Did Thomas Jacob Sanford of Burton Michigan, who was identified as the Grand Blanc, Michigan LDS church shooter, regularly donate to the American Democratic Party ActBlue political action committee? No, that's not true: A screenshot circulating on social media shows Federal Election Commission records of donations made in 2025 from several people named Thomas Sanford, but none of them are from Michigan. The FEC database does not show any political donations from Thomas Jacob Sanford of Burton, Michigan.
The screenshot was posted by @WhiteBoySpicy in a reply (archived here) to a post on X on Sept. 28, 2025. The post was captioned:
Thomas Jacob Sanford donated to Act Blue regularly. That all these liberals have is smears. No sound reasoning, judgement or principles.
This is the screenshot from the FED database included with the post:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/WhiteBoySpicy/status/1972453171638444397.)
Although slightly blurry, the above screenshot appears to be authentic and unaltered. Lead Stories searched the FEC database with no filters other than the name Thomas Sanford, and received the same results as were posted by @WhiteBoySpicy (pictured below). There are even more results than pictured, but for comparison, only the fourteen lines which appear above are included below. . The contributions listed were from people residing in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Idaho. Most of the contributions are not to ActBlue. They are donations to the political action committee for Jeff Bezos' aerospace company: Blue Origin.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/.)
Lead Stories also searched the FEC database for any contributions made between Dec. 31, 2015 and Dec. 31, 2026 by a Thomas Sanford or Sanford in Burton, Michigan or any of the three Burton zip codes, 48509, 48519, or 48529. The image below shows "No data available in table"
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/.)
According to the website voterrecords.com, Thomas Jacob Sanford registered to vote in Genesee County, Michigan on July 24, 2017. There is no party affiliation listed -- Michigan voters do not register by party affiliation.
