAC faulted for centering "his campaign on attacking Israel."
However, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, a candidate who ran in the 7th District Democrat primary to replace retiring incumbent Rep. Danny Davis, turned out to be a bad investment.
With 90% of the votes in, the Associated Press called the race for state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat with a history of tax fraud who secured 23.9% of the total vote. Conyears-Ervin, one of only handful of candidates who said in a WBEZ-FM survey that she did not oppose sending U.S. military aid to Israel, trailed behind with 20.5% of the vote.
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The United Democracy Project, an AIPAC super PAC established in 2022, poured nearly $5 million into positive ads for Conyears-Ervin, reported Politico.
Austin Weekly News reported that the AIPAC group's intervention in the race was criticized by many of the other 13 candidates, including Ford, who was backed by the retiring incumbent.
"I’ve also had meetings with the very people that’s spending this money," said Ford. "They want you to say 'yes' to everything that they have requests for. There’s no gray lines as it relates to their beliefs. It’s a yes or no. … 'Don’t have a conversation, that this is what we want. We want you to vote with us in Washington 100% of the time, and we want to control our member,' and that’s what this is about. And I refused that type of relationship."
Ford suggested further last month that "this money dwarfs, or tries to dwarf, the voice of the voters in the 7th Congressional District, and it would tell you immediately who this candidate will be beholden to. Follow the money."
Kina Collins, one of the leftist candidates defeated on Tuesday, said last month that it was "not going to help [Conyears-Ervin's] case that AIPAC is backing her."
While AIPAC's support may have negatively affected Conyears-Ervin's chances, she also had plenty of baggage. For instance, she reportedly agreed in September to pay a $30,000 fine to resolve charges brought by the Chicago Board of Ethics.
Conyears-Ervin, an ally of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), was accused of misusing city resources and retaliating against whistleblowers — allegations she denies, reported WTTW.
Conyears-Ervin's race was among the Illinois primaries regarded as a test for AIPAC. The lobbying group characterized the night as a win overall, however, stating, "Illinois voters rejected half a dozen anti-Israel candidates across several heavily Democratic open-seat races. These results further demonstrate that campaigns defined largely by opposition to AIPAC, our members, and the values we represent continue to fall short on election night."
The group added, "Although Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin did not advance, AIPAC congratulates State Representative La Shawn K. Ford on his win. The pro-Israel community is proud to have helped defeat Kina Collins, who has voiced anti-Israel views over multiple election cycles."
Ford — who was indicted on 17 counts of bank fraud but ultimately pleaded guilty in 2014 to only a single misdemeanor charge of tax fraud — will face off in the general election with Republican nominee Chad Koppie, a farmer and retired Delta Airlines pilot whose "main goal is trying to ban abortion."
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The White House, federal regulators, and Congress are scrambling to develop a national approach to artificial intelligence. Yet almost no one is examining AI from an ethical or civil-society perspective. Policymakers frame it as an economic or national security issue. Those angles matter. But the deeper question — what it means to live in an AI-dominated world inside a constitutional republic — remains almost entirely unaddressed.
AI is already reshaping our political life, our civic discourse, and our education system. One of the clearest windows into this shift is the outsized influence of Wikipedia and Reddit. Large language models like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini consume a training diet heavy on both sites. AI systems don’t “know” anything in a human sense. They mirror patterns. And the patterns they ingest come from platforms run by anonymous editors, ideological moderators, and unaccountable gatekeepers.
No special-interest group today is fighting for Americans who will soon live in a world saturated with AI slop.
The Oversight Project examined the underbelly of this problem, beginning with Wikipedia. After noticing what looked like coordinated ideological editing campaigns, we sought to understand who was shaping the platform. What we found was a small, powerful cadre of editors with the authority to dictate what information is permitted. These editors operate anonymously — or so they believed.
We identified several of them and, more tellingly, where they were editing from. Some connections were foreign. Others showed activity that aligned with a 9-to-5 workday. It was clearly inorganic. That raised obvious questions: who pays these people, who coordinates them, and whether intelligence services are involved.
The most aggressive coordination appeared on politically sensitive topics, especially anything involving Israel or the Arab world. Automated tools tracked and reverted edits across thousands of pages to enforce a narrative. When Wikipedia realized we were mapping these networks, it panicked. To protect anonymity, the platform changed its internal rules to obstruct outside scrutiny. Then it retaliated by downgrading us to “deprecated” status — a ban in all but name. Anything sourced to us became unacceptable on the site.
We are sounding the alarm because foreign actors and domestic ideologues understand the power of controlling Wikipedia’s information flow. Our own intelligence agencies almost certainly understand it as well. In a recent interview, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger told me that intelligence services would be negligent if they were not influencing the platform.
Sanger also expressed regret about founding Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales, noting that like so many other institutions, it has been conquered by the ideological left and turned into a political instrument, a shift made even more consequential in the age of AI.
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This is where the danger becomes unmistakable. Most people treat Wikipedia and Reddit cautiously when browsing the internet, aware of the bias. AI does not. When you ask an AI system a question, it generates polished, authoritative-sounding answers built from those same sources — stripped of context, caveats, or transparency. What appears neutral is often laundered opinion.
This information-laundering must become part of the national conversation about AI. Some policymakers seem to understand the stakes. The Senate Commerce Committee has sent oversight letters and plans a hearing. The House Oversight Committee has signaled similar interest. Even Ed Martin, former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has demanded information from Wikipedia.
But the truth is blunt. No special-interest group today is fighting for Americans who will soon live in a world saturated with AI slop. There is plenty of lobbying in Washington for everything except preserving an honest information ecosystem. Without intervention, public knowledge will be shaped by opaque networks of foreign actors, ideological activists, and machine-driven amplification on a massive scale.
Policymakers must recognize what is at stake and act before the architecture of public knowledge is fully captured. The future of AI — and the future of democratic self-government — depends on it.
Why does the story of Jeffrey Epstein matter so deeply to the American right? Why does it persist, years after his death, as a source of outrage, fascination, and dread? Why is the call to “move on” met with such visceral resistance?
The answer lies in what Epstein’s case reveals. It is not merely the record of one man’s depravity or even the scale of the crimes committed. It is a window into a concealed architecture of unaccountable power, intelligence protection, institutional rot, and elite impunity. For many on the right, it confirms long-standing fears about how power in the United States is really organized and who it is designed to serve.
These questions strike at the heart of an older conservative concern: Who governs? And who is permitted to ask?
These concerns are hardly new. They are the very ones that helped elect Donald Trump, and they have shaped conservative criticism of the American regime since the New Deal. The Epstein affair provides a rare glimpse into the soft underbelly of the administrative state. At some point, moral clarity demands that we stop parsing and start acting. This is a time to strike, to “fire for effect.”
From the expansion of the federal bureaucracy under Franklin D. Roosevelt to the postwar rise of the national security state, conservatives have warned about the merger of government power with private influence. The most dangerous feature of that merger is not the bureaucracy itself, but the consolidation of authority among entrenched intelligence services, elite financial networks, and foreign-aligned interests. These actors operate in close coordination, beyond democratic oversight, and with the consistent protection of institutional power.
Epstein is valuable because he exposes that structure in plain sight. He had no obvious source of legitimate wealth. His hedge fund, insofar as it existed, had only one known client. Yet, he moved in elite circles, befriended presidents and princes, and maintained access to corporate titans and scientific institutions.
Most disturbingly, Epstein appears to have operated a long-standing sexual blackmail network. The question is not merely how he got away with it, but who allowed him to do so.
The answers are deeply unsettling. The FBI curtailed its investigations. The CIA has remained silent. The media showed little interest and declined to pursue the story in any depth. Meanwhile, the possible involvement of foreign intelligence services (especially those operating through figures like Leslie Wexner) has been treated as politically untouchable. This refusal to investigate is not born of ignorance or oversight. It is protective behavior. It signals that the wrong people are implicated.
Even if one adopts the minimalist position, that Epstein was not a formal intelligence asset, the implications remain staggering. Why would a known predator be permitted to operate so openly, with so many connections to power? Is the American state unable or unwilling to act when the guilty hold the right kinds of passports or relationships? Have we reached a point where elite networks are simply beyond reach, shielded by layers of shared interest and mutual compromise?
These questions strike at the heart of an older conservative concern: Who governs? And who is permitted to ask?
RELATED: The White House will need to do plenty more to get past Epstein

Epstein’s case offers a rare and ugly answer. What it uncovers is not a fever dream of conspiracy but an observable mode of governance that relies on secrecy, compromise, and shared immunity. It appears that intelligence actors have conducted operations not only abroad but also inside the United States, targeting the American elite itself. An immoral country condones sexual blackmail as a mechanism of influence and protection, integrated into a broader system of control ... ironically an indication of a country spinning out of control.
One can find instructive parallels in the operations of Israeli intelligence during the 1980s and 1990s. Under the direction of Mossad officials such as Efraim Halevy, Israel conducted systematic surveillance and developed personal leverage over Syrian elites. These methods included financial inducements, covert recordings, and exposure of private behavior. Such tactics are common in international espionage and are recognized tools of statecraft.
What makes Epstein so alarming is the apparent use of similar techniques within the United States, directed inward rather than outward. The uncomfortable possibility is that foreign intelligence services (including Israeli cutouts operating through figures like Wexner) were not merely bystanders, but active participants or beneficiaries of the Epstein operation. That possibility remains largely uninvestigated, not because it lacks merit, but because it threatens established political alignments.
Wexner’s history as a major donor to Republican candidates is one example of how these relationships complicate any honest inquiry. For a sitting senator or rising intelligence officer, confronting these questions comes at great cost.
This story is not important only because of the criminal sexual behavior it contains. That abuse, particularly of underage girls, is monstrous and demands full exposure and justice. But Epstein’s operation mattered at a higher level because those crimes were used to build networks of control. They were not incidental. They were instrumental. This is the cold logic of espionage deployed inside a supposedly self-governing republic.
RELATED: The conspiracy theorist is the last honest man

For the political right, Epstein represents a grim vindication. The warnings about politicized intelligence services, compromised elites, and foreign impunity were long dismissed as paranoia or fringe thinking. Yet, the details of this case suggest those warnings were not only plausible, but understated.
Consider the unequal application of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Consider the way domestic allies are hounded while foreign-aligned actors operate with impunity. Consider the cultural message that those with the right credentials and connections will never face consequences. Epstein’s story reveals the inner wiring of a regime that no longer pretends to serve the citizen, only itself.
Was Epstein a direct employee of a domestic or foreign intelligence apparatus? I highly doubt it. My best guess is he was a very well-connected money launderer with a psychopathic lack of empathy who was therefore the perfect tool for intelligence gathering and manipulation. He operated in the open, however, and was criminally harmful to some of the most vulnerable U.S. citizens. But we have seen how little citizenship means in the modern internationalist cosmopolitan soup.
Efforts to bury this story are morally callous and institutionally suicidal. Each attempt to suppress, ignore, or discredit the legitimate questions raised by the Epstein case erodes the remaining credibility of the agencies involved. The denial becomes confirmation. The silence becomes testimony. The cover-up increases the criminality, the offense to the American people.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) warned in his farewell address of a rising military-industrial complex. But the deeper danger he identified was the fusion of state power, private capital, and unaccountable influence. Epstein should be understood as a grotesque product of that fusion. Refusing to confront it will not preserve institutional authority. It will ensure its collapse.
In the end, the Epstein story is not simply salacious. It is foundational. It forces a reckoning with how the American regime truly operates and what moral and political compromises have become routine. That is why so many are eager to see it buried.
And that is precisely why it must not be.
In June, Texas Patriot, a prominent anonymous account supportive of President Donald Trump, announced during the height of tensions with Iran:
F**k it. If Trump takes us to war, I’m done with him and his administration.
I voted for:
NO WARS
No taxes
Cheap gas
Cheap groceries
MAHA.
What of these things has actually happened?
I’m pissed.
This message from a popular pro-Trump account seemed significant. Was Trump’s populist base turning on him?
In our current world, however, where plausible fake engagement can be created at an almost limitless scale, true anons will lose a great deal of their power.
But shortly thereafter, Right Angle News, another popular anonymous account, asserted that Texas Patriot was actually based in Pakistan. Yet another popular anon account contested this, saying that Texas Patriot is really an American originally from Texas who now lives in Georgia. Notably, most other major accounts weighing in on the controversy, from Proud Elephant to Evil Texan, are themselves anonymous, adding further to the hall of mirrors.
Either way, Texas Patriot deleted its own account shortly thereafter, perhaps suggesting that he or she had something to hide — or at least didn’t want the scrutiny.
The question of whether Texas Patriot is, in fact, a patriot from Texas or a bad actor in Islamabad is ultimately beside the point. As Newsweek wrote of the incident:
Social media has proved useful for galvanizing the MAGA movement, with popular accounts often reacting to political developments from Trump’s feud with X owner Elon Musk to Trump’s policy agenda. If it emerged that an account alleged to be American was actually based in another country, it would impact users’ trust.
And such trust is rapidly eroding, which will accelerate as ever more sophisticated fake accounts and bot farms are exposed.
The incident was just one of many in which major social media accounts were discovered — or at least suggested — to be run by someone far different from who they were purported to be. And it previews a shift that is just now beginning, which will fundamentally change how we interact with social media content.
When it comes to who will rule social media, the age of the anon is ending. The age of radical transparency is beginning — and yet, if designed well, radical transparency can still include a substantial and valuable space for a large degree of online anonymity.
Several reasons explain the shift. Increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence models and bots generate outputs that, in many cases, are already almost indistinguishable from humans. For most users, they will soon become fully indistinguishable (a fact confirmed by multiple studies that have shown that most people have a poor ability to tell the difference between the two). And almost certainly, bots guided with even a minimum of human interaction will become indistinguishable from actual humans.
Many of my best friends have had anon accounts. A few are still prominent anons. It’s also noteworthy that almost every prominent ex-anon I know personally, whether doxxed or self-outed, dramatically improved their profile and professional opportunities once they were no longer anonymous.
I am not anti-anon, however. I understand why some people, especially those expressing opinions well outside of the mainstream, need to be anonymous. I also acknowledge that anonymity has been a crucial part of the American political tradition since the revolutionary era. An internet that banned anons would be an internet that is much poorer. This is why the biggest current anon accounts will be grandfathered into the coming system of radical transparency, as they have actual operators who are known to enough people that they are recognized as genuine.
I know several big anon accounts like this. I don’t know who is running them, but I have multiple offline friends I trust who do know the account holders and vouch for them. Accounts of this kind, with credible, real-world validation, will continue to have influence. But increasingly, new big anon accounts will be ignored, even if they amass a large number of followers (many of whom are fake).
As these ersatz accounts become increasingly sophisticated every day, engaging with the truly real becomes ever more important. Fake videos and photos proliferating on social media merely add to the potential for deception.
Even accounts run by real people will not be immune to the age of radical transparency. Some are partially or wholly automated — a way for a “content creator” to maintain a cheap 24-hour revenue stream. In the future, if you want to have influence, mechanisms will be in place to prove not only that it is you who are posting but that you are posting content that is authentic, with a proven real-world point of origin. Some have even suggested using the blockchain as a method of validation.
There should be a simple way of blocking the worst AI slop accounts, foreign bad actors who post highly packaged clickbait, or those who shamelessly steal content made by others. Most Americans would probably prefer not to engage with unverified foreign accounts when discussing U.S. politics. Certainly, I would be willing to pay for a feed that only showed me real, verified accounts from America, along with a limited list of paid, verified, and non-anonymous accounts from other parts of the world.
I am interested in having discussions with real people about real content and the real opinions they have. I want accounts mercilessly downrated if they produce inauthentic content presented as real. I want accounts downrated that regularly retweet unverified slop. If X, or any other online platform, can’t consistently provide that, I’ll look elsewhere — and so will many others.
My desire for authenticity is not a left-wing attempt to police “disinformation” — that is, whatever the left doesn’t want said. It’s far more serious. It’s not about getting “true” facts but a feed that is filled with actual people producing their own content representing their own views — with clear links to the sources for their claims.
Anonymity has, naturally, always been accompanied by a slew of problems: It can lead to echo chambers or aggressive exchanges, as users feel less pressure to engage rationally.
The lack of personal stakes can escalate conflict, which is amplified by AI. Modern AI can generate thousands of unique, human-like posts in seconds, overwhelming feeds with propaganda or fake news. The increasing influence of state actors in this fake news ecosystem makes it even riskier.
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Anonymity also emboldens individuals to act without fear of repercussions, which often has downsides. The online disinhibition effect, a psychological phenomenon first described by psychologist John Suler in 2004, suggests that anonymity reduces social inhibitions, leading to behaviors individuals might avoid in face-to-face settings.
Everyone has met the toxic anon online personality who turns out to be quite meek and agreeable in person. One friend of mine who had an edgy online persona eventually closed her anon account (with tens of thousands of followers) and recreated her online presence from scratch as a “face” account. Her tweets are no longer as fun or spicy as they had been, but her persona is real — and presents who she really is. And she eventually landed a great public-facing job, partly based on the quality of her tweets.
Anons could play a leading role in the old social media world where bots were mostly obvious, and meaningful provocations were, in large part, created by real people through anonymous accounts. In our current world, however, where plausible fake engagement can be created on an almost limitless scale, true anons will lose a great deal of their power. They will be replaced as top influencers by those who are willing to be radically transparent.
Truly transparent identities should include verifiable information, such as email addresses, phone numbers, or government-issued IDs for account creation. While such information does not need to be publicly shared, it should be given to the social media company connected to the account.
Raising the barrier for AI-driven impersonation, while not foolproof, deters malicious actors, who must invest significant resources to create credible fake identities.
For anons unwilling to trust their private information to one of the major online platforms, third-party identity verifiers dedicated to protecting user privacy could carefully validate their identities while keeping them anonymous from social media companies. Such third-party brokers themselves would have their prestige checked by the accuracy of their verification procedures. This method would still allow for a high degree of public anonymity, bolstered by a backend that guarantees authenticity.
In the future, pure online anonymity will not be banned — nor should it be. But in the coming age of radical transparency, a truly anonymous account — one whose owner’s real-world identity is neither known within i own trusted circles nor verified by a reliable third party — will have little to no value.
The next internet age will value not just what you say, but more importantly, that others know you are the one who is saying it.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally in The American Mind.
A foreign-based website referred to as the ICE List is exposing the names and photographs of dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers amid a 413% increase in assaults against agents since President Donald Trump began his second term.
The website states that it is a "crowdsourced database of individuals involved in deportations, ICE operations, and associated abuses."
'I never thought we'd see international journalists launch a similar project for the US.'
It claims to obtain information about ICE agents from public sources, including social media profiles and news coverage, and that it does not publish private data, such as home addresses or personal contact details.
In addition to exposing known ICE agents, it also lists unidentified officers whom the site has accused of "assault and kidnapping," presumably referring to the arrests of foreign nationals who are unlawfully in the United States.
The database's stated goal is "transparency and public accountability," and it claims it "does not support harassment, doxxing, or any illegal activity."
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DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Blaze News, "This is not an 'independent media group.' These are thugs."
"We will prosecute those who doxx ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law. These criminals are taking the side of vicious cartels and human traffickers. We won't allow it in America," McLaughlin added.
The controversial "open journalistic project" was created by the Crustian Daily, a Substack account that claims to publish "plainspoken breakdowns of complex political topics." The journal celebrated the release of Mahmoud Khalil, accused President Donald Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution by striking Iran, and argued that ICE is a "modern Gestapo."
A June 14 article from the Crustian Daily titled "We're Building a Database of ICE Identities, Here's Why" contends that "fascists are terrorizing the population" and "fighting back is a community effort." The article argues that the ICE database is "not harassment" because it does not "encourage threats."
While no author is listed on the Substack, its footer credits Dominick Skinner, who, according to his Bluesky and LinkedIn accounts, appears to be based out of the Netherlands.
Skinner and the Crustian Daily are linked to a website called Crustianity, which parodies Christianity by "celebrat[ing] pizza" while claiming it is "as real as any other" religion. It describes its debt for sin as "punching a Nazi."
As of Friday morning, the Crustian Daily's ICE list was taken offline, but apparently only temporarily.
A Threads post from the journal explained, "Our web host has terminated the hosting for the ICE List. Likely a request from the US government. Moving to a more trustworthy host as we speak."
The Crustian Daily continued to encourage individuals to submit information about law enforcement officers while the site is down.
"New ICE List website should be up by the end of today, tomorrow at the latest," a separate post read. "The US government may have set us back by about a day, But they've gone and made us more determined than ever."
Despite evidence of a Netherlands base — indicated by Skinner's social media accounts, the Crustianity website selling rainbow "Punch Nazis" shirts in euros, and hosting meetups exclusively in the Netherlands — the ICE List and the Crustian Daily try to appear to be U.S.-centric organizations, reinforced by their focus on American immigration issues and omission of international ties.
'Together, we can fight fascism in the USA.'
A comment to Newsweek from Andrew Fels, an attorney at Al Otro Lado, seemed to confirm that the ICE List is not run by anyone based in the United States.
"This kind of open source counterintelligence is common in conflict zones around the globe, particularly against security forces deemed unaccountable or suspected of human rights violations. But I never thought we'd see international journalists launch a similar project for the U.S.," Fels told the news outlet.
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Blaze News contacted the ICE List to confirm its association with Dominick Skinner, clarify the operational base of the website and the Crustian Daily, and address concerns about whether the list could exacerbate the reported 413% surge in assaults against ICE officers.
An individual identifying only as "Dominick" declined to answer these questions directly. Yet his response continued to echo rhetoric mirroring American political debates.
"Hmm, I would expect some questions on the state of the country, after Trump unleashed ICE on the people of the USA, the fear put into the hearts of American citizens, the damage done to US democracy, and indeed, the legality of these acts, under both domestic law and international humanitarian laws," Dominick wrote. "As you should be aware, we want a database that can be relied on in courts, we want to match the crimes committed, to those committing them. And, just like with the Nazis, and as laid out by international law, we don't believe that 'just following orders' is an excuse."
"I do not believe you're reporting with good intentions, based on the one-sidedness of the questions," he stated, declaring that he would reply to the questions only on the condition that Blaze News send another "fair and even" list of inquiries.
Underneath Dominick's signature, it read, "Together, we can fight fascism in the USA."
Less than an hour later, Dominick sent a follow-up email accusing Blaze News of attempting to "make a threat" and "not request for comment."
"If your intentions are what you claim they are, the only way of me answering questions, is in a back and forth, where you answer my questions," Dominick wrote. "I'll treat further failure to respond as a rejection of that request, and inform my community of your lack of bravery on this topic, and a confirmation that you intended on passing on a threat."
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