Federal prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's Washington, D.C., office have issued subpoenas to JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other major banks as part of a criminal investigation into whether the institutions shut down customer accounts for political reasons, the New York Post reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
The subpoenas order the banks to hand over lists of customers whose accounts were closed and to explain why each account was terminated. Prosecutors are examining whether the closures amount to politically motivated discrimination, a practice critics have labeled "debanking."
The probe marks a significant escalation in the Trump administration's effort to hold Wall Street accountable for what conservatives have long described as financial censorship. If the facts bear out the allegations, the case would confirm what many on the right have suspected for years: that some of the country's largest financial institutions punished customers for their politics, their industries, or their associations, and did so while hiding behind compliance jargon.
Pirro's office is eyeing potential charges under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, a statute originally used against banks that peddled toxic mortgages ahead of the 2008 financial crisis. The law carries a ten-year statute of limitations, meaning account closures dating back to 2016 or later could fall within its reach.
The probe did not originate from a formal referral. President Trump signed an executive order in August targeting "politicized or unlawful debanking" and directing regulators to refer cases to the attorney general. But no cases had been referred under that order. Pirro's office launched the investigation on its own.
Representatives for JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo all declined to comment to the Post. The Wall Street Journal first reported the existence of the probe.
The investigation builds on a trail of account terminations that stretches back years. President Trump has long maintained that JPMorgan and Bank of America dumped his accounts and refused to open new ones after January 6, 2021. First Lady Melania Trump has said her own account was shuttered shortly after the Capitol riots.
JPMorgan admitted earlier this year in court documents that it closed accounts for Trump and several of his businesses in the wake of January 6. Trump personally sued JPMorgan and CEO Jamie Dimon in January over the closures.
The Trump family also sued Capital One last year, alleging the bank axed more than 300 accounts tied to Trump businesses in 2021. That figure alone suggests a coordinated institutional response, not an isolated compliance decision.
For readers tracking the broader landscape of JPMorgan Chase's expanding operations, the contrast is striking: a bank investing aggressively in cutting-edge technology while facing criminal scrutiny over how it treated its own customers.
The criminal probe does not exist in a vacuum. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an independent bureau inside the Treasury Department, said in December that it had found early evidence that the country's nine biggest banks had "debanked" customers in industries including oil and gas, coal, firearms, and adult entertainment.
Those are not fringe sectors. They are lawful American industries employing millions. If the largest banks in the country systematically cut them off, the implications reach far beyond individual account holders. They touch the basic question of whether private financial institutions can operate as ideological gatekeepers.
Pirro's office and the OCC are now coordinating, the Post reported. Just The News confirmed that the DOJ subpoenas sought names of individuals allegedly affected by debanking along with the rationale behind each closure, a request designed to force banks to put their justifications on the record.
The banks have not mounted a public defense, but sources close to the situation pushed back on the premise of the investigation. One source familiar with the matter described prosecutors as "grasping at straws." A person close to the situation told the Post:
"No one is sitting around a table secretly deciding to debank conservatives."
Banks have instead pointed to anti-money-laundering rules and regulatory pressure as the reasons behind account closures. That defense is worth examining carefully. For years, federal regulators under the Obama and Biden administrations pressured banks to sever ties with entire categories of lawful businesses, a practice known as "Operation Choke Point." Banks complied, often enthusiastically. Now, when asked to account for those decisions, they blame the regulators who told them to do it.
That circular logic, "we only did it because the government made us", may not hold up well under a federal statute designed to punish banks for institutional misconduct. And the ten-year window of the 1989 act means prosecutors can reach back into the years when those regulatory pressures were at their peak.
The administration's broader financial policy agenda, including initiatives like the Trump Accounts savings program, reflects a philosophy that ordinary Americans deserve access to financial tools without ideological interference. The debanking probe is the enforcement side of that same coin.
Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host turned U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has drawn scrutiny for the pace and scope of her office's investigations. Before the debanking probe, her prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell over the central bank's $2.5 billion renovation project.
That probe drew sharp criticism. Democrats called it a "political hit job." Prosecutors Carlton Davis and Steven Vandervelden made an unannounced visit to the Fed's construction site in April. A federal judge later quashed Pirro's subpoenas in the Powell case, and she shut down the investigation, referring the matter to the Fed's inspector general.
The quashed subpoenas in the Powell probe will inevitably color how critics view the debanking investigation. Pirro's office will need the facts to be airtight. But the underlying question, whether banks weaponized account closures against disfavored customers, is legitimate, well-documented, and long overdue for serious legal scrutiny.
The Treasury Department's recent consumer-facing initiatives show the administration is willing to build alternatives. But alternatives alone do not address the core problem: dominant financial institutions deciding who deserves a bank account based on politics rather than creditworthiness.
President Trump has not limited his response to executive orders and lawsuits. At Davos last year, he addressed Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan directly:
"I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives."
That kind of public pressure from a sitting president is unusual. But so is the situation that prompted it. When the leader of the free world cannot maintain a checking account at two of the country's largest banks, something has gone badly wrong in the financial system.
The broader conservative concern extends well beyond the Trump family. Gun shop owners, energy companies, religious organizations, and politically active individuals have all reported sudden account terminations with little or no explanation. The OCC's December findings, covering oil and gas, coal, firearms, and adult entertainment, suggest the problem is systemic.
As policymakers debate the long-term structure of financial access, including proposals that could reshape how Americans save and invest, the debanking probe raises a foundational question: what good are new financial tools if banks can cut you off for your beliefs?
No charges have been filed. The investigation is in its subpoena phase, and the banks have not been accused of criminal conduct in any public filing. The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act is a broad statute, and applying it to alleged political discrimination in account management would be a novel legal theory.
But novelty is not the same as weakness. The statute was designed to hold banks accountable for institutional misconduct. If prosecutors can show that major banks systematically closed accounts based on customers' political affiliations, industries, or associations, rather than legitimate risk factors, the law may fit the facts precisely.
The banks will argue compliance. They will point to suspicious-activity reports, know-your-customer rules, and the alphabet soup of post-9/11 financial regulations. Some of those defenses may be valid in individual cases. But when the pattern spans multiple institutions, hundreds of accounts, and entire lawful industries, the compliance defense starts to look less like prudent risk management and more like coordinated exclusion.
Americans who play by the rules, pay their taxes, and operate lawful businesses should not have to wonder whether their bank will drop them for holding the wrong opinions. If the Justice Department's probe establishes that Wall Street turned financial services into a loyalty test, the consequences should be severe, and the precedent should be permanent.