The US president recently said that JPMorgan and Bank of America refused to service his accounts
The administration of former US President Joe Biden pressured some of the country’s biggest banks to sever ties with Donald Trump, the New York Post reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources.
Speaking to CNBC earlier this week, Trump said that JPMorgan had told him he had to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, and that Bank of America declined to accept the funds when he attempted to transfer them. Trump did not elaborate on the timing or circumstances, but the Post, citing anonymous sources, has reported that the events possibly occurred after he left office in 2021.
According to the outlet, the banks were pressured by the White House in response to Trump’s role in the January 6 Capitol riot, which occurred on the day Congress was set to certify Biden’s victory. At the time, Trump insisted that the election had been “stolen” from him by the Democrats.
“Think back to what it was like being Trump back in 2021; he was a hot potato after January 6 and the regulators made it clear to us that we shouldn’t do business with him,” an unnamed banking executive told the newspaper. A JPMorgan official said that regulators “put the fear of God in you if you did business” with people like Trump.
According to the report, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the country’s Federal Reserve scrutinized financial institutions under rules requiring them to weigh reputational risks tied to their clients. Critics have previously accused US banks of discriminating against conservatives and cryptocurrency-linked businesses, under those guidelines.
The Wall Street Journal also reported this week that the Trump administration had prepared a draft executive order aimed at penalizing banks that engage in such “de-banking” practices. The order could be signed by the president as soon as this week, the paper said.
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