When you donate money to Black Lives Matter, does the Democratic Party get a cut?
It’s a claim that has gone viral on social media. Several people wrote the VERIFY team asking us to find out if it’s true.
The Instagram post claims “donations to Black Lives Matter website go directly to the DNC” and that blacklivesmatter.com “appears to be an international money laundering program used by the Democratic National Committee.”
Joshua, Cheryl and Arron saw it and asked the VERIFY team, “Does the money raised for the BLM movement go directly to the Democratic Party?”
We have three sources for this.
- The Black Lives Matter Foundation
- ActBlue, the charity that provides the online donation platform
- Michael Malbin, a professor of political science at the University at Albany and director of the Campaign Finance Institute
“Our first reaction was that either somebody doesn't know what he or she is speaking about or the poster is trying to make a cheap political shot for the sake of it—for the sake of making a political point that has no basis,” Malbin said.
Different versions of the post have surfaced.
One on Twitter claims ActBlue is funneling a portion of the donations made to BLM to the Democratic Party.
“If this charge were true, that you could take money that's being given for one purpose and have it transferred without your knowledge to another, that would put ActBlue out of business immediately,” Malbin said.
Black Lives Matter took to Twitter to “debunk conspiracy theories” about the donations.
ActBlue issued a statement saying, in part, “This is entirely false. When you donate to Back Lives Matter through ActBlue Charities, your donation goes to Black Lives Matter. The same is true for any candidate or organization you donate to using ActBlue or ActBlue Charities. Every donation on our platform is made by an individual, choosing where their money goes.”
So, we can verify these claims are false.
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