Source: Patriot Post | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
It all started innocently enough, as our Douglas Andrews recounted last week: an offhand remark in a speech President Donald Trump gave remotely days after his inauguration to the bigwigs camped out at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
As Andrews put it:
After answering [Bank of America CEO Brian] Moynihan’s question about GDP growth and inflation, Trump said this: ‘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. … They don’t take conservative business. And I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of [Joe] Biden or what, but you and Jamie and everybody, I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong.’“
With that mic drop, President Trump returned an ugly truth, at least for many conservatives, to the fore. At the tail end of Trump’s first go-round back in 2020, he attempted to establish a new Fair Access Rule that would protect “politically disfavored businesses” and people from losing their relationships with their bank without cause.
Trump’s rule came in response to an Obama-era diktat called “Operation Chokepoint,” which targeted businesses as varied as payday lenders, firearm dealers, and other entities thought to be potentially involved in money laundering. All the while, Obama was turning a blind eye to the multiple LLCs associated with his second-in-command. Although the Obama administration was more famous for siccing the IRS on Tea Party groups, this was just another way that it targeted conservatives.
Trump’s Fair Access Rule only lasted a few weeks before the Biden administration rescinded it in 2021, leaving victims like Melania and Barron Trump without a bank account from their preferred financial institution. Once the Biden rules were in place, banks found the excuse of blaming the “stringent regulations currently in place” and the heavy fines initially enacted by the Obama administration for making them once bitten and twice shy. “We could be fined to death” for noncompliance, said one banker.
Things weren’t going to be kept under wraps forever, though. The ball began rolling shortly after the election when podcaster Joe Rogan interviewed investor Marc Andreessen, who claimed on the podcast that over 30 founders of crypto and other companies had been “quietly debanked” by the Biden administration. Naturally, media outlets brushed off this claim, but it came back when Trump made his Davos remarks.
Even better, it was followed quickly by a new House investigation.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer has announced a new probe into what he termed “apparently politically motivated debanking” of those 30 founders and others, including the Trumps.
Debanking “disrupts their ability to manage money and pay their employees on time,” explains Jack Kelly at Forbes. “It creates barriers to entry in the tech industry out of fear, potentially reducing competition and limiting innovation. The act of debanking sends a troubling signal to the market, investors and potential partners, suggesting possible risks or compliance issues. This perceived risk can significantly damage the company’s reputation and erode investor confidence.”
It’s not likely to occur right away, but as Trump, the leverage expert, demonstrated, there is more than one way to put pressure on a recalcitrant entity; just ask Colombia, Mexico, Canada, and thousands of formerly remote federal government employees. Banks will want to start working with all customers regardless of political persuasion before Trump gives them an offer they can’t refuse.
