U.S. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus announced on Thursday he was asking the Department of Justice to investigate the online fund-raising of President Barack Obama's re-election.

Priebus sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday demanding probe of the Obama campaign's "troubling pattern of behavior" in fund-raising which could violate campaign laws by accepting online donations from foreigners.

"The President's campaign committee does not use the industry standard practices to guard against receiving fraudulent or excessive contributions via the internet," Priebus wrote in the letter.

Priebus's letter and request followed a report published earlier this week by the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative political watchdog group.

The report alleged that the current online campaign contribution system lacks accountability and transparency, and that the Obama campaign lacked rigorous screening for donors' citizenship and failed to impose basic e-commerce safeguards, such as requiring donors to provide the three-digit Card Verification Value code on back of a credit card.

Under U.S. federal election law, contributions from foreign nationals to presidential campaigns are forbidden.

"This new report suggests that the President's campaign did not take the appropriate measures to correct for the vulnerabilities uncovered during the previous election cycle, in which reports surfaced that the president's campaign accepted a large number of excessive contributions and contributions from donors using fake names, suggesting a pattern of questionable behavior that is troubling," Priebus wrote to Holder.

The Obama campaign released a statement, saying the campaign had not accepted "donations from foreign nationals or any other ineligible individual" and the campaign "voluntarily goes above and beyond Federal Election Commitments to ensure the integrity of fund-raising efforts."

The Obama campaign said the watchdog's report was the latest in a "pattern of peddling bogus news."

"The allegations made by Government Accountability Institute ( GAI) are more reflective of the group's politics than any grain of truth," said the Obama campaign, adding that even the group's chairman and president had "strong Republican ties."

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