President Donald Trump condemned Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan over the company’s debanking practices against conservatives.
Speaking during the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) meeting, Trump said, “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 complained that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank and that included a place called Bank of America.”
“They don’t take conservative business, and I don’t know if regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and [J.P. Morgan Chase CEO] Jamie [Dimon] and everybody, I hope you will open your banks to conservatives, because what you are doing is wrong,” he said.
Bank of America released a statement on the matter, asserting they “welcome conservatives.”
“Bank of America serves more than 70 million clients and we welcome conservatives. We would never close accounts for political reasons and don’t have a political litmus test,” the company said.
Last year, fifteen Republican attorneys general sent a letter to Moynihan, alleging that the company is debanking religious and conservative customers.
Bank of America “appears to be conditioning access to its services on customers having the bank’s preferred religious or political views,” the attorneys general wrote.
The letter said the company’s “discriminatory behavior” is a “serious threat to free speech and religious freedom, is potentially illegal, and is causing political and regulatory backlash.”
By debanking customers, the company is “exposing itself to numerous legal risks” and is “opening itself up to potential legal liability under consumer protection and antidiscrimination laws, and creating substantial regulatory and political risk from states that are already taking action to stop de-banking.”
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently told Joe Rogan that the Biden administration has weaponized financial institutions to debank entities politically opposed to the White House’s agenda.
“This is where the government and the companies get intertwined,” Andreessen explained. “And back to your fascism point, which is there’s a constitutional amendment that says the government can’t restrict your speech, but there’s no constitutional amendment that says the government can’t debank you, right? And so, if they can’t do the one thing, they do the other thing. And then they don’t have to debank you. They just have to put pressure on the private company banks to do it. And then the private company banks do it because they’re expected to. But the government gets to say, ‘We didn’t do it. It was the private company that did it.’”
