Trump Acts To Protect Conservatives

Last week, President Donald Trump charged that after he left office in 2021 the two largest American banks rejected him as a customer, reinforcing claims that conservative clients were being unfairly denied accounts. The focus on financial services and debanking is a new development for the Trump administration although the policy is something long sought by conservative activists.

Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in a wide-ranging interview that JPMorgan Chase informed him he had 20 days to move “hundreds of millions of dollars in cash” to another bank. The president said he then approached Bank of America to “deposit a billion dollars-plus” and was told the bank couldn’t provide him an account, Trump said. Mr. Trump eventually placed his deposits in a variety of smaller banks.

He didn’t say exactly when this happened. However, it is known that the President was debanked from the payment processor Stripe following the Pelosi-facilitated riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

For political conservatives, the political abuses by the Internal Revenue Service, via Operation Chokepoint, by financial institutions or private social media companies are nothing new, but now finally, the issue of cancel culture is finally getting the attention it deserves. Americans need access to the financial system in order to prosper and when they are quietly canceled by financial institutions, the harmful impacts are felt by impacted households.

In response to the demonstrated discrimination against conservatives, and perhaps influenced by his own personal experience, President Donald Trump on Aug. 7 via executive order directed federal departments and agencies to take on debanking by financial institutions, which deny access to checking accounts, payment processors and other financial services due to political grudges and other viewpoint-based discrimination that has taken place against small businesses and individuals – including a prominent billionaire once and future President.

In the analysis of our friend Robert Romano, Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government presented in an article for the Daily Torch, the President’s order directs the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) to act to end political and other unlawful discrimination in banking.

The agencies must “remove the use of reputation risk or equivalent concepts that could result in politicized or unlawful debanking, as well as any other considerations that could be used to engage in such debanking, from their guidance documents, manuals, and other materials (other than existing regulations or other materials requiring notice-and-comment rulemaking) used to regulate or examine financial institutions over which they have jurisdiction.”

According to Mr. Romano, the order applies to all financial institutions subject to regulations by those departments and agencies, and will include rescinding or amending existing regulations that make debanking possible under the current framework: “The Federal banking regulators shall also consider rescinding or amending existing regulations, consistent with applicable law, to eliminate or amend any regulations that could result in politicized or unlawful debanking and to ensure that any regulated firm’s or individual’s reputation is considered for regulatory, supervisory, banking, or enforcement purposes solely to the extent necessary to reach a reasonable and apolitical risk-based assessment.”

This is a sea change in financial regulation, noted Romano, but much still depends on the strategy that will be laid out by Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent who will “develop a comprehensive strategy for further measures to combat politicized or unlawful debanking activities of financial regulators and financial institutions across the Federal Government, including consideration of legislative or regulatory options to eliminate such debanking.”

That’s a fairly wide mission, and the analysis will undoubtedly have to consider whether existing laws go far enough to prevent political discrimination in financial services, or if civil rights laws need to be updated to reflect the times and financial technologies that all citizens need to thrive in today’s digital-based economy.

As Mr. Romano pointed out, particular attention will need to be given not just the FDIC-insured and SBA lenders, but also the very thorny issue of payment processors, whose control over who gets to charge credit cards is the nexus of the financial cancel culture monopoly that must be addressed. Also, look at how diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) standards were imposed on financial institutions via Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing and other policies led directly to the cancelations.

This is long overdue. Now, Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) has announced he has introduced legislation to make permanent President’s Trump Executive Order guaranteeing free and fair access to banking for all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs. 

The legislation Barr introduced to codify the Executive Order prohibits banks from denying services based on political or religious views for legally operating businesses. Some of the most targeted businesses and individuals of debanking in the past include:
 

• Firearms manufacturers and dealers legally operating under federal law
• Cryptocurrency firms facing account closures and restrictions without legitimate cause
• Energy companies, including coal and natural gas producers, cut off for not fitting a progressive ESG narrative
• Christian nonprofits, including one providing care to orphans and victims of sex trafficking, whose accounts were shuttered
• President Donald Trump who was debanked by multiple banks following his first-term despite consistently being on the Forbes billionaire list and having great credit.
• Ambassador Sam Brownback, the former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, whose personal account was terminated by a major bank without explanation.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has introduced similar legislation in the Senate to curtail the weaponization of federal banking agencies by eliminating the ability for regulators to use reputational risk as a component of supervision. The American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, the Financial Services Forum, the Blockchain Association, and the Online Lenders Alliance have all endorsed the bill. Organizations representing industries that have been debanked, including the ATM Industry Association, the INFiN Alliance, the National Pawnbrokers Association, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, as well as a coalition of 26 state financial officers, also voiced their support. 

We call upon Congress to pass the legislation introduced by Representative Andy Barr and Senator Tim Scott. The Capitol Switchboard is (202-224-3121), call your Representative and Senators today to demand he or she co-sponsor and vote for the Fair Access to Banking Act and the FIRM Act.
 

• Trump administration
• financial regulation
• Robert Romano
• Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent
• Payment processors
• Rep. Andy Barr 
• Trump executive orders
• banking for all Americans
• Firearms dealers
• energy companies
• Christian conservatives
• debanking
• Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott
• Fair Access to Banking Act 
• FIRM Act

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