The Federal Government Colluded with Big Banks to Censor Americans: ADF

Religious Freedom,

Recently our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom discussed how official documents indicate the federal government colluded with big banks and other financial institutions to censor Americans.

Congressional investigations show that after the events of January 6, 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department gave banks and other financial institutions guiding “typologies” — patterns that could be used to identify suspicious people or activities — including search terms and patterns like “TRUMP” and “MAGA.”

The government also encouraged financial institutions to comb through transactions for terms like, “Bass Pro Shops,” “Cabela’s,” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods” when looking for “Homegrown Violent Extremism.”

In a recent video interview about this issue, ADF’s Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement, Jeremy Tedesco, said,

You’re buying guns, you’re shopping at Bass Pro Shops, you’re buying religious texts, you’re giving to religious nonprofits. Under the Biden Administration, you could become [labelled] a domestic violence extremist.

Family Council has written repeatedly about how financial institutions may censor conservative Americans. In 2021 our credit card processor that helped handle our donations terminated our account after designating Family Council as “high risk.”

At 10:29 AM on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, our office received a terse email from our credit card processor — a company owned by JPMorgan Chase — saying, “Unfortunately, we can no longer support your business. We wish you all the luck in the future, and hope that you find a processor that better fits your payment processing needs.”

Within sixty seconds, our account was terminated and and Family Council could no longer accept donations online. All we can do is speculate that our conservative principles and our public policy work might have had something to do with the decision to close our account.

Unfortunately, other organizations have had similar experiences as well. In fact, corporate shareholders, state attorneys general, congressmen, and news outlets all have expressed concerns over conservatives being wrongly labeled as “high risk” or “hate groups” and subsequently debanked.

JPMorgan Chase recently took steps to prevent religiously-motivated debanking. That’s good, but our state and federal government need to make sure this sort of thing never happens to anyone again. After all, banks that are too big to fail are too big to discriminate.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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JPMorgan Chase Moves to Prevent Political, Religious “Debanking”

Religious Freedom, ,

Fox News and our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom report that JPMorgan Chase is changing policies to prevent religious and conservative groups from being “debanked” over their views.

Fox News reports,

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to update their code of conduct to protect against religious and political discrimination, in what activists are calling a “major win” in the fight against debanking.

Debanking is the phenomenon in which a bank customer has their accounts canceled, often with no explanation. Conservatives have long alleged that banks were unfairly targeting them in the practice.

As part of the agreement, conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom has withdrawn a shareholder proposal brought by their client, Bowyer Research, calling for JPMorgan to issue a report on the risks associated “related to religious discrimination against employees.” In exchange, the bank has updated their Diversity & Inclusion section of their code of conduct to prohibit discrimination against “religious views,” and included language prohibiting discrimination against customers for their “political opinions.”

In recent years news outlets have reported how government policies encourage banks to designate conservative organizations as posing a “high risk” — giving the banks an excuse to close their accounts.

In 2021 Family Council’s credit card processor terminated our account after designating our organization as “high risk.” 

At 10:29 AM on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, our office received a terse email from our credit card processor — a company owned by JPMorgan Chase — saying, “Unfortunately, we can no longer support your business. We wish you all the luck in the future, and hope that you find a processor that better fits your payment processing needs.”

Within sixty seconds, our account was terminated and and Family Council could no longer accept donations online. All we can do is speculate that our conservative principles and our public policy work might have had something to do with the decision to close our account.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Other organizations have had similar experiences as well. In fact, corporate shareholders, state attorneys general, congressmen, and news outlets all have expressed concerns over conservatives being wrongly labeled as “high risk” or “hate groups” and subsequently debanked.

Family Council is grateful to Alliance Defending Freedom and to everyone else who has stood up against debanking, and we appreciate JPMorgan Chase’s willingness to adopt new policies that protect people from debanking.

Banks that are too big to fail should also be too big to discriminate. Nobody should have their bank account closed for what they believe.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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