NEW YORK
JPMorgan Chase has acknowledged for the first time that it closed the bank accounts of President Donald Trump and several of his businesses in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, marking a significant development in the president’s legal battle with the nation’s largest bank.
The admission came in a court filing submitted this week in Trump’s $5 billion lawsuit against the bank and its CEO, Jamie Dimon.
The president alleges his accounts were shut down for political reasons, disrupting his business operations in a practice known as “debanking.”
Until now, JPMorgan had never explicitly confirmed in writing that it closed Trump’s accounts after Jan. 6. The bank previously spoke only hypothetically about its account-closing policies, citing federal privacy laws.
“In February 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan’s CB and PB would be closed,” Dan Wilkening, the bank’s former chief administrative officer, wrote in the filing.
The abbreviations refer to JPMorgan’s commercial and private banking divisions.
The acknowledgment removes any ambiguity about the bank’s actions and provides new ammunition for Trump’s claims that financial institutions targeted him in the turbulent aftermath of the Capitol riot.
By James Kisoo
