President Donald Trump on Thursday at the World Economic Forum called on Bank of America to offer its services to conservatives.
In Davos, Switzerland, Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, asked Trump a fairly vanilla question about his plans for the economy.
Trump ended his remarks by calling for Wall Street’s largest banks to platform conservatives.
“By the way, speaking of you — and you’ve done a fantastic job — but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America,” the 47th president said.
Then, referring to JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon, Trump said, “You and Jamie and everybody, I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives, because what you’re doing is wrong.”
In a statement to Breitbart News, Bank of America spokesman Bill Haldin said, “We serve more than 70 million clients and we welcome conservatives. We are required to follow extensive government rules and regulations that sometimes result in decisions to exit client relationships. We never close accounts for political reasons and don’t have a political litmus test.”
Conservatives, venture capitalists, and cryptocurrency companies have long complained about “debanking,” or losing access to one’s banking services due to the person or group’s commercial activity or political affiliation.
For instance, Dr. John Eastman, a former constitutional law professor and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, said, “So why, pray tell, did you cancel my and my wife’s accounts after I had been a customer for nearly 40 years? And why did you refuse to tell me why?”
Republican attorneys general last year blamed Bank of America for “some of the worst-known instances of debanking.” Bank of America has denied these practices.
Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen made headlines in November on the Joe Rogan Experience when he detailed the federal government’s move to “debank” businesses:
Andreessen on Thursday noted that Trump’ wife and son were debanked, sharing a quote from Melania Trump’s book, Melania:
A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase told Breitbart News in a statement, “We have never and would never close an account for political reasons, full stop. We follow the law and guidance from our regulators and have long said there are problems with the current framework that Washington must address. We welcome the opportunity to work with the new Administration and Congress on ways to remove regulatory ambiguity while maintaining our country’s ability to address financial crime.”
In JPMorgan’s The Unshakeables podcast, Dimon spoke about the debanking issue, largely blaming the federal government for putting pressure on financial institutions to remove accounts of “high-risk” individuals and businesses.
“But where Marc is right is all these examples where they put a lot of pressure on us and they tell us what is high-risk, and if we don’t debank someone and something goes wrong, we can pay hundreds of millions dollars of fines. So, a lot of banks are guessing, like, ‘We should get rid of these people because if we don’t get rid of them, we’ll be fined.’ And you’ve seen that over and over and over,” Dimon said.
Ben Walter, the CEO of Chase’s business banking unit, said the Bank Secrecy Act compels banks to create risk-based and anti-money laundering compliance that flag customers and entities that could have ties to organized crime or other suspicious activities.
This practice of debanking first became commonplace during President Barack Obama’s time in office through Operation Choke Point, which discouraged banks from doing business with gun sellers and payday lenders.
The Biden administration similarly warned financial institutions about the alleged risks of working with the crypto industry.
According to supervisory letters obtained by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase via Freedom of Information Act requests, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) pressured banks to debank crypto companies.
The Blockchain Association, a crypto trade group, said it has identified more than 30 instances of debanking in the crypto industry.
Republicans and Trump are now moving to investigate and end the practice of debanking.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said his committee will investigate these practices, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) announced a February 5 hearing on debanking.
Scott said in a statement Friday:
Debanking is un-American – every legal business deserves to be treated the same regardless of their political beliefs. Unfortunately, under Operation Chokepoint 2.0, Biden regulators abused their power and forced financial institutions to cut off services to digital asset firms, political figures, and conservative-aligned businesses and individuals. This is unacceptable.
As Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, I look forward to working with President Trump, industry leaders, and members of both parties to stop these abuses.
In his executive order on Thursday calling for American leadership in digital financial technology, Trump called for “protecting and promoting fair and open access to banking services for all law-abiding individual citizens and private-sector entities alike.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
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