In brief
- Trump sued JPMorgan and CEO Jamie Dimon for $5 billion, claiming he was debanked for political reasons after January 6.
- The Trump administration has embraced the crypto industry’s claims that big banks locked out certain customers under Biden.
- But the president previously told Decrypt that he blamed the Biden administration for such actions, not the banks themselves.
President Donald Trump sued Wall Street giant JPMorgan for $5 billion on Thursday, claiming in a Florida lawsuit that the company debanked him and his businesses for political reasons.
The legal action, against both the bank and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, follows threats the president made on Saturday to sue JPMorgan for “incorrectly and inappropriately debanking me after the January 6th protest, a protest that turned out to be correct for those doing the protesting.”
In the lawsuit, Trump’s attorneys claim JPMorgan Chase decided to close the president’s accounts in early 2021 “as a result of political and social motivations, and JPMC’s unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views.”
“While we regret President Trump has sued us, we believe the suit has no merit. We respect the President’s right to sue us and our right to defend ourselves—that’s what courts are for,” a JPMorgan spokesperson told Decrypt.
“JPMC does not close accounts for political or religious reasons. We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company,” they said. “We regret having to do so, but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so. We have been asking both this Administration and prior administrations to change the rules and regulations that put us in this position, and we support the Administration’s efforts to prevent the weaponization of the banking sector.”
The Trump family has long claimed that it was shut out of America’s top banks following the events of January 6, 2021, and the end of Trump’s first presidential term. They have also said those events were a key motivator behind the family’s eventual embrace of crypto as an alternative financial system with fewer gatekeepers.
President Trump’s first extensive comments on the subject of debanking came last June, in response to a question from Decrypt.
“I can tell you, because I’ve been a victim myself, because of my politics, that big banks were very nasty to us,” Trump said at the time, speaking from the Oval Office. He went on to lay blame for the issue on the Joe Biden administration, not bank executives.
“If the Biden people order the banks to be virtually closed, they can do anything they want. The regulators control the banks,” Trump said. “It’s not the president of the bank. The president of the bank is far less important to a bank than a regulator, and a regulator can put that bank out of business.”
Trump’s new lawsuit, however, puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of JPMorgan’s leadership for declining to do business with the Trump family.
A few weeks after Trump made those initial statements about debanking, he signed an executive order in August directing federal banking regulators to adopt policies to prevent debanking related to political views—and also, related to crypto.
“The digital assets industry has […] been the unfair target of debanking initiatives,” the order said.
Crypto leaders have long claimed they lost access to traditional banking under the Biden administration, and alleged the federal government orchestrated a secretive plot, dubbed “Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” to keep the industry cut off from basic financial services.
Debanking has long been a core issue uniting crypto advocates and the president’s family.
Federal banking regulators under the current Trump administration have adopted explicit policies to address crypto leaders’ concerns about debanking.
Editor’s note: Adds comment from JPMorgan spokesperson
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